BISON.

As you may have noticed, I seem to have developed this knack for getting fairly close to wildlife, a capability which has afforded me the opportunity to get some fairly interesting pictures.

Now, this is fine when we're talking about something like a twelve pound turkey, a 40 pound fawn, or an 8 pound marmot. However, when one is dealing with a quick, intelligent hairy beast weighing close to a ton (or more) that can go from 0 to 35 in a matter of a few steps, it's a different story.

I considered this, and realized that in this particular situation, the gift of getting close to wildlife might not necessarily work to my advantage here, and that the wise, practical and safe thing to do would be not to push that capability too far. This being said, I did what you'd expect, which was to see how close I could get before this guy showed any sign of irritation.

DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME, FOLKS. Bison speak with their tails. If it is laying down, everything is cool. If it starts to twitch and raise a little, he's probably getting a little irritated. If it is sticking straight out, forget it, it's too late. As I walked up to this guy, carefully watching the tail, he seemed to be unconcerned with my approach (as a backup I was also walking along the edge of a 10-foot deep ravine that I could drop down and disappear into in two steps). Although his tail remained encouragingly at parade rest, he eventually raised his head from grazing, looking directly at me as if to say "really, lets not get silly, that's quite close enough". I did not seriously consider debating him on that subject.

After making this guy's acquaintance, I decided to go visit the rest of his family (about a hundred of them) that were grazing in the valley about a quarter mile away.

The herd itself seemed to consist mostly of cows, calves and juvenile males. The big bulls, like the guy above, seemed to do their grazing on a distant perimeter around the herd.

I approached the herd along the side of a hill, figuring that it would offer me some cover. Over the top of the hill was a dense clump of juniper that I planned to recede into if necessary. I had no intention of getting too close to the herd, for obvious reasons. Calculating the they could run about 3 or 4 times as fast as me, I kept the cover within range.

Turns out it was a good thing. As I was happily setting up for some nice shots, the herd broke into a run. Cool! Um, except that, well, they're sort of, ah, like kind of running in my general direction. Hmm ... not so cool ...

To make a long story short, the herd did not seem inclined to run up the hill where I was, although they did stop running, and then stood around in kind of a semicircle and stared at me. It had a fairly disconcerting effect.

If you click on this picture to expand it to full size you'll ba able to make out a few RV's in the background, just above the line of trees. just to the right and a little below the left-most RV is a tiny grey rectangle - that's the Trooper.

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