So we narrowly missed a warm and friendly confrontation with a full grown mama grizzly with her cub.
About a week ago, on our second day at Yellowstone, we decided to leave the park to go fishing on the lake. The water was bone-chillingly cold and the catch was just bad; so we got bored and decided to hike into the woods with my air rifle to look for small game. After shooting a very cute and very small animal, I felt really guilty and vowed to shoot very cute and slightly larger animals instead. As we stalked very loudly through the woods, Bob spotted a large quail-like bird about 15-20 yards in front of us and pointed it out to me. I got all excited. So I crouch down, stabilize my elbows on my knee, and tilt my head to look through the scope. Just as my breath was calming and I'm about to take my shot, the bird flutters away, looking very alarmed.
Thinking that the bird saw me from its peripheral vision, I cursed myself for being slow and started walking forward to see how far it had fled. As I got close to where the bird was standing, I caught some movement in MY peripheral vision, just beyond the bushes to my right. I freeze and stare through the bushes. The thing moved again. This time, I could see the brown head of a full-size grizzly contrasted clearly with the green of the bushes. My heart instantly jump to my throat. We had just been reading that grizzly's can run up to 30 mph flat-out. At that rate, if it saw us and decided to attack, we'd be about a quarter mile short of the car before we got run down.
Not wanting to surprise the bear as it moved towards us around the bushes, I signaled Bob back. "Bear!" I whispered and pointed towards to my right, "There's a bear!". We slowly (but not too slowly) back away from our positions. The good thing is that the bear must not have noticed us at first, because we were able to get about 100-150 yards away before we saw the bear again. When we looked back, we saw the majestic body of a fully grown grizzly bear saunter up to the top of the high ground close to where we were. As we stared at this emperor of the forest, a smaller brown figure jumped into view as well. It was a grizzly cub! And the emperor was an empress! I was just about to say "awwwww, so cute!!!" when I realized how lucky we were to have spotted the bear before it spotted us. Mother bears are incredibly protective when the cubs are around.
Mama bear must have caught our scent, because it suddenly turned its head and looked straight at us. We were in a particularly flat area of the forest where only low level bushes grew. The bear was uphill from us and there was nothing that could slow her down if she decided to attack. One breath, two breaths, three breaths; we stayed very very still. Fortunately, it decided that we didn't pose enough of a threat for her to risk leaving her cub. Instead, it just looked at us like a huge club bouncer as if saying "yo, get the f*ck outta heaaah." So we backed away again, facing the bear, in a very very very dignified manner; because you know, true outdoorsmen aren't afraid of no stinkin' animals. I even started to reach for my camera, but then I decided I shouldn't risk the sound of velcro unzipping to set anyone, not naming names, off.
As we walked away from the bear and her cub, we realized that this whole area must have been the bear family's feeding grounds. We came upon two carcasses of adult elk. One must have died a long time ago, as nothing remained except for its skull, spine, and rib cage. The other, lying close to it, still had its limbs with hide and hoof attached. Bears usually go for veggies and smaller animals, but we weren't about to stay long enough to find out whether a bear had actually killed those elk.
Exiting the woods and breathing a sigh of relief, Bob and I high-five'd each other for seeing a grizzly and her cub in the wild for the first time in our lives. And we were both celebrating our escaping from potential death. And I definitely learned a very useful wilderness survival lesson through all this -- when you venture into grizzly infested woods, always bring a friend or two. Because if the grizzly decides to chase you, you won't have to run faster than the bear -- you just have to run faster than your friends.
