Ghost of the Coast

The Ghost of the Coast

It's self-evident that the "signature" animals of the Great Bear Rainforest on the central and northern BC coast are bears - grizzly bears, black bears and, of course, spirit bears. But there's another high profile carnivore that's found in the Great Bear Rainforest - the gray wolf. And, there's probably almost as many wolves in the Great Bear as there are bears. While you may occasionally hear wolves you almost never see them - they are, metaphorically and almost literally, the Ghosts of the Coast. When you do see them it's...well...simply thrilling.

Gray wolves have probably been in the Khutzeymateen Grizzly Sanctuary since long before it was a sanctuary. Since I started visiting the Khutzeymateen in 2006 we've seen a few wolves - but in each case they were incredibly wary and you often only got a glance of them in the distance and the next second they were gone. There has seemed to be a modest trend to seeing a few more wolves in the Great Bear Rainforest (and in the Khutzeymateen) in recent years, but the sightings are still rare enough to be very noteworthy and exciting.

During my 2014 Khutzeymateen Grizzlies photo tour we had an amazing encounter with a wolf that was pretty much off the charts. Ironically, it came on the first day my group was in the Khutzeymateen and right when we were watching a fascinating and intense encounter between a freshly-weaned 3 year old male grizzly and a larger male who really didn't want the young bear around. While watching the high-stress (for the bears!) encounter, someone in our boat looked behind us and saw this wolf lazily walking through the deep grass of the alluvial fan that it was sharing with the two bears (the grass was so deep it almost obscured the wolf). To our amazement the wolf calmly walked by us, then between the two bears (stopping to scent mark a stump) and slowly plodded up along the shoreline. The reaction of the wolf to the bears and the bears to the wolf? An indifferent glance. Many of us captured images of the wolf and a bear in the same frame!

The shot above was captured not long after we first saw the wolf and while it was ambling through the long grass. Given this is pretty much as open as it gets in the Great Bear Rainforest, it's no surprise that wolves are seldom seen there! Focusing on this wolf - and keeping the eye as the sharpest point of focus - was a bit of a challenge as foreground grasses continuously overlapped the eye. I tried to time this shot so that the bulk of the upper part of the head (and particularly the eye) was in the clear. The wolf itself is showing the most common coat colour/pattern found on the coast - predominantly gray but with brown/orange patches as well as black and very light "flecks".

Subject: Coastal Gray Wolf (Canis lupus) calmly ambling through the grass in the Khutzeymateen Estuary
Location: Khutzeymateen Inlet, northern Great Bear Rainforest, BC, Canada
Camera: Nikon D4s
Lens: AF-S Nikkor 400mm f2.8 lens - hand-held from floating zodiac. VR on and in "Normal" mode.
Exposure: 1/500s @ f5.6; ISO 360. no compensation compensation from matrix-metered exposure setting.
Crop: This is about 80% of full frame with equal cropping all-round

More details about the image - including post-processing information and a higher res version of the image - can be found here on my website:

http://www.naturalart.ca/galleries/latest/detail_2.html.

Comments and critiques welcomed - probably best to view the larger version prior to doing so!

Cheers...

Brad

PS: Like all wildlife images on my website and that I post on NPN, the subject is fully wild and completely unconstrained. Besides the potential impact of my/our presence, nothing has been done to intentionally alter or affect the ongoing behavior of the subject and, of course, there has been no use of any form of bait or other form of wildlife attractants (including vocalizations)