When we decided to do a big family trip this year, my brother in law told me about 50 times “don’t forget your camera! I want to see a bear and you to get a picture for me”. I wasn’t going to tell him that if I was going out west, the camera bag would be packed before other essentials like underwear and allergy medicine. And it’s true. I had my carry-on camera backpack loaded and ready in the car before anything else. I have a *small* obsession with photography.
I saw bears on 4 different occasions. We saw 3 mother grizzleys and 1 mother black bear. 3 mamas let their cubs run around them. 1 momma tried to keep her cubs away from the crowds. Speaking of crowds, I was pleasantly surprised by how the parks handled the crowds. On all sightings, there was a park ranger helping with traffic and keeping the crowd at a distance. All of these shots were taken with a 300mm zoon. Many people had super long range wildlife zooms and that was the only reason they were in the park—up close bear pics.
I was insanely jealous of the super long rang folks. I just don’t have the 8-10 thousand bucks to put down on zoom range glass if I don’t have a career in wildlife photography. But I got as close as I could and spent about 15-20 minutes with each set of bears and my family never complained to me about the wait. Some of these pictures are on previous posts, some are new.
Blurry cub ears
Grizzly on a hill
These were from the last bear sighting and beyond a doubt, the best in my opinion. This momma was playing with her cubs in the shady spots.
Cub playing with momma paws
Gimme a kiss!
Momma bear profile check
The bear family
Seeing the bears and having a momma deer visit us each morning were the two wildlife highlights of staying in Wyoming. I saw many other animals in the wild and I’m glad I had the chance to get them on camera. The only animal I didn’t see was a big cat. Frankie’s relatives didn’t want to show themselves or maybe they were still up in high country until the snow melts. Maybe next time 🙂