After hearing four bull elks bugling all night, we decided to spend the morning photographing the bull elk around the campground. Why drive to other areas when we could shoot them almost right from our campsite?
One bull elk had a single cow in a side meadow above the campground. Homer and Jethro were the two bull elk straight out in the meadow from our campsite. They each had their own areas, and neither of them had any cows. Sid Vicious was the biggest, meanest elk in the neighborhood. We joined the hordes of photographers trying to photograph him, but we soon decided he was too mean and irritated to be worth the risk. We found out later from a Park Ranger that he had already nailed seventeen cars this season. Sid Vicious seemed to be the obvious choice for a name.
Toward the end of the morning, the elk up the side meadow lost his one calf to another bull elk. He tried every trick he knew to cut her off from escaping, but she outsmarted him and ran back up a ridge. He was furious! He walked along the river running through the meadow until he had to cross it. All of a sudden, he totally lost it. He tried to tear the entire river bank down with his horns. Eventually, he worked off his anger and continued his trek across the meadow.
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After spending the morning photographing the elk, we drove the short distance to the Norris Geyser Basin. We saw Echinus Geyser erupt and several small geysers having minor eruptions. It is a taste of what we will see tomorrow in the Old Faithful area.
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