Night of Carnage

We parked the RV in a designated pull-off in the middle of Hayden Valley. If in the car, we would have driven around, looking for rangers, or following the guys with the really big cameras to find wildlife. But with the RV, we figured we would just park up and take a chance that something would run by. We grabbed the binoculars and the camera, and climbed up to the roof. We hadn't even sat down before a man below cried out, "Grizzly, dead ahead!"

The distinctive hump of the Grizzly's back was easy to spot, moving across the low sage brush. We watched as it zigzagged through the brush, nose to the ground. "He's searching about for a baby elk. Mother elk leave their little babies hidden in the brush, while they go out to graze." When the Grizzly suddenly sat back on its haunches and popped its head up to take a scan across the valley, the cry went out, "It found one!" Through the binoculars, you could see a limp and lifeless baby elk in its mouth.

It proceeded to rip apart its find, popping its head up occasionally to look around. When two large ravens showed up to grab a piece of the action, the bear got fed up at the nuisance, took the remainder of the elk in its mouth, and swam across the river. We watched for quite some time more while it finished its meal, before we decided to try another spot in the valley.

We drove South and pulled off at the next jam that we crossed. Far off in the distance, silhouetted against the setting sun, was a mother Grizzly and two cubs. We were having such luck that we decided to drive the Northern end of the valley. As we crested a small hill in the road, we came across the mother of all wildlife jams. The cars were at a dead stop, four wide, half a mile up the hill and around the corner. Since ton cars were getting by from the North, we were able to slide into a free space in the pull-off at the bottom of the hill.

Before Nicole could even shut the engine off and ask, "What are they looking at?", she saw them - wolves! Back up on the roof of the RV, we could see four wolves: two gray, one black, and one white. They were tearing apart an elk. That had apparently just taken it down because the rest of the herd was looking down cautiously from the top of a hill, like, "Is she doing to make it?"

Mary Lou grimaced as she saw bits of flashes of brilliant red as the wolves worked together to rip off chunks of elk flesh, but Nicole watched everything through the binoculars. For an hour, she sat and watched them finish of everything edible, observing the alpha white male eat first, with the help of one of the gray wolves. When the white one was finished, muzzle coated in blood, it trotted over to a clearing to rest, and clean up a little. With the alpha gone, the black wolf jumped in, while the other gray wolf sat patiently, watching, and waiting for its turn. It was bloody. It was raw. It was primal.

Satisfied with our night of carnage, we waited until the wolf jam cleared out a little, and got back on the road. We had just left Hayden Valley, riding parallel to the river, when we started to see brake lights ahead. We followed the line of sight of the pointing passengers and, through the pine trees, across the river, was a grizzly bear dragging something out of the water. Mary Lou jumped out of the moving RV with her camera, and left Nicole to navigate it to the next pull-out. Nicole backtracked through the woods, and watched as the Grizzly finished heaving a sickly grey, bloated carcass onto the riverbank.

No one could tell what it was, elk, antelope, maybe even a bison. The back legs of the carcass had already been stripped clean, and the white leg bones were splayed and pointed up to the sky. They trembled nauseatingly as the grizzly sunk his sharp claws into the beast and tore it open. A knowledgable gentlemen that had joined the jam informed his family that sometimes, during difficult winters, bears will eat some of their kill, and store the rest of it in the almost freezing river. A wildlife refrigerator, if you will. That carcass could have been pinned there in the logs, preserved all winter long, until the bear needed it. Awesome.

The sun had finally set. As we sat outside at our picnic table, we breathed deep the fresh air, looked up at stars and realized. . . you just can't get any better than this.