This is week is another of the great adventures in the heart of the countries largest and personally my favorite national park, Yellowstone. These events are always fun, spending a whole week in Yellowstone, traveling in snow coaches to places unable to get to in winter by car. It didn’t take long to see our first critter of the trip, the big boys, the Bison. This guy was walking down the road, doing the usual Bison thing. The Bison use the roadways in winter to traverse the park, the roads are packed and are easier to move on then breaking a path through the snow. Bison don’t hibernate nor migrate out, so they spend their time eating calories in grasses buried underneath the snow. The less they spend the less they need to eat. Basic survival in this sense makes them use the roadways. This particular one along with his buddy, walked down the road and eventually moved off into the snow towards a group out towards the Madison River. It was a nice morning, nice light popping through the clouds making for some nice shots.
The afternoon wasn’t so nice… After we left the fountain paint pots we ran into a group of Bison not far away munching away. We pulled over, watching them, and not long afterward a storm cell came through providing a fresh blanket of snow. It was difficult to shoot through, and eventually had to go to manual to get a sharp image. Not a bad little session but a wet one.
Images captured with Nikon D3, AF-S Nikkor 200-400 Vr, on Lexar UDMA Digital Film