Darwin wins again…
A bison gored and killed a 25-year-old woman in Yellowstone National Park on Monday, after she approached the animal despite explicit warning signs in the area instructing visitors to stay at least 25-yards away from dangerous wildlife.
Full article, HERE from the Daily Mail.
This is the sign that is posted all over Yellowstone!
And in case you don’t get it… NPS provides a ‘humorous’ version…
Frankly, I think too many people have watched the Disney channel/Disney type movies and think they are all cute and cuddly…
Just because they sing/dance/talk in the movies, that IS NOT real life! Sadly, this young lady got a reality check that she didn’t survive.
We’ve got the same issues up in the Wichita Mountains preserve just an hour north of us. 650 buffalo, 250ish Longhorns, and various other wild animals roam the park without fences. And people continue to try to get ‘up close’ to the animals for a picture to post on social media or show their friends back home.
If they are unlucky, what their friends get is a closed casket funeral. Darwin wins, NEVER forget that!
That’s why we have long focal length telephoto lenses, to keep the stupid away.
One time through animal meandering, I wound up almost between a ewe and her lamb. She went on alert; I looked back, and went the other-other way, getting out of the danger zone. That was only a medium-sized animal with a hard skull, but she could have hurt me pretty bad.
Everything can be petted once… sometimes very very briefly
I you can get close enough.
I’ve been in a bison jam in Yellowstone during their rut. Several of the bulls walked between my car and the one in front of me, and I was in a little rental car, not my usual truck so they were bigger than we were. We didn’t get out. All photos were taken through windows despite a bit of rain because there was no way I was opening a door.
It is sad that someone thinks that Yellowstone is a petting zoo where all the animals are specially trained to remain motionless while a self absorbed millennial gets that perfect selfie. I hope this one had no kids or if she did, she didn’t pass on her genes for stupidity.
It is also that time of the year where we will be getting reports of young adults falling backwards into the Grand Canyon while taking pictures of themselves.
Banning smart phones in the National Parks might be a life saving action.
They were just as bad with film and then digital cameras.
Selfie-cide was the #1 cause of tourist fatalities one year in Europe. Selfie stick, cliff or balcony, some assembly required. The horrible ones were when the kids watched their parents go over the cliff . . .
Even without selfies, photography in the wild places can be dangerous. A friend was a ranger at the Grand Canyon and witnessed a couple have the husband ask the wife to back up a bit, and she went over the edge. My friend had to go after the wife, and it wasn’t a shear drop so he thank God managed to catch up with her hundreds of feet downslope and help her back up, scraped and bloodied and bruised, but alive.
I wonder how many tourists can visualize 25 yards to +/- 5 yards or even 10 yards.
While the advice might be technically accurate, it might not be useful…sort of like that fine gentleman in Bangalore who advises me on computer issues.
There are certain critters that are generally reasonable enough, even wild, to be admired up close. Wildlife photographers often find themselves being inspected or cuddled up to by curious animals. Usually things like meerkats, foxes, or baby seals.
That being said, trying to get up close to a bison strikes me as an amazing failure in risk analysis. That is a LOT of animal and if it gets angry, you are in trouble.
And you’re not wrong about Disney having a lot to answer for.
Wildlife photographers (if they’re smart) let the wildlife approach them and make sure to have a safe retreat for both themselves and the animal they’re photographing.
been to Both the Wichita Mountains preserve and Yellowstone. At Wichita Mountain reserve I kept the rental car between Myself and the Longhorns. At Yellowstone I saw a bull elk swim across a river to get away from the Dumbasses who wanted to get a little bit closer. It was not breeding season. I carried and used a 100-300MM lens with a doubler on it.
I got to see a tourist get cuffed for throwing rocks at a bull elk “so he’ll stand for a picture!” And then argued—vehemently— with the ranger. I was rooting for the elk.
I would be rooting for the elk too!
In 1960, my father packed up the family and moved from Massachussetts to Washington state. We drove and camped across the country. This included a trip to Yellowstone. I remember home movies of that trip. The bears lined the road on both sides as people would throw food at them as they slowly drove by. A lot of stupid people would get out of their cars and try and get close up pictures. One dumb mother was trying to coax a couple of bear cubs down out of a tree all the while mama bear is walking around behind her begging for food from all the cars. I don’t think anything happened to dumb tourist other than the park rangers yelling at her, but man, you have got to have a better sense of self preservation.
I live in Eastern Idaho. Every year someone gets killed trying to get that perfect bison photo. This has been true since long before smart phones became a thing. I’ve been in a few “Bison jams” in the park, stayed inside the car, kept hands inside the car, stayed off the horn, got a fantastic photo through the side window. For some reason, in their tiny little bison mind, vehicles don’t seem to be considered a threat, people on the other hoof often are. To make life even more interesting, bison are unpredictable. One minute they will ignore everything except the grass they are munching, the next minute they’ll send some idiot on a suborbital flight.
Near where that woman was mauled, I have watched people come to forks in the trail system and take the one toward where bison are standing just off trail, rather than the one that skirts them at a safer distance.
Yeah, I live just outside the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. I’m constantly amused at the tourists who think the animals in the Parks are either tame or animatronic. We have several close calls and one or 2 maulings a year. I tell my wife sometimes, that if the bears got more tourists it would thin them out some and traffic would be lighter.
As a cause of death, bear attacks fall somewhere in between falling coconuts and shark attacks in frequency.
I’ve gotten closer to moose and bear than I should have a few times, but only because they were adjacent to my return trail, and quite intent on their snacking with no sign of moving anytime soon. I gave them as much distance as possible and departed at a swift walking pace. I didn’t stop to take photos, or walk up to pet them.
Even something as small as a white-tail deer can be lethal when it’s mating season, much less the giants. One of them killed a park employee at the now-defunct Baconsfield Park when I was a mere lad, maybe 1957 or so.
Heck, a dang terrier pup almost took my left eye a couple of months ago.
And this bagel is staring at me….
Toast it, lather it up with some cream cheese, and devour it.
Most people are disconnected from wildlife and large farm animals. They see a moose and think of Bullwinkle. They see a bear and hear Richard Attenborough calling it Bruno and saying they are gentle beasts.
They see their first range bull and forget cattle kill more people in the US than wildlife does. Walt sure didn’t help the situation.
Today on Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom!”
Jim: Well, Marlin, that bison sure did protect the calf with that charge!
Marlin: That’s right, Jim! All species have a drive to protect the young. If you aren’t a bison, though, you can protect your young, if buy some insurance with Mutual of Omaha. And also, teach them not to do stupid crap.
Jim: I agree, Marlin! Don’t be a dumbass. kids!
LOL. Well played.
Marvelous! I want to see that ad IRL.
Well met!
Even supposedly tame animals aren’t safe to annoy too much, especially if the animal isn’t used to you. One of my favorite parts of spring and summer in high school was the local news reports of dipshit townies finding out the hard way that “tame” livestock stay in the fence because they believe they should stay there, and because they have no particular motivation to leave. When someone is too close to one of their young on the other side of the fence,that can change really quickly, and many types of livestock aren’t even remotely slowed down by going through the fence to trample the idiot. Bison are a particularly bad choice to pull that nonsense with. At least one person won a darwin award every year by choosing to ignore multiple, “no trespassing,” signs to try to pet, take pictures of, taunt, or otherwise annoy bison or cows from the other side of the fence.
When I was a kid I was cutting through the neighbor’s field and accidentally walked between a notoriously bad temped heifer and her calf. All I remember after the “Uh oh!” moment was the palm of my hand hitting the top of a fence post as I vaulted the fence.
It’s amazing how fast you can move when you’re properly motivated…
There is “knowing” and KNOWING something. Most of us grow up in suburban or urban environments. We have no personal knowledge of many animals beyond cats and dogs and even there our knowledge is overpowered by our emotions- the neighbors kitty or puppy should have known I just wanted to pet it. Too many of the folks I know don’t understand that reality isn’t conditional to their feelings.
I lived and worked in Japan for a couple of years, and almost nobody there is used to encountering (and respecting) natural hazards. Even ‘Frontier World’ had to be re-named to something like ‘Out-West World’ because most Japanese don’t really grok the concept of spaces which are not already completely domesticated by technology or the magic pixie dust of government. Cliffs without a guard rail? UNthinkable. A pictorial sign in the ‘Quasi-Natural Forest’ of Mt. Takao illustrated how ‘A natural area requires lots of upkeep’ (i.e, sweeping out fallen leaves, etc…)
A Japanese tourist (21, F) went to a petting zoo in Australia and was shocked when a croc snapped at and swallowed her $800 purse. When asked, she said that she was lowering her purse to bop it on its head while it was asleep in the sun, and **”I didn’t think it would do that…”**
The Japanese-language tourist handout at Yellowstone is a real hoot – trying their best to bridge the cultural gap and emphasize as extremely as possible that cute-looking furry animals are NOT DOCILE, big-eyed, small- or no-mouth anime critters. Do NOT try to pet the wolverine…
Well Japan does have (a few) bears that regularly cause people to freak out. And, these days, lots of wild boar which annoy the farmers and occasionally gore/trample an idiot. Although a bunch of places now do a decent trade in wild boar meat (and wild board skin leather products…) so they are adapting.
But yeah. Urban Japanese have no clue and regularly manage to kill/seriously injure themselves even in the parts of Japanese national parks where there are signs every 100ft warning you not be be moron.
Right about that, sir. Not only ubiquitous signage, but also endless voice-loops warning you about not tripping over the last step of a stair case, look both ways before crossing streets, etc. EVERYWHERE. Also, train station platforms and city parks include speakers that play a constant background noise that sounds like “huh bub,” because they feel more at ease in crowds and get nervous if they feel alone. We used to host Japanese exchange students and observed that when we took them hiking they felt relieved at encountering other hikers and were more trepidatious if no one else was around.
Also had fun taking them to “the beach” which meant the rugged, blustery northern Oregon coast and its cold, grey-green waters. Great for flying kites though.
All- Some ‘great’ examples… and this trend will continue…
Guy- Having spent some time in Japan, yeah… they are fanatical on cleanliness and hygiene, even in the parks.
I like binoculars…
I’ve always followed the old mountain men’s advice. “Don’t go bothering something that ain’t bothering you”.
Animals are predictable. Ask any rancher that has pulled a calf and then been chased by the mother.
In the 90’s thru 2010 I worked at the salmon hatchery in Valdez Alaska. In July thru September the creek and tide flats around the hatchery were often wall to wall fish! While I was around we were lucky no one was hurt but one time I saw a mother grizzly trailing three cubs actually bump some tourists to get across the creek. The only thing that probably saved them was very well fed bears. We had several complaints of cruelty when we used bean bag shot shells (supplied by the authorities) to move bears that were hanging around along! They would also crowd the sea lions in the creek. These guys weigh about 2000 pounds and have lion like teeth, as I said, we were lucky!
In the early 1970s I was stationed at Ft. Sill in near proximity to the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Preserve. I spent a lot of my off duty time either on the open range of the post or the Wildlife Preserve. Hunting was good on post.
The old bull buffaloes of the Wildlife Preserve herd would be driven from the herd and most lived a solitary existence. In the winter the paved roads provided their old aching bones some warmth and they would lay on the pavement to soak up some heat.
The story was told of the 2nd LT who was out for a drive in his new MG Midget and came upon an old bull in his repose blocking the road. The LT inched up closer and still the old bull did not move, so…the LT honked his horn. The story goes that the bull stood up and proceeded to total the MG.
No maps were involved in this operation. 🙂
Old NFO,
Is the Nocona boot factory still in operation.
We used to go there and get great quality boots as seconds for a good price.
PH- I have them AND long lenses…
WSF- Oh hell yes!
Hammer- That…gives me the shivers just thinking about it!
Waepn- LOL One hopes… No Nocona Boots merged with Justin back in the 80s, and the plant in Nocona was closed in 99. You can still buy the boots (although I don’t, I went to Tecovas) but they are now made assembly line style in El Paso.
Yellowstone Park, 1990s: NPS flier reads “Buffalo run 45mph. Can you?” Still saw a lady drag her kid across the road to take a photo with an INSTAMATIC. The buffalo was not amused and, thankfully, trotted away.
Same trip at Devil’s Tower: lady feeding ground squirrels potato chips. Park employee warned her off. She ignored him. I told her the ground squirrels had fleas and carried diseases. THAT got her to move. Yes, she complained at the park gate about them having sick animals on the grounds.
Every trip to Rocky Mountain National Park I’ve seen people feeding the ground squirrels, often in front of or beside a “Don’t feed the wildlife” sign, and sometimes in other parks as well. I understand they’re actually the animal most likely to attack humans in many of the Western national parks. For sure I’ve had to fend off the furry little menaces when picnicking in the parks in the past.
Stretch/TOS- Yep, all day every day…cute… NOT!
My great grandparents used to travel from their home in Toledo, Ohio to Yellowstone by car. Great Granddad had a Stanley Steamer, which made sense as he was a mechanical engineer. Anyway, they camped near Old Faithful, and my Great Grandmother got her hot water from the geyser; she’d wash dishes in it. There were no guardrails or warning signs, the thought being that if anyone got burned by the hot water, they wouldn’t do it a second time.
MJ- Good point. People were ‘smarter’ back then, or at least more ‘practical’!!!
My friend’s mom used to put out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for a raccoon and her babies that would come around. One day she forgot and went grocery shopping. She came home to find a large hole chewed through her window screen and the family helping themselves to the bowl of fruit on the kitchen table.