After leaving Missoula we decided to stop by the National Bison Range. It is about one hour north from Missoula on HW93. You have to pay to get in, but our National Park pass got us in without any extra cost. In the park there are couple loops that you can take, one is short and take you closer to the bison herds, the other one is longer and take you almost through the entire park. We already seen plenty of Bison in Yellowstone so naturally we took the longer loop. The drive was scenic, but for the first three quarters of it we didn’t see much of the wild life, with the exception off a turkey that was a bit territorial and decided to attack our car. As we saw it, we stopped to take a look at it, but instead of running away it got on the car, on top of it, on our sunroof and started pocking at it with its beak. Making turkey noises while doing it. Later on we learned that it had a nest nearby.
As we started to descent off the mountain we saw this buck deer. He was far away, but as we started descent serpentine, we looped around him and got a bit closer. I guess our car looked somewhat cool, or smelled of some turkey and not so alien, he decided to come by and check us out. It was only maybe for a minute or two. He was making hardly audible deer noises, ate some grass, took a look at us and took off. But not before I was able to take a few photos.
As always, all photos available in high resolution at my photo gallery.
