Bearly Far Enough Away

 

 There have been very few time that I have been worried about my safety while I have been out photographing. Most the time I am not photographing anything dangerous but on occasion I have had opportunities and been quite close to moose, wolf, bobcat and black bear. I always make sure I do not get any closer then the animal will tolerate. I do not want to stress the animal or find myself in a bad situation.

The one time that I was kind of worried was on a trip to Yellowstone a few years back. As we were driving down the road on our way to the Lamar Valley I noticed a guy looking at something of to the side of the road. I stopped to check it out and found that he was looking at a grizzly bear seeping in a little home made bad about 100 yards away. Shortly after I got there the bear stood up and looked directly at us. I am guessing that it had caught a whiff of our scent on the wind. Bears have a very good sense of smell. Even though it was a good football field away it was still pretty scary. Bears can run quite fast so it would have been an all out sprint to the car, which was about 25 feet away, if the bear had charged. Even so we both decided it would be a good idea to back up. We slowly moved back towards the road and my car, walking backwards and keeping an eye on the bear as we went. After a few minutes it must have decided that we were not a threat because it lay back down in its hole and went back to sleep. I have ended up closer to grizzlies on a couple of occasions but have never had one stare me in the eyes like this one did and hope that I never do in the future.