Montana Tacomas

They were on a hiking trail, not the road.
And the buffalo out there are way more unpredictable as the number of human visitors is way lower than here at Yelly. Theyre just not used to sharing their space with us as much so they get agitated easily.

 

Yup, fully aware of the rules of wildlife viewing and lecture plenty of visitors who just dont have common sense.

And from what I've seen in the parks recently 100% of the blame is on the tourists. They have no experience being in the outdoors around wildlife and treat the place like a freaking petting zoo. The situation in Yelly is complicated further because the animals dont have the same fear of humans as their countertparts outside of the park so people are able to get much closer than they should. And then they get too close and the animal freaks out. For the animals in the park we are a normal part of their day to day environment so they dont think much of us. Can you walk up to the elk and buffalo in the parks? Yes. Should you? Hell no. Can you walk up to a wild elk in one of the national forests in MT? Hell ho, you'd be lucky to get within a quarter mile before it runs away.

 

Its very likely that he didn't see the buffalo and didn't know to steer clear of them. The trails in Roosevelt are very narrow and overgrown and are bordered by large dropoffs and rocks. not a lot of room to maneauver around.
From my trip there last year. This was a "good" section of the trail. A few sections I would have needed a machete to clear a path through the brush and spent most of my time hiking with my arms out in front of me, wrists crossed, in order to deflect tree branches from smacking me in the face.

 

https://kbzk.com/weather/2019/07/31/wildfire-south-of-wise-river/

so much beetle killed timber up there...its kinda my 2nd home as I spent many a summer days camping up there...

 

Very true. Everyone assumes they're slow due to their size. They can move when they want to.

Couple of years ago I was in the Tetons and came across a bull and cow moose. It was during rut and she kept teasing him, bellowing and then running away as soon as he came her way. I was up on a bluff and they were down along the river bottom, maybe 40-50 yards away. At one point he decided he'd had enough of her teasing and charged at her full speed. he cleared about a 80 yard stretch of space that was full of willows in just a few seconds, just stepped over everything in his path. I think I only got one or two pics and was just sitting up there like

 

its definitely always been this way. just more people in the parks now. and more folks who have never been in an environment like this before. they literally have no clue what they're doing.


Many, many years ago. Early 90's... I was camping with my folks in Yellowstone and we were headed into West for dinner. The stretch of the road closest to the Madison River was almost bare back then as the fires had burned everything down to a crisp. There was a grizzly bear about 30-40 yards off the road eating an elk carcass and there were several cars stopped. We stayed up on the shoulder of the road, still too close for sure but we knew better than to venture any further. My mom got impatient and got back in the truck, was yelling at my dad and I that we needed to get going. There was this guy out in the meadow, walking up to the bear with a camcorder on his shoulder. One of those huge monstrosities that took a full sized VHS tape...he was about 5 or 10 yards max from the bear. My dad yelled back at my mom at the top of his lungs, "no, I want to wait and watch this moron with the camcorder get eaten by the bear!" Camcorder dude heard my dad and lowered the camcorder...then started to slowly back away. I don't think he realized he was as close as he was since he was looking through the view finder the whole time. Pretty sure we were just seconds away from seeing him taken down by the bear.

 

and what they run OVER, we'd have to veer AROUND.

Not sure if its still available on youtube but the dude who has the Grizzly Bear exhibit between Bozeman and Livingston did a couple of TV show/documentary things several years ago. One of them was about bears here in MT and they took infrared cameras up into Tom Miner Gulch between Livingston and Gardiner to film the grizzlies at night. Those freaking things were cruising around in the pitch black of night faster than I could have traveled in broad daylight. Scary.