Wild Life Moment: Grizzly Bears Hunting in Grand Teton National Park
TW: DEATH OF AN ANIMAL
During our time in the Grand Teton area, we scored a site at Colter Bay Campground for two nights.
Early on our first morning, I took Sally for a drive to do some sight seeing and hopefully capture some wildlife.
We didn’t have to go far. About 15 minutes into our drive I came across a group of cars stopped on the side of the road in a meadow. There were Park Rangers present as well, so I knew this meant something big. I pulled over and asked the first person what was going on. They told me there was a grizzly rooting around in the meadow. A moment later, there she was.
Camera in hand, I started snapping. The Park Rangers were directing traffic and keeping all the people at a safe distance.
Eventually, another bear wandered up! This one was a male. The two bears sort of circled our crowd the entire time. (A wide circle) But they crossed the road 4 or 5 times during this entire ordeal. The poor rangers… I really saw how hard they have to work to keep safety a priority.
There were multiple times when the bears would randomly head for the road and the Rangers would have to yell, “GET IN YOUR CAR” and we would all run to our cars. One time, a car had just pulled up and probably didn’t know what was going on. Their son, middle school age, got out of the car to see what everyone was looking at. The next moment, the bear was running towards their car from over a hill. Everyone was yelling at him, and when he got to his car they had locked the doors on him and he actually JUMPED through the window of the car and the bear went right on past. Crazy.
Now here is where things got interesting…
The entire time we were watching the bears they were busy rooting in the grass. As someone who doesn’t know anything about bears, I had no idea what was going on.
All of sudden, the female bear pounces on something in the field and we hear a squeal. The pedestrian I am, I think its a chipmunk or prairie dog. She jumps on it again.
You would not even believe the collective gasp from the crowd when in the next moment, she flings an elk calf into the air.
Yes… a full on baby elk.
This moment is forever seared into my brain. She took that elk calf like it weighed nothing. And it was definitely bigger than my dogs.
My brain was immediately setting off alarms.
“Am I in danger?”
As soon as she had control over the calf, she started running AT THE CARS. And not just at any cars, MINE.
During this time I had join the crowd on the side of the road and left Sally in the truck, and I couldn’t run back to my truck because that was the exact direction the bear was going. She ended up running two cars in front of mine.
The entire time all I could think was, “Sally, please be a good girl and ignore the bear running directly towards you.” She luckily was good and didn’t even make a sound.
After all that commotion, the bear disappeared under some trees on the opposite side of the road. Within a few minutes, the male bear returned and started making his rounds. He knew there was a meal somewhere. Also during this, the mother elk was calling out and clearly in distress. It was really sad to watch.
Eventually, the male bear found the meal and chased the female bear away. All that work for her to not even get to enjoy it.
Watching this was a great reminder that the parks are NOT zoos. These animals are wild and will act so. The circle of life is real.
When I left this scene, I was elated from what I experienced. It really felt like a once in a lifetime moment.
