Steve Backshall tracks down Yellowstone’s grey wolves in Deadly on a Mission: Pole to Pole
I HAD BEEN ADMIRING a young male with a black scraggly mane (to be fair, he had been flirting, glancing my way while snorting and shuddering) when I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. A little further up the hill, a mere 30m away from where I was standing, a skirmish between two young bison was unfolding.
When animals weighing more than 900kg lock horns, it is truly startling. The enormous heads bashing each other with increasing ferocity create a wave of energy that surges through the air.
Actually, these youngsters were just playing, preparing themselves for the real thing. In autumn, when the rut begins, these mock battles become serious business, as each contender strives for dominance. Herbivores as well as carnivores have been fighting for mating rights in Yellowstone National Park long before recorded history.
It was the last weekend in May and I should have been basking in the spring sunshine, but an unexpected overnight storm had dumped several inches of snow over the landscape. The upside was that the auburn bison stood out prominently against their white surroundings. The icing on the cake would have been if the ‘red dogs’ (newborn calves) had been tagging along. But it wasn't until later that I was rewarded with this sight: turning off a road just north of Biscuit Basin, which follows the Firehole River, I spotted several youngsters nuzzling up to their
