Wolf in the Snow

With Elena shouting at me to stop, I could see that the pack would soon be out of sight around a corner, so I drove past the other parked vehicles and around the corner until I could find a wider spot to pull over. Elena grabbed one camera and bolted from the car as I stopped and as the first part of the pack crossed the road about 100 yards in front of us. Other cars pulled past our rental car and almost to the spot where this one wolf paused at the edge of the road.

As more cars pulled up towards the spot where the "first" wolf had paused while crossing the road. I focused on one wolf still up on the hillside as the wolf stopped and surveyed the growing line of car backed up in the path taken by the other wolves in the pack. After a moment of hesitation, the wolf turned and started coming straight down the hillside to where I was standing in the 100 foot gap between my rental car and the cars that had pulled past me.

As the wolf came down the hillside, I kept taking photos but started moving towards my right and the other cars to put space between me and the wolf and keep the best angle for the photos while trying to give the wolf a clear path to rejoin the pack. These photos were taken with my 500mm telephoto lens, so the wolf was a bit farther away than you might assume when first looking at the photos, but I was still getting a little anxious.

The wolf paused on the road about 20 feet from our rental car (the headlights visible behind the wolf), while I was about 50 feet or so away and still slowly backing up. At this point the wolf was standing almost exactly where I had been standing when I first got pictures of the wolves up on the hillside or crossing the road, and I had reached the back of the line of cars.

After the wolf posed for it's portrait at the top of the page, it actually took several steps towards me. A passenger in the minivan at the end of the line of cars rolled down the window and offered me sancturary inside their vehicle. I strongly considered accepting the offer, but kept backing up and kept shooting ready to dart around the front of the minivan if the wolf got any closer.

The wolf then took a few strides off of the road before stopping to look back at the other people gathered at the back edge of the stopped cars. To me, it looks like the wolf if trying to decide if it could cull one of those nylon covered two footers and whether there would be enough meat to make it worthwhile.

I certainly had no desire to get any closer after seeing into the wolf's eyes through my telephoto lens.

Please check out my Yellowstone Winter gallery for more images from our visit to Yellowstone.

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