Sunday, May 12, 2019

Mammoth Campground, Yellowstone

This was an amazing day. I saw things I had read and heard about, but never seen.

It starts with a bison carcass in the Lamar Valley. All morning we saw wolves on it:

Then, all afternoon, we had a wolf that was trying to cross the road to get to the carcass, but was always blocked by cars. He passed within 100 yards of us several times:

Finally, there was the orphan bison calf. We believe that the dead bison had a calf, and it was wandering up and down the valley, alone. Bison will not adopt orphans, so this calf was doomed. It couldn't eat grass, so it would either starve or be eaten by wolves or bears. It tuned out to be the latter – wolves.

By 8:00 pm, I was ready to go back to camp, but my job this evening was to stay and report what happened. So I stayed.

The wolf that had been trying to cross the road all day finally made it. He went to the carcass and fed for a while, and then went for the calf. It took 15 minutes to kill it, and even then it took the help of another wolf. Here's some video of the fight, but it's a bit gruesome. I left the audio in so you can hear us talking while it's going on. Some of the calf's actions we still don't understand.

After making the original post, I've talked with people who study bison and the consensus is that the calf was so new, it didn't have any idea what was going on.  It's mother died before she could teach it anything. It didn't know to be afraid.