My wife and I had a family member with us, and I wanted to show him a bull moose.
Not a dark shape three hundred yards away.
A real Grand Teton bull. Velvet on the paddles. River water nearby. The kind of animal that makes a person stop talking because there is suddenly nothing useful left to say.
So we went to Gros Ventre, one of my favorite pieces of country in Grand Teton National Park.
This is where I have watched bulls gather as the rut gets closer. The river, willows, shade, and old trails seem to pull them back.
And I knew who I hoped we would find.
Hoback.
The King of the Tetons.
Into the country most people avoid
Photographers were already above us on the hill, working Hoback from hundreds of yards away.
We went lower.
I am not sharing the exact place, and I would not tell a first-time visitor to follow me into it. This is thick, wet country. It is where I have been chased by moose before, and where I once thought I might have to say goodbye to the world a little earlier than planned.
Experience helps, but it does not make me untouchable.
I move slowly. I scan the trees before stepping into the next opening. I watch ears, shoulders, tracks, fresh scat, and broken branches.
We stayed outside the park’s minimum distance and kept the moose’s path open. Twenty-five yards is the legal floor around moose, not a target. More room is always the better photograph.
Then the forest opened.
There he was.
Hoback in velvet
Hoback stood near the river carrying the kind of antlers that make the trees around him look temporary.
He does not just look like a moose. He looks like the idea of one. Dark body. Giant paddles. That heavy walk of an animal that has never needed to explain why the road should belong to him.
The light was good. Our family member got to see the bull I had hoped to show him. I got photographs of Hoback still wearing the velvet he will soon rub away.
Then he turned and started moving in our direction.
Our job was simple. Keep the space open. Watch his body. Let him choose the line.
But Hoback did something the bulls have been doing a lot lately.
He laid down.
Almost two hours before sunset.
I have wondered whether these bulls have learned that if they bed down, the photographers eventually leave. I could be completely wrong. It may simply be heat, energy conservation, or the rhythm of the season.
This time, I wondered about something else.
Maybe he knew the storm was coming.
The king knew before we did
Not long after Hoback settled into the grass, the rain began.
At first it was light enough to ignore. A few drops on the leaves. The kind of rain that makes you believe stubbornness is a shelter.
We moved beneath a tree.
Three people, expensive camera gear, and one increasingly useless ceiling of branches.
The tree started giving up.
We had somewhere between half a mile and a mile back to the car.
So we made the call.
Hoback could keep the river.
About fifty yards from the car, the sky broke open.
Rain hammered the path. Clothes soaked through. Water ran off the gear. We stopped pretending we might stay dry and started laughing because there was nothing else left to do.
We climbed into the car and thought the day was over.
The photograph I had waited years to take
Then our family member spotted another moose near the valley.
The rain softened, and the light changed.
There are often rainbows around Gros Ventre after a storm. I have seen plenty. The problem is that they are almost always in the wrong place.
For years, I have wanted one over the Sleeping Indian.
Not beside it. Not fading somewhere east of it.
Over it.
And there it was.
A rainbow lifting above one of my favorite moose corridors, with the Sleeping Indian beneath it and the wet valley shining like the storm had only come to clean the glass.
I grabbed the camera.
The shot was there.
We had gone into the timber for Hoback.
The storm gave us the sky.
The wild always keeps part of the plan
Wildlife photography teaches you to want one thing and stay awake for another.
I got photographs of Hoback in velvet, and now I know where he has been working. I will go back.
But the photograph that stayed with me was the one I could not have planned.
The rainbow. The mountain. The moose corridor beneath it.
That is why a good park day needs more than one destination. The bull may bed down. The rain may arrive. The thing you came to photograph may disappear before the best part begins.
If you are trying to figure out where to begin, which wildlife corridors are worth watching, or what else is along the drive when the animal beds down, explore the interactive wildlife map. It can help you build a route with enough room for Yellowstone and Grand Teton to change the plan.
We went looking for the king.
The storm gave us the sky.
Plan tomorrow tonight.
Keep wildlife wild.
