Watching wildlife in Yellowstone is not easy at least for Bears and Wolves. Elk tend to hang out in the grassy dividers between roads at Mammoth Hot Springs and Bison cross the roads in front of you everyday. (Please Please don’t get out of your car in those situations, Bison are incredibly tolerant but they have their limits and people have been gored)
But the Wolves and most Grizzlies are far way from the view areas. When we first went to Yellowstone and got up early to watch wolves we stumbled upon the “wolfers”. The original Wolf Project had over 100 volunteers who were used to note the location and activity of the various wolves who were released. They are still active today. In addition there are a lot of dedicated wolf watchers that come to Yellowstone year after year for their vacation to watch wolves.
But, with the exception of the rare and lucky times when a wolf or bear may cross the road when you happen to be there, the animals are a long way away. Sometimes miles away. But the experience can be still very rewarding if you come prepared with the right tools to watch wildlife in Yellowstone.
There will always be dedicated wolfers up at the crack of dawn waiting for the wolves. You don’t need to find the wolves you just need to find the wolfers! You will usually notice a group of wolfers on a small hill or rise for a better view. Scanning the landscape with binoculars and Spotting Scopes on tripods. They generally are very willing to share a view through their spotting scope for you.
You won’t find them with big camera telephoto lenses like you might with wildlife photographers. One reason is that their prime purpose is to watch and note the behaviour of the wolves but the second reason is that a good spotting scope with have many times the magnification of a camera lens. My scope is a 2000mm telephoto lens. The quality of scopes is not as high as camera telephoto lenses but the cost of even a 1200mm camera telephoto lens would be $30,000. Not that scopes are cheap. Dedicated birders and wildlife watchers can often be seen using scopes that are $5000 to $10000.
But that is out of our price range. When we first realized we were not going to see wolves with the naked eye we went to the Fishing Bridge store and bought two pair of Bushnell Falcon 10×50 binoculars. Now being a camera snob Bushnell is not the name I associate with fine optics. But these binoculars are amazing for their $69 price. They significantly improved our wildlife watching experience. But when we went to the Lamar Valley from the Hayden Valley the distances to the wildlife get further away.
After realizing how much better of an experience we could have with a scope vs our current binoculars I went shopping for a scope when I got home to be ready for the next trip.
Scopes and binoculars are spec’ed by the diameter of the opening or aperture of the far end of the scope. The bigger diameter the better the light gathering capability. This is important because you are often looking at wolves very early in the morning with very little light.
Second the scopes are rated by the magnifying capability. In the following picture you will see this scope has a rating of 30-90×100 which means it has a aperture of 100mm and a zoom magnification range from 30-90 power.
In the case of our binoculars they are 10 power fixed, no zoom, and an aperture of 50mm so half the diameter of the scope. There is also the issue of quality. Just having a wide aperture and high magnification does not mean you are going to be able to see anything at all.
When I first went shopping for a scope I knew nothing about scopes. They come in an incredible range of prices from dirt cheap to astronomical. It was very hard to make a guess as to what level is reasonable and will provide value without getting into a second mortgage.
After searching reviews I settled on the VisionKing 30-90 x 100. It cost less than $400 at the time and it has proven for us to be a valuable asset in our viewing. I am sure that the $5000 scopes have better sharpness and better contrast but, to me, they are not worth 10x the money. I got my VisionKing scope direct from VisionKing via Ebay and had a good experience with them as a seller.
http://www.visionking.com.cn/en/products.asp?c_id=2&c_pid=2
You also need a strong stable fluid-head style video tripod. You are going to be moving the scope to follow a moving pack of wolves and that action must be smooth not a pain to keep the animals in view.
The last aspect of using a scope is capturing what you see on your smartphone as a camera. It is called digiscoping and it simply involves a gadget to hold your smartphone camera over the eye piece so you can take a picture or a video.
The problem is there are a lot of smart phones of different sizes out there and the eye pieces on the scopes come in different diameters. Some of the big name scope makers also make adapters for their scopes for a few popular smartphones. The key is having a good solid attachment that does not move on you and that will keep the cell phone camera centered in the optical path. I have had better luck with the designs that go over your eyepiece with a screw-to-tighten disc rather than the ones that have clamping arms that clamp onto the eyepiece. It must be easy to keep the camera on the back of the cell phone centered in the adapter or you will not get good pictures and you will be fiddling with the adapter all the time.
Watching a wolf pack trying to feed on a carcass while fending off a Grizzly Bear and a Bull Bison at the same time is a thrilling experience but you need to have the right tools to maximize your opportunities.