“Bear!”

It was late afternoon and a small grizzly bear was ambling across the meadow where the horses were picketed in the Teton Wilderness. Seemingly uninterested, the horses barely lifted their heads from grazing. I watched the bear as it emerged from the Buffalo Fork riverbed and sauntered up into the woods. Good bear, I thought as it moved off without stopping by our camp for dinner.

Fortunately, that’s typical of our experience as natural history outfitters in Wyoming. We have camped in bear and wolf country over 100 nights each year for the past 25 years. We’ve also shared our camps with wolves on many of these trips. Once we were camped close enough to see and hear a pack near their rendezvous site. They stayed on their side of the meadow, and we stayed on ours. Our clients were treated to a once in a lifetime experience. They were thrilled.

Operating a natural history outfitting business in grizzly and wolf country means sharing this wilderness with the natives who once lived there. This opportunity is based on attitude: we can learn to live with large carnivores in the future, or we can cuss and kill them as we have in the past. In Yellowstone’s backcountry we have the conservation success story of the century—the recovery of grizzly bears and wolves. In celebrating this success story, it is essential that we show respect for the individual animal, the species and its ecosystem, and we share these ideas with our clients.

TAYLOR OUTFITTERS WINTER WOLF WATCH TRIP IN YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK JANUARY 27-30, 2006

Join Taylor Outfitters on a four-day Winter Wildlife Watch and Cross-Country Ski Trip in Yellowstone National Park this coming January.

Winter in Yellowstone’s Northern Range is a spectacular time to view the frozen landscape and wintering wildlife. You’ll see wolf packs hunt their prey in full view of the roadside or ski trails. You can also see elk, bighorn sheep, bison, otters and coyotes in the Northern Range. In addition, the Lamar Valley is a birder’s paradise with numerous raptors commonly viewed, including bald and golden eagles, hawks and owls.

Tory and Meredith Taylor have led natural history tours in Yellowstone and the surrounding national forests for more than 20 years. They began offering Winter Wolf Watch trips 10 years ago when wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone. Taylor Outfitters is fully insured and practices “Leave No Trace” wilderness ethics. Tory and Meredith have long enjoyed sharing the beauty of Yellowstone with their guests.

The trip will include early morning starts, ski or snowshoe travel, and full days spent outside in the northern part of the park. For details about logistics and itinerary, contact:

Taylor Outfitters
6360 Hwy 26 Dubois, WY 82513
307-455-2161 ph
307-455-3169 fax
metaylor@wyoming.com

So how does an outfitter operate in bear and wolf country? The basic tenets are those that are taught in the program “Living in Bear Country” that is presented throughout Wyoming annually. Camp clean. Use your head. Make noise while visiting bear country—grizzlies do not like surprises. Carry pepper spray, not guns. If you hunt in bear country, think about what you will do when you harvest your game and evaluate your hunting tactics before you hunt.

Recently I heard about a fellow outfitter who testified that in his area he and his staff had to arm themselves to the teeth to defend themselves from bears. I have just returned from that outfitter’s area where I saw several backpackers, an out-of-state horse group and a long line of giggling teenage girls hiking merrily along. These folks, like us, were not bothered by bears. I wondered why this outfitter wants to terrify people? Or worse yet, I wondered why the Wyoming Game & Fish Department and politicians believe these guys when they declare that they need to manage for the minimum population of bears and wolves. Just playing Wyoming politics against large carnivores, I suppose. Bears and wolves are part of the ecosystem and seeing or hearing them can make a wilderness trip the highlight of someone’s life.

There are many things in Wyoming’s backcountry that can harm humans and horses: storms, falling trees, lightning, giardia and, yes, bears. But bears are one thing that we can learn to live with if we accept them as part of the picture and use our heads around them.

See you in God’s country, and hope we see a bear at home in the wilderness ambling along a distant horizon.

Tory Taylor and his wife Meredith have owned and operated Taylor Outfitters in the Wyoming portion of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem for more than 20 years. Tory is a board member of Wyoming Wildlife Federation and has been recognized with numerous conservation awards, including WWF’s Conservationist of the Year and Budweiser’s Outdoors Man of the Year.