A Grizzly Encounter

The day began like many others…

Nicole and I readied our gear at the office for an amphibian survey. Today, our destination was a small pond near a residential area in Canyon. We drove out of Gardiner, up and through Mammoth, headed east for a ways, passed through Tower, over Dunraven, and descended on Canyon. Upon arriving, we donned our packs and grabbed our nets, walked through a baseball field, and made the short distance to the small pond. I smelled a putrid odor in the air. We noticed that the water drastically receded and I attributed the foul smell to the exposed mud. Now, two smaller ponds remained. We began our survey, hoping to capture adult and metamorphic frogs. However, we saw only dead animals — only metamorphs, no adults. They were in such abundance, there was no question that we were witnessing a die-off of amphibians at this site. We began collecting the tiny corpses for analysis. About halfway through our endeavor, Nicole gazed into the woods and exclaimed, “what’s that?” There was a large brown mass laying on the forest floor. We cautiously walked towards the unknown. Upon investigation, we discovered a deceased male bison. It may have been the one that we saw near the pond the previous week. The animal must have been dead for a few days. Some of the hair had fallen out and maggots were feasting on the flesh. The cause was unknown; the animal was not emaciated nor looked like it had sustained injury. Usually, for our protection, we would leave the area after discovering such a find but we wanted to collect more data on the die off of amphibians at this site. We collected more tiny corpses; their legs and arms were well developed yet their tail not yet disappeared. Towards the end of our survey, we found two that were living. They were easy to catch and didn’t seem to be doing well. Additionally, I captured two terrestrial tiger salamanders that I found swimming in the pond. We brought them back to the bank to process them.

We set our specimens on the ground and took our equipment out of our packs. I sat on the ground and prepared to work, my back away from the pond. Overhead, I heard what sounded like a the wing beats of a raven flying above. I couldn’t be more wrong. Suddenly, Nicole said, “whoa, something in the woods, a bear, bears!” In one motion, I stood up and turned, scanned the woods, and located two grizzly colored forms charging the bison carcass. Another distinct form was not far from them. In this same motion, I unholstered my bears spray. We yelled, “hey bear” to get their attention and hopefully get them to leave. We stood our ground with our defensive measures in hand, waiting for confrontation. None happened. The threat of our presence was enough to cause them to retreat — a mother and two older cubs. We were both relieved to avoid a showdown. We decided to process our living animals in the middle of the adjacent baseball field. The reasoning was that we would have optimum time to see if the threat returned. After working up our animals, we loudly returned to the pond. We quickly released the animals and took water samples before returning to the safety of the truck.

There was an eerie feeling in that place. Death surrounded us. There was no life in that pond — the frogs were gone and the tadpoles were dead. The putrid bison lay decomposing a short distance away. Death also waited for us.

At the end of the day, we commended ourselves for our levelheaded action. In the face of danger, we functioned well as a team. In hindsight, we should have left the area once we stumbled upon that bison carcass. Our inquisitive nature as scientists got the best of us. In the end, we collected good data and made it out safely.