Seeing a grizzly in the wild is a pretty cool sight. Seeing one standing up on its hind legs and looking straight at you from 40 yards away while you're sitting in an open Jeep adds a bit more excitement to the whole thing!
I have to give credit to my wife here. In spite of being more than a little spooked, she kept snapping pictures and got some great ones for us.
We were climbing up out of a small creek drainage, came around a corner, and there he was. Up on his hind legs, sniffing the air and looking at us. He dropped down after a few seconds and slowly ambled up the road and away from us.
Fortunately, whatever he was eating in that meadow was a lot more interesting to him than us. We sat there for at least 10 minutes and watched him dig and eat.
This is about where the Jeep was when we first saw him. He was standing on the small hill you can see through the passenger side windshield. Here he's across the meadow, probably 150 yards away.
There were apparently great things to eat here. Just before we took this picture he was lying on his stomach digging under the bush behind him.
He eventually moved far enough away from the road so that we could safely pass. We drove about a mile and were stopped by a tree blocking the road. We drove back and he was right back along the side of the road. A pickup came along, we asked him to push the bear off the road for us, which he did, and we were able to drive by.
You always hear it said that grizzlies are fast runners. Believe it! When the pickup pushed him off the road he took off into the timber. Not only was he moving very quickly as he ran through the trees, he was dodging them like the best running back you've ever seen.
We showed these pictures to some folks who know grizzlies. The consensus was that this is a young male, maybe 2-3 years old.
A few miles down the road after passing the bear for the second time, my wife said, referring to the downed tree that caused us to have to go back, "we need a chain saw".
Want to know more about grizzlies? Here's a link to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Site on Grizzly Recovery.
http://www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/species/mammals/grizzly/yellowstone.htm
In the next post I'll tell you about our search for a saw and what we finally ended up with. And I'll give you a close up tour of the Jeep we're travelling in and tell you a little about it.
Want to know more about grizzlies? Here's a link to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Site on Grizzly Recovery.
http://www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/species/mammals/grizzly/yellowstone.htm
In the next post I'll tell you about our search for a saw and what we finally ended up with. And I'll give you a close up tour of the Jeep we're travelling in and tell you a little about it.
