By: Emily Stifler Wolfe From a window on the third floor of the Huntley Lodge, Patrick Conroy watched as a big bull moose chased a cow moose on Silver Knife ski run. The resort’s staff videographer, Conroy grabbed his camera, ran downstairs, and started hiking. Keeping a safe distance and out of sight, he framed up one photo, zooming in with a 400-mm lens right before the bull disappeared into the trees. Embodying the moose’s…
By: Emily Stifler Wolfe Near the top of the whitebark pine tree, the black bear sow reached for a pine cone with her open mouth. Grabbing it, she dropped it to the ground to eat later. Nearby, her cubs picked at the cones, learning to harvest the high-fat, high-protein nuts so important for survival. This wouldn’t be an uncommon occurrence in the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park. Except it wasn’t in the backcountry. The tree…
By: Emily Stifler Wolfe Charles Post was working as field research assistant on the remote South Fork Eel River in northern California when he first grasped the power of photography. Among bear, elk, mountain lions, and 3,000-year-old redwoods, Post was helping renowned food web ecologists Dr. Mary Power and Dr. Sarah Kupferberg, study Foothill yellow legged frogs, which migrate from small mountain streams to the mainstem river to breed every year. In addition to his…
By: Emily Stifler Wolfe Dale Evans was deployed to Iraq when he landed his first Wyoming elk hunting tag. Originally from Florida, Evans put in for the tag when he realized he’d miss hunting season back home in the states. That fall, 2010, he spent more than two weeks in the backcountry outside of Dubois, Wyoming, shooting a bull elk on day 15. During that trip, he fell in love with the West. In 2014,…