My brother-in-law Dave and I went out shooting early one of the mornings we were in the Grand Teton National Park. We were in a hurry to get back from Mormon Row to our camp at Coulter Bay, because they had a big day planned and we didn’t want to be late. Along the way, we saw several cars lined up along side the road (typical sight for the parks, not always worth stopping).
Then we saw that a ranger also had parked, lights flashing and he was out of his vehicle along the side of the road. If that wasn’t enough, we then spotted a couple of photographers with 600mm lenses also. That was our cue to get out our cameras and check it out. The longest lens I have is my f/4 EF70-200 with a 1.4x extender, so that would have to do.
We were pretty excited when we saw that it was a bear that everyone was watching, then another one walked out into the field. The ranger informed us that they were two siblings left by their mother a few months ago and they were foraging for breakfast.
We stood, watched, and took many many pictures, hoping that they would maybe stand up, or at least play with each other, but they kept getting closer and closer to the road. When we got there, I imagine they were about 150 feet away, the ranger said a couple of times that if they got much closer we’d have to get in our vehicles. I felt pretty good, since I thought I could outrun a few of these photographers with their big lenses.
Apparently it was too early to play, and they didn’t do too much. Once they got to about 50-60 feet away I decided that it was time to get in the car. It was curious that the ranger had let them get that close, but he must have known something that I didn’t.
So while I didn’t get a shot of a bear standing on it’s hind legs, or playing with his brother/sister, I did manage to get one that looks as though he was smiling. Perhaps thinking along the lines “How close can I get before they all run away?”. After all, it was breakfast…
Have you ever seen a bear in the wild?
How close were you?
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I have seen a bear in the wild. My Dad and husband where up making a cabin in this small canyon outside of Escalante. They called to say that there was a small black bear hanging around the trash dumpster. So I ran out there with my camera to see what I could get. I have a 75-300mm lense that still doesn’t get me as close to stuff as I would love. Anyways, this bear was a honey colored skinny little thing that was quite skittish. It ran away as soon as I showed up in my big mini-van (or maybe it was me being big since I was seven months pregnant.) But he soon came back to dine on the garbage. He came right by my back left bumper and about three feet from my door that I was trying to hold shut. I got some great shots of him in the dumpster. Then this dork guy shows up from town and tries to feed the bear by hand. I was hoping for an action shot mauling incident but the town cop showed up and scared him away. He pestered my Dad and husband the next day by walking right up to the open garage in which they were chopping wood. I heard that he died a few weeks later when he was hit by a car while eating some road kill. Now bears super scare me so this was a great photo shoot and therapy all in one.
Well, Bryan found a freshly killed black bear on the side of the road about a month ago. Being the kind of man he is, he pulled over and put the huge bear into his work trash can that was in the bed of his truck, tied it up and brought it home to share with the kids and his brother. They got lots of pictures and then burned it. He saved the skull and after much preservation has it sitting on his sink.
Does that count?
Beautiful work!
Heather, thanks for the story, I too would have been hoping for some action mauling shots
Amanda, definitely counts
I’m certain I wouldn’t have thought about bringing it home, let alone saving the skull 