When I first came to the prairie, my impression was that the
land was a vast, flat, somewhat boring place with very little wildlife. Well, I
couldn’t have been more wrong. Except for the vastness – this place is SO VAST.
Montana is named Big Sky country for a reason… Out on our hikes, I
have learned that this landscape may look flat, but it is rather hilly (which
great for interval training). We are constantly coming across wildlife while
we’re hiking and it is a part of our job to document what we see. However,
there have been times when the wildlife have come to us. For example, when we
came back from Glacier, we woke up to the bison herd about a quarter
of a mile away from our camp. Throughout the day, the herd made their way to
our camp, surrounding us and stranding us on our picnic table. That night, the
new August crew arrived and were welcomed by the bison herd at Buffalo Camp as
their welcoming party.
In mid-July, we were headed out for an early hike one
morning and saw three badgers looking for their breakfast in a prairie dog
town. Badgers are carnivores and primarily eat prairie dogs and small mammals.
They often hunt alongside coyotes. Badgers are also incredibly skilled diggers –
they can dig through cement! They’re about the size of a large, fat cat and are
pretty cute looking, although they could gouge your eyes out with their claws.
We also stumbled across four bull elks one evening on our
way to Fourchette Bay for a sunset swim. They surprisingly did not run away
from us, but instead stood there, staring at us curiously. After a 4-minute
stare down, they decided to scamper off into the sunset. It’s pretty fun
hanging out with all these animals!
Bison oftentimes hold up traffic in the prairie
Crew member Jonah Gula (J$) taking a photo of a huge male bison. NOTE: Our large canvas tent broke while we were in Glacier in a huge wind storm. Two poles broke and almost all of them bent. As you can see, the canvas also ripped. In case you were wondering - my tent survived.
Our badger friends (Photo: Shannon Rebinski)
Our elk friends
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