Arooooooo! We drove back up through the Hayden Valley this morning, seeing nothing more than bison, and found that the elk carcass had a wolf chewing on it. Over the course of an hour there were four different wolves at the meat, and near the end a brave little coyote showed up and started scouting ever closer in the hope the wolves were just leaving. Eventually we needed breakfast ourselves and turned around. More bison and two coyotes on the way back.
In the afternoon we repeated the trip and found a single wolf on the dwindling remains of the elk. There were still at least forty cars pulled up at the roadside to ogle the spectacle, and of course any passing cars were also rubbernecking worse than those checking out a pile-up on the M25.
Near dusk I spotted a gaggle of ravens in the woods about thirty yards from the road. On investigation it looked like they were gathered on a deer carcass that had no sign of predation, i.e. a natural death or roadkill. So we noted the spot and decided to check it the next morning, just in case.
Still, those wolves have got to be one of the highlights of our trip (of course the otter sighting is always the main highlight), they’re a really iconic species. And by all accounts this was a good sighting; plenty of people were telling us that typically wolves are viewed up to a half-mile distant across the valley using a spotting scope. These were scarcely 100 yards from the road. More than that, this location was less than half a mile from the Canyon Village Visitor Centre! So that would explain the 40+ cars and the constant vigilance of several park rangers to avoid any idiot behaviour from the avid watchers.
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