These photos were shot from right outside my tent, from a distance of over 1/4 mile. The elk are gathered just south of the geyser basin, along the shore of Shoshone Lake, You can see the steam from the geysers drifting in the cold morning air across the broad meadows that line the western shore of the lake.

All night long, two huge bull elk had battled back and forth around the little bay between my campsite and the geyser basin. At one point, about 2 in the morning, I had to pile out of the tent beneath a full moon to chase one of the bulls out of my camp. There was a full moon, and between the bugling of the elk and the bright light of the moon, sleep was hard to come by. At that time, one of the bulls, the one with the harem of about 30 cows, was on the west side of the bay, over by the geyser basin. The challenger was on my side of the bay, charging madly up and down the hillside, bugling out shrill challenges to his rival on the other side. I heard him as he piled down the hillside between the cook site and my tent, sliding as he reached the steep bank at the bottom. For a while, he stayed over on the north end of the point, running back and forth, sometimes splashing loudly out into the lake, offering up all sorts of dire threats to the bull on the west shore. Then, working himself into a frenzy, he started running back and forth, right by my tent. He'd take time to rip into the bushes along the bank, slamming his rack hard into the limbs and branches. He was so close that I could hear him breathing heavily as he charged back and forth by my tent. Finally, he started getting so close that I was worried that he might actually attack the tent, so I piled out into the frigid night air to drive him out of camp. It probably made a pretty humorous scene, there on the night shores of Shoshone Lake, as I stood there in my boxers, yelling, "Yo Bull! Get the hell out of here!!!" He finally took the hint and moved on around the end of the small bay, crossing over to the geyser basin on the other side. I got back into Big Agnes (it's worth buying the tent just to have the opportunity to say something like that) and lay there for the rest of the night, sleeping little, but happy as hell to be part of such a wild scene.

In the upper photo, the bull with the harem was desperately trying to keep them away from the challenger. The cows seemed equally desperate to escape his clutches, literally, and were constantly swirling to and fro as they looked for a way past the vigilant bull. Each time a cow would try to race past the bull, he'd cut her off and drive her back to the harem. All that time, the challenger was standing about 300 yards away, bugling challenges and calling in the cows. I've never seen an instance where a harem of cows was so eager to escape one bull to join another.

In the lower photo, the cows have fled into the lake in an attempt to out-flank the beleagured bull, only to have him once again head them off by swimming out to cut them off. His rack was so massive that he was having trouble keeping his head above water, but he still managed to push most of the cows and calves in the harem back to shore.