Bison, Grand Teton National Park

While we certainly found bison on every day of our Grand Teton and Yellowstone trip, one of the best encounters came in the late afternoon in Grand Teton National Park. The large herd that resides there had moved fairly close to the road, and they stayed there resting, feeding, fighting, and running around until long after the sun had set. These are such remarkable animals, and it's interesting to think about what the landscape must have looked like a few hundred years ago when a few million were still roaming the west!

View more photos of the largest land animal in North America in my Bison Gallery.

Moose pair in the sagebrush, Grand Teton National Park

Our moose encounters in Grand Teton National Park were one of the highlights of our entire road trip. It was amazing to see these huge animals up close, and I'm really excited that we were able to find them feeding in the sagebrush on a few occasions. This post is a series of four photos of a pair of moose that we watched on our final morning in the park. We started the day by finding them off in the middle of the sagebrush at dawn, but they slowly worked their way closer to us in the morning light.



We were there just before the start of the rutting season, so most of the bulls we saw still had velvet on their antlers. However, on our last morning there we caught this bull with mostly clean antlers (you can see a bit of velvet still hanging down by his face in these shots). He was clearly still a bit itchy, and he spent a fair amount of time scratching on any solid object he could find. I was so amazed at how large these animals really are, and they really are a sight to behold. I know it looks like he's aggressively coming at me in the frame below, but he was just interested in feeding in that brighter patch of vegetation.



Unfortunately, for a lot of the shots on this trip (including many of the shots from our encounter with this pair) I really had to jack up the ISO, which introduced quite a bit of noise. It was a tricky trip in that regard, with a lot of shooting right near dawn and before the sun had made it over the mountains. It's a delicate balance with my gear, confounded by the fact that the low-light conditions challenges the autofocus on my lens (f/6.3 at 500mm), but I decided that I'd rather have a chance for sharp shots with noise instead of blurry shots due to slower shutter speeds with less sensor noise. Overall it seemed to work out ok, but the amount of shots that I've culled due to technical quality does speak volumes to what having a faster long-lens would allow you to do.



View more photos of these impressive animals in my new Moose Gallery.

Pronghorn in the grass, Yellowstone National Park

I still have so many images to go through from my trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks in September, but here is a frame that jumped out at me during an initial scan through the photos. When you have a chance to get close to such amazing wildlife like this herd of pronghorn, it's easy to get caught up taking intimate portraits of them, but I tried to also step back a bit with the zoom and place them in their environment. Pronghorn are so well suited to their prairie home, and they look beautiful when surrounded by tall grasses.

Visit my Pronghorn Gallery.

Young pronghorn, Yellowstone National Park

Here is one of my favorite shots from today in Yellowstone National Park, which was chosen for today's upload at my wife's request. This photo cracks her up since it appears that the pronghorn is smiling into the camera and saying "Cheese!" She's always joking that wildlife likes to pose for me, so this one was her favorites. We had a great close-up encounter with a group of pronghorn this morning, and some of the other highlights included seeing wolves (and pups!) through the binoculars in the Lamar Valley, as well as a grizzly bear! Both were feeding at different times on a bison carcass that was really far away -- but thanks to some friendly people with scopes, we were able to get a pretty good glimpse of them.

Black bear cub, Yellowstone National Park

We spent our first full day in Yellowstone National Park today, and we were able to find some interesting wildlife. In addition to the standard bison and elk, we saw a coyote hunting in the grass and some big horn sheep after the sun had set. We also believe we saw two gray wolves in Hayden Valley. However, we only saw them as tiny black dots in the binoculars. Those around us at the turnout had been watching them for a little while, and claimed that's what they were. I'm still hoping to see one that I can recognize in the binoculars.



One of the highlights was watching a family of black bears feed on pinecones in the top of the trees along Dunraven Pass. There was a mother and two cubs, one of which is shown in these shots. All three moved through the tree so easily, and with the tree growing on such a steep slope, one wrong move could have been very bad. But no worries, they all made it down safely!



We'll be out again for sunrise tomorrow -- and I'm looking forward to what we might find!