28 Sep 20 Back a bit early from Yellowstone: 2,400 miles, 3,500 images, 7 days of smoke, 3 days of clear weather for shooting, and a blown transmission in the SUV. Not exactly what I had planned on!! But Jan has been bugg'n me about getting a new truck for quite some time so now I guess it will happen. The big story while I was there occurred on the 18th which I learned about dining with good friends on the 19th. You can watch all about it here . Apparently a large 6 point bull elk had been battling an even larger bull and lost, having been injured in the process. Going his own way a large grizzly, #791 and 9 years old, caught wind of the injured elk and ran it down in the Yellowstone river and then feasted on it for for 10 days. The weight of the elk was estimated at 600 pounds as supposedly is the weight of the bear. Imagine eating your own weight in chow over a 10 day period. Having see a portion of the fight on one of the diners phone, I decided to get up early the next day to go see if I could get any shots of that bear and the kill. I departed at 0530, in 24°F weather - colder than Iceland in February - to get there before the crowds so it turned out that there were only about 250 others there before I arrived and courtesy of the park Nazis only had to park a half mile away. That resulted in my making a few bad decisions in not taking my longest - and by far heaviest - lens, nor the cable release, and a much needed stool all of which I had with me. I did luck out and find a nice location into which I could squeeze in without encroaching on anyone else and then spent the next 4 hours watching a mostly sleeping bear - guess that's what you do most on a FULL belly, while the fog rolled in and obscured the view for most of the 4 hours. When the sun finally burned it off the lighting was about as HARSH as I've ever encountered and the bear had positioned the elk and himself such that he stayed, for the most part, in the shade morning til night! So with that in mind PLEASE look at this offering as mostly a documentary shot and not something that I think is worth sharing other than it completes the story. The two links below, for those of you curious about all this, bring you up to date as of the morning of the 27th. IF you watch the last one you will see that all that is left of the elk is the rack, head, and hooves. Nothing went to waste!
https://www.facebook.com/31315334396/posts/10157812542354397/?extid=ygLUpELEmwdfd73i&d=n
https://www.facebook.com/1339235569/posts/10223961619331875/?extid=2BW8vZqs8bq5RWdh&d=n
This is a tight cropping of the original to which I've don a lot of manipulation to get it where it is. Shooting through fog to get something sharp is a talent I do not possess. Nap Time Nikon D500; Aperture priority; ISO 800; 1/400 sec @ f /6.3 with the 80 - 400 (600mm equivalent).