Overland in the Americas: Wolves, the crack cocaine of wildlife watching

If you ever visit Yellowstone the best tip we have was given to us by Lisa and Dave an awesome couple who we met in Alaska and live in Gardiner just above Yellowstone. Base yourself at Slough Creek campsite, get up an hour to half hour before sunrise and drive through the Lamar Valley towards Cooke City. Stop when you see a yellow Xterra SUV and about ten other cars.

The conspicious yellow SUV is owned by the wolf project worker who is armed with a scope, a radio tracking device and an army of amateur wolf watchers.

Rick and his yellow Xterra, you can't miss him.

The Lamar valley where we saw all 11 wolves from the Lamar canyon pack. A grey Alpha female no. 9, her two husbands both black no's 754 and 755. 754 had a limp and had had it for about 6 weeks, we felt really sorry for him trying to keep up with the pack. There are then two groups of four pups, one from this year and one from last who haven't left the pack yet.

Brewing up a quick coffee on the stove, trying not to miss any action while we do

Arrive early to get a good spot

Wolves killed an Elk during the night and the carcass is in the creek in the photo above just at the left end of the horizontal yellow streak of vegetation.

A retired policewoman from Oxford called Sian has been watching the wolves for the past ten years. She had a fantastic telescope with an HD eyepiece which we took some photos through. She watched the wolves chase the elk into the creek as it got dark the previous night and thought the elk would be safe....as the sun came up the next morning we saw a carcass, already eaten to the ribs.

A grey wolf chases a cheeky magpie off the carcass.

The lamar valley, a scenic spot for the carcass, the wolves were also kind enough to make the kill in easy view of the road.

We we're now hooked. It was a bit like a soap opera, every night we watched the goings on at the carcass til it got dark and during the day we watched from sunrise and knew if we left to go and see anything else in the park something good would happen. We'd already missed some howling by a pup that got separated from the rest of the pack but thought we'd better risk missing out again and see the other good wildlife watching area Hayden valley.

A group of stopped cars is always a good sign in Yellowstone and this time in the Hayden valley a couple had had to do an emergency stop as a grizzly bear ran out in front of their car, across the road and down to this river which it swam across (sadly we missed that). It was now on the other side chewing a Bison skull which was completely white indicating it must be pretty old, it then began chewing on the hide, trying to pull a bit off and getting rancid grey slime all over its face. The hide looked grey/green colour as the bear dragged it up the bank. This is when we realised how lucky the Alaskan bears are. We'd watched them in the salmon filled rivers, catching a slamon, biting it and if the fish was a male dropping it back in the water, they only eat the females and eggs. While Koidak bears get to live on caviar these poor Yellowstone bears have to make do with chewing on a moldy old Bison hide. We think the rhetoric about Alaskan bears being the toughest is rubbish, they are just the fattest, after all you wouldn't call the fattest people the best specimens of all humanity, for our money bears in the lower forty eight are much tougher as they really have to work to stay alive.

Rancid bison skin, yum yum!

Dragging the grey slimy hide out of the water. The photo is bad because I took it through my binoculars.

As predicted when we went back to the elk carcass a grizzly was on it. The can smell a carcass from miles away. The hardcore wolf watchers like Sian filled us in on all the details of the grizzly's arrival. You can just see the hind leg of the elk to the right of the bear, paler brown.

It had obviously been an exhausting day for the bear, he lay on the bony carcass and made it look very comfortable.

Ralph was glued to the action.

Next the alpha female returned to taunt the bear. He responded by making sure he was standing all over the carcass at all times which looked like it was playing Twister. She was relentless and kept standing right next to the bear, both of them pretended not to notice each other but were obviously keeping a close eye out.

At one point the wolf managed to avoid the bears swipe and escape with a rib. We watched them until it was too dark to see any more. When we returned at sunrise the following day the bear had spent the night lying on top of the carcass!

Poor 'Limpy' or no. 754

It took a while to perfect the digiscoping but Ralph got pretty good, this is the bear standing all over the carcass, trying to keep the crows off it.

Another contender for the carcass, a bald eagle, there was also a golden eagle, 3 coyotes, 11 wolves, crows, ravens, magpies and many more all making use of the one poor elk.