Animals of Glacier

Long horned sheep are nuts!

The abundance and diversity of wildlife in Glacier National Park is incredible!  Glacier is home to sixty-six species of mammals including black and grizzly bears, mountain lions, wolverines, lynxes, coyotes and wolves.  It really felt like a wild and dangerous place to be, and from my experience with it, I am much stronger and more able.
The best berry patch of the park happened to be...our campsite!  This meant bears, bears, bears! Bears where the hot topic of the campground.  From all this talking, I actually learned quite a bit about bears, their behavior and how to act in an attack.  Five black bears and two grizzly bears where residing in and around our campsite.  Rangers made frequent rounds to scare off bears by yelling and eventually by shooting them with rubber bullets.
The rules were:

Can't touch this

We could only walk Clovey in daylight and in open areas, no tent or soft shelled camping was allowed which meant we could not pop our top, NO FOOD OUT ANYWHERE/ANYTIME, you where not permitted to run in the campsite as bears would see you as prey and you always had you carry bear spray with you incase it came down to a confrontation.
Bears are typically not out to get people and are overall very timid, but as the bears became increasingly frustrated at being shooed away from their food source, they began getting violent with people in the campsite.  The rangers eventually and abruptly decided the campground had become too dangerous and closed it down without warning.  Wow what an experience!
In total we saw about fifteen bears in our six days in Glacier.  One of which was a very close encounter (from the car, thankfully).
One of my favorite animals we saw several times and also got very close to, about fifteen feet, was the long horned sheep.  They felt so majestic to me.  Almost like they only lived in books.  I loved their strong and fearless presence.
Until Glacier I had never heard of the peculiar looking white mountain goats.  They truly are a sight to behold, dwelling in the high mountains.  These goats survive winters in this harsh terrain by licking lichens off rocks with their adapted tongues! Sounds rough!
A funny animal story... I was talking with a friend in the campsite when I saw a dog trotting across the road. After a double take I realized it wasn't a dog! It was a coyote! I immediately ran to the car, grabbed my camera, ran after the coyote, jumped on a picnic table and snapped a pretty cool shot.
I hope you enjoy the pictures of our exciting animal encounters!
For a complete list of mammals in Glacier click here.
To find out more about the wildlife present in Glacier click here and select from the menu on the left.