Every summer, tourists flock to Yellowstone National Park to take in the beautiful sights and risk their lives by getting way too close to the wildlife living in the park.
It seems like it’s almost a given that idiotic people visiting the national park, which are often referred to as “tourons,” either get too close to a bear, get tossed up into the air by a bison, or have their tires popped by a bull elk.
One could even include it into the old saying “death. taxes, and people losing all of their intelligence when stepping foot into Yellowstone National Park.” And it isn’t like it is a recent phenomenon. This kind of stuff has been going on for a very long time.
To prove my point, we’ll travel back in time to May of 2015 when a bear encounter in the famous national park might as well have been a pay-per-view event.
In the defense of all the people in this footage, it is very likely that the mother bear ran up on them, but even so, no one there handled the situation very well.
Maybe there should be some sort of training course you have to pass before visiting Yellowstone? I know it might be a little tedious to have people basically take a pop quiz so they can enter, but it’s not like the questions would be challenging. I’m thinking true or false questions like this:
“True or False: If you come across a bear, you should try and get as close to it as possible.
True or False: If a bison is resting in a field, that would be the perfect time to try and snap a selfie with it.”
Obviously those are incredibly easy questions to answer, and you would think that would really just be common sense, but it might act as a good reminder for some of those people who visit that actually end up doing things like that.
With this encounter, the scariest part is that the tourists close to the bear are sort of trapped within the confines of the bridge. There’s no way to know how the bears made their way onto the bridge, but one could assume that these people probably had some time to get the hell out of dodge before the bears got this close.
In the video, the mother bear is on the defensive because she has her three bear cubs with her. People are at first just trying to walk away from her, but once she starts charging some of them, they are all but forced to “get on their high horse.”
And in the wildest part of the clip, there are many people standing nearby that have ample time to return to their vehicles and instead choose to continue to stand out in the open and film it with their phones.
Meanwhile, the three bear cubs are just running around on the bridge and having the time of their life. I think the fact that they are running amuck amongst all the people is what really triggers the mother bear to stay on the defensive and start charging different groups of people on the bridge.
Take a look at the terrifying footage below, which was captioned:
“Tourists at Yellowstone National Park got a little too close to a family of black bears crossing a bridge.
Video shows a mother bear charging toward a group of visitors to protect her cubs.”
Giant Mama Bear & Her 4 Giant Cubs Come Barreling Through The Snow
What you gonna do if you see this coming right at you?
It’s no secret that mama bears are way more protective and hostile whenever they have their cubs nearby.
Her job is to teach them how to live off on their own until they’re about a year and a half to two years old, and then they’re let out on their own to fend for themselves.
So, whenever you have a run in with a mama bear out in the wild, you better make sure you do your best to not make her or her cubs feel threatened, or it may end pretty badly for you.
This video is example A.
Luckily enough, the person filming is in their car so they can easily escape, but you can see a massive mama grizzly bear trudging directly towards the car in the snow, with four pretty big cubs following behind.
Now it appears that these cubs are a bit older than a year and a half to two years, and there may be a good explanation for that.
According to BBC, more and more bears being hunted by humans may contribute to mama bears hanging on to their cubs for longer than usual.
Joanie Van de Walle of the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, Canada said:
“Because females that care for their cubs longer survive better under the hunting regulation, we say that hunting has a selective effect (it artificially determines which females are going to survive and reproduce based on their reproductive behavior).
Our hypothesis was thus that hunting regulation could favor longer maternal care in this population.
Therefore, the observed change in female reproductive behavior could be the result of the increasing hunting pressure in the population.”
However, females won’t breed again until their cubs are gone, which is why male bears (also known as boars) will sometime kills cubs in an effort to mate their mother.
Brutal? Yes, absolutely… but that’s nature for you.
Nevertheless, just look at the absolute monster size of this bear family.
Is this the biggest bear family in the woods?
Mama Grizzly Bear & Her Cubs Eat Elk Calf
Nature, man…
One particular female grizzly bear in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park is some what of a big deal. Popular with tourists, “Bear 399” is arguably the most famous grizzly bear in the world.
Grizzly 399 was born in 1996, and according to Outdoor Life she was given her name/number by the Yellowstone Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team who has monitored her closely for the duration of her life.
She is 7-feet tall, weighs 400-pounds and has given birth to 16 cubs over the years. Though she has spent most of her life in close proximity to tourist activity, the bear has never had a negative run in with humans.
Rafael Sandoval was recently exploring Grand Teton National Park when he captured an absolutely awe inspiring sequence of photos of Bear 399 hunting down an elk calf to feed her own cubs.
The pictures were originally shared by wildlife photographer Rafael Sandoval of Jackson Hole EcoTour Adventures (give him a follow).
“So this just happened last night and my heart is still racing… This grizzly sow #399 bagged an elk calf for a dinner for five after an intense chase. For the past few months, bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem have been browsing on nutrient dense vegetation such as grasses, flowers and roots.
However, as prey species like elk, bison and deer begin dropping calves like it’s going out of style, the bears have begun to switch over to more savory menu options.
The CALFeteria is open, folks!”
CALFeteria?
Savage.
Even though it’s only an elk calf, the raw power and speed of the grizzly is on full display. Grizzlies are capable of reaching speeds of 35 mph, which is terrifyingly fast when you think about it.
In one photo the bears long sharp claws are clearly visible as it closes in and overwhelms the baby elk.
The fact that the mama bear had 4 cubs in tow to feed somehow makes the little elk’s demise less sad.
Once the elk was on the ground, those baby bears jumped on that thing like drunk people on a 2AM pizza.
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Elk Slams Right Into A Moving Car At Yellowstone National Park
Matt Fluke of Idaho Falls, Idaho, was looking for a place to picnic with his family when the car behind him got smoked by an elk. Boom, right into the side of their SUV.
Of course there is nothing special about hitting an elk with your car, just about anybody that’s every heard a country song has a deer a time or two. But this elk wasn’t just crossing the road, it was running for its life.
Yep, right after it slammed into the car and knocked itself out, a black wolf emerged from the trees, just seconds behind it.
“I didn’t look at my dashcam video until I got back to where we were staying at. Originally I thought it happened behind that car. We pulled over for a second and saw the elk on the road and the wolf with it.”
Naturally, they pulled over to watch nature take its course.
Wanna catch an elk? Just chase it into a moving car… chase is over.
“There was a turn out real close and lots of other cars stopping around there. You could see it from where we were at and the car that was behind me pulled over and then pulled out and went down the road… it was wild.”
Wild indeed.
Grizzly Bear Charges Two Bowhunters
NOPE…
Bears might be one of the coolest, most badass animals on the entire planet. And for many of the same reasons, it also makes them some of the most terrifying animals on the planet.
Big, fast, strong… if you happen to find yourself in the unfortunate position of getting changed by a bear, it might be too late before you even get the chance to react. For these two bowhunters in Canada, that was nearly the case.
While hunting near Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, these bowhunters stumbled upon a big ol’ sow and her two cubs at the feed barrel, but once she got a whiff them, she locked on in a full blown charge.
“These two hunters were watching a bear and her cubs when the larger animal suddenly charged towards them. Luckily, the two men were able to scare the bear off and walked away with only minor injuries.”
Thankfully, these fellas escaped with some minor injuries, and what I can only imagine is a freshly soiled pair of shorts.
But… they caught the entire thing on camera.
