Writing in Island Park

I recently returned from Island Park, Idaho in the eastern part of the state –adjacent to Yellowstone.

I was on a quest for some interesting stories about hunting. And I found some:

The first thing evident when we pulled into the summer cabin area, were six game & fish officer trucks, parked together at the entrance. Turns out that a hunter and Grizzly bear got into a confrontation with each other, over an elk that the hunter was dressing. The hunter clipped the bear with his pistol, so now there was a wounded grizzly wandering somewhere around the cabin area. Not a good place to take your dog for a walk! There was some concern that hunting would be shut down for the area, but we believe that they caught that bear the same day.

Recently the area drew national news with a story superbly entitled “Critics hate Idaho hunting ranch’s guts”

Evidently, a private elk ranching operation has been dumping (apparently legally) gut piles from their expended stock, only slightly buried outside their fence line. There has been much speculation that this is what is attracting more Grizzlies than normal to this area adjacent to Yellowstone.

My friend drew a moose tag. However, in the 5 days up there, we encountered very few moose in our travels. We speculate that the known Grizzly presence in the area is making the prey animals more skittish than normal. Same thing happened right after wolves were reintroduced en masse. Not that any of this is bad, but all the rational animals appear to be more on edge.

I probably looked out of place, walking around with the hunters, while donning my Sun Valley threads and acting with non hunting-fever mannerisms. At least, I hope that a few folks got a good chuckle. Each night the grizzled hunters in our camp would recount their wild safari stories from afar. And each morning, I would scribble them down as fast as I could to remember them. We actually saw a grizzly bear one evening, munching away at grass and grubs, seemingly unconcerned about us peering down from a mere eighty feet, above in our truck. Anyhow, I have more stories, but in all the rush to get out of there, I left my other computer at the cabin, with the scribblings and with my abnormal psyche class homework. Wonder if the instructor will believe me, if I tell her that I was spooked by a Griz -causing me to leave the laptop atop the woodpile?