Wildlife Safari in Jackson
This morning we went out on a wildlife tour in Teton National Park organized by our hotel, Spring Creek Ranch. Our naturalist guide, Curt, drove us around a few places in the park, and we saw lots of stuff. I highly recommend a wildlife tour if you’re in Jackson - this region is apparently one of the top wildlife refuge areas in North America. Much like our heli-skiing experience in Panorama, a good guide is a huge advantage, and Curt’s passion for his work made our trip very worthwhile.
Over the course of a few hours, we saw four moose (MOOSE!), a sage grouse, some mule deer, some bighorn sheep, a few coyotes, a bald eagle, and lots of elk - there is a huge feeding ground for them near Jackson. Somewhat disappointingly, no wolves. I might have spotted one later in the day, but it was probably a coyote - see below, you be the judge.
Things we learned:
- coyotes and wolves don’t like each other very much, and wolves generally win that battle
- for many years, conservationists thought that all predation was bad, which led to wolves being killed off - that position has changed, resulting in wolves being reintroduced in the wild, which has resulted in more manageable populations of competing species
- coyotes only weigh about thirty pounds - a lot of their size is fur
- wolves weigh about one hundred twenty pounds - big dogs
- they feed the elk, which is pretty controversial - but weaning the elk off the feed is difficult
- coyotes and wolves like elk
- coyotes and wolves almost never attack people
- the Tetons are a fairly new mountain range, as they have jagged peaks - older mountain ranges erode over time
- moose shed their antlers every year - you can tell the male moose by the stubs where their antlers used to be
- moose grow their antlers to duke it out with other male moose in attempt to woo female moose - if they can, they’ll kill each other doing so
- male bighorn sheep have more pronounced horns
- mule deer are very common in the west, whereas white-tailed deer are not
Below are some pictures. Some notes to self with respect to photography:
- clean the damn spot off your lens (it’s really problematic when zoomed in)
- get a bigger zoom lens (or at least a teleconverter…200 mm just doesn’t cut it sometimes)
- learn how to take better pictures
With those caveats, here are the photos - a few of them turned out well.
Bighorn Sheep
Elk
Coyote
Mule Deer
Moose
Geese
Pond
These are from later in the day when we made a separate drive through Teton National Park.
Tetons
Bird
Wolf? Or Coyote? Unless someone can prove otherwise (and if you can from this photo, I’d love to know how) I’m going with wolf.
Off to dinner at the Blue Lion, and then one more day of skiing tomorrow!