Yellowstone National Park is a place filled with adventures just waiting to be had. During the summer this wild place sees millions of visitors, scrambling to take it all in before their time is up. Filled with spectacular views, thermal activity and a variety of wildlife, it is a place that is popular to many, yet is in the changing of seasons that the true Yellowstone is revealed. Not one that is consumed by the hustle and bustle of the cars and the crowd, but shrouded in mystery and silence. This winter wonderland is beautiful and dangerous all in one, where the perils of nature play out before our eyes.
As a Montana native, I have the privilege of having Yellowstone National Park in my back yard and the ability to take advantage of all the opportunities that it has to offer to the curious visitor. In the spring of 2013 I had the chance to witness a part of nature that many may never see.
As a college student I was itching to get out of town, away from the worries of school, and stretch my legs and have a fun week with a couple good friends. We decided to pack up the tent, cooler, cameras and libations and head to Yellowstone’s famed Northern Range, for a week filled with wolves, elk and bison, not to mention some bitter cold temperatures. None of us could have imagined what that week would reveal.
The week went by and we were able to make many trips into the Lamar Valley. Spending the days behind the glass of our spotting scopes, bino’s and cameras looking searching for and photographing wolves, bighorn sheep, elk and bison took its toll on us so we spent the evenings soaking in the Boiling River and sitting around the camp fire. It was not till the middle of our stay that we found something that would forever be engraved in our minds.
During a drive from Lamar Valley back to our camp we were side tracked by a couple bull elk that were bedded off the side of the road near an area of the Blacktail Plateau. One of the bulls had already shed his antlers and was left with two red sores on the top of his head. The other bull, however, had only dropped one of his antlers and was still carrying around quite a large piece of bone. This sparked our interest and as we talked about how it must feel to be carrying around a large piece of dead bone, and talking about how none of us had ever seen a bull actually drop an antler off of his head. As hunters we have found antlers in the mountains before, but to actually witness that act was a rare spectacle that many can go their whole lives without witnessing. We were losing light that night, so on the way back the next morning we stopped and the bull was still almost the exact spot as the night before. We continued on with our day and saw wolves feeding on an elk they had killed the evening before and a grizzly bear that had awakened from his winter slumber, but in the back of our minds we were thinking of that bull spending his day by Blacktail Plateau. We decided to make the trip back and watch that bull for a while before we headed down to the river so soak in the natural hot springs. When we got there we saw a person that worked for the Yellowstone Coalition taking pictures of the bull as well. Upon talking to this man we realized that this was not just some ordinary bull, but this was the famed Bull No. 10. This bull had been embedded in Yellowstone folklore for years for a variety of reasons and was a bull that many park regulars had watched for years.
We talked for hours about some of the events that had led to this bull becoming so well known, one of which he said involved a fight with a swing set that had been the reason he was tagged in the first place and also about how this magnificent bull ruled the roost during the rut in the fall. We decided to stay a little bit longer that day and spent hours just watching and photographing this bull, hoping that we would perhaps get to see something that had never graced our eyes and probably never would again.
It seemed like hours went by, and nothing had happened. We were growing restless and loosing light, and wanted to go and look for wolves in Lamar one last time. I felt that I needed one last picture of this bull before we moved on. Then as I was putting the camera back on the tripod I looked up and that is when my friends and I were rendered speechless. Right before our eyes bull No. 10 shook his head, and the antler fell to the ground. For a second he just looked at it, as if he were wondering what had just happened or perhaps enjoying the sense of relief that came with the weight be lifted off his head. For me this was a photographers dream. A chance to get a photograph of something that I may never witness again, a photograph of bull No. 10 that no one else will ever have or get the chance to have. A photograph that would cement its importance in my mind over many others as it was the only tangible evidence I would have that this was not a dream.
In shock and disbelief we took a couple more pictures and discussed amongst ourselves how awesome it was to see a bull, especially one that is as well-known as No. 10, shed an antler yards from our cameras. We decided that we would end the day on a good note and went back to the camp for a steak and some libations and talk about the amazing day we had and get ready to get up the next morning and do it one last time before we headed back to civilization.
The next day we spent the morning looking for wolves and bears again and then headed back Mammoth to pack up camp and get on the road. When we were coming up on the Blacktail Plateau we noticed that there was a National Park Ranger there. We decided to pull over and go tell him about what we had witnessed the day before. Upon talking to him we were depressed to find that someone had actually walked up and taken the shed for their own, an action that is illegal in the National Parks. Once the ranger found that we were not the culprits we were able to talk to him for a while about this special bull. He told us that the Park Service had the other antler and had been using the antlers from this bull to educate visitors on antler growth from year to year. The other antler from that year had main beams that measured between 55 and 60 inches and that Bull No. 10 was over 15 years old, which is something that you don’t see every day. We showed him the pictures that we had taken and talked for a bit before moving on and getting on the road home.
We had figured that we would get the chance to see this bull again in a couple weeks when we came back for some college course work and to gather data for a population and dispersal assessment we were conducting. When we came back to gather this information Bull No. 10 was nowhere to be found. It was later that we found that only days after we had the witness this magnificent bull drop an antler and spent hours photographing him that he had died, taken by a pack of wolves that he had managed to evade for many winters. As sad as that was to hear, we knew that was how life worked. With the death of Bull No. 10 we also knew that we had something that no one else could ever get and memories that would be with us forever. We had the photographs of the last antler that Bull No. 10 would ever drop on Yellowstone’s Northern range. We had the privilege of seeing this undisputed king of the Northern Range in his final moments of glory and the chance to share that with the people that we loved back home. We had observed events that only the peace and serenity of a winter in Yellowstone could give, and for a few wild eyed college kids that time we spent with Bull No. 10 was all we could ever have asked for.
Montana Tines 