Tuesday, May 23, 2017

A Great Wildlife Day in the Tetons, Bears and Elk, and More! (Part 1)


We just got unpacked, (mostly), when our friends George and Val came over to say hello. They then invited us to spend the next day searching for bears In Grand Teton National Park. Even though rocks were calling me, (we work rock into cabochons and jewelry), we quickly agreed!
The next morning, we got an early start, about eight thirty, and headed for the park. Its only about fifty miles away. Of course, we had to stop in Jackson at the Bunnery where we purchased the best sticky buns we have ever tasted.
Armed for a close encounter with bears we ate the buns on the way into the park. As we passed a buffalo herd I spotted an animal and George pulled over. It was a huge grizzly boar! We watched, from a safe distance as it grazed on grass, unconcerned about the minor traffic jam.
As more cars stopped, we pointed out the bear and one man told us of a bear up near Togetee Pass. He said the bear was just ten minutes above the Blackrock Ranger station and was grazing in the ditch. Deciding to go looking for bear number two we headed up the pass.
Seeing a car stopped we slowed down and there it was! Our second grizzly of the day! It was completely unconcerned with the four cars and slowly grazed toward us. You usually think of grizzlies as carnivores but they are omnivores, and often feed on the new spring grass.
It neared us as it grazed and ended up about twenty feet away! Of course, we were inside the truck and we were all holding our breath at the incredible close contact! Now we have been close to a brown bear in Alaska but this is the closest we have ever been in the lower forty-eight
Even though the bear wore a collar and an ear tag, it obviously had never tasted human food and so it ignored the vehicles. If you are ever close to a bear, remember that a fed bear is a dead bear! Once used to human food it will eventually cause so many problems it will become dangerous and it will be killed.
The bear finally started to graze back to where it stared and so we turned around and headed back into the park. The State of Wyoming has announced that it will hold a grizzly bear season and my question to the hunter that will kill this bear is. Will you mount the bear with its collar and ear tag, (The bear was outside the park)?
I do hope that next fall’s hunters will only be allowed to harvest problem bears. They are killed when they develop a taste for fresh cows and sheep and endanger people. Having lived in Wyoming for forty years, I do understand the problem faced by the expanding bear population. According to the latest count a population of seven hundred to a thousand now exist in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and its surrounding area

Time to get off the pulpit. Heading back into the park we next turned north at Moran Junction in hopes of scoring a trifecta, three bears in one day! We first drove to Pilgrim c\Creek but that’s for the second part of this blog! To be continued oh and Clear skies

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