Sunday, August 23, 2015

Wolves and a Bear

I was not planning to do any wildlife watching today. Today was supposed to be some internet stuff and fishing. It didn't quite work out that way.

On the way to Cooke City, I saw some people I knew. The way they were set up told me that there may be some wolf activity to be seen, so I stopped. The story was that up in the hills above the road, the Lamar Canyon pack pups had been seen. So, I got my scope out. Back up the road was another group of people with a different angle on the scene. They said, over the radio, that they were seeing a grizzly bear in the area the pups had been seen. More interesting. No sigh of the wolf pups, though. After about half an hour, they said the bear was heading down the hill in out direction. Really interesting, so I got the camera out. Soon enough, we saw the bear coming down. It crossed the road about 200 yards away and headed up the valley, ignoring the fishermen.

Then, we heard howling from both sides. The pups were to the west of us and the adults were across the valley to the east. After about 15 minutes, we started to see the pups. One here in the sage, another there on a hilltop. It became obvious that they were heading down hill, so we watched and waited. They crossed the road near where the bear did. (the pictures aren't very good because the heat waves made it impossible to focus)

Then, they crossed the creek

Shook themselves dry

And waited for the 4^th one to arrive

Not a bad morning.

I did go fishing in the afternoon, but only caught 3.