Back before normal life got upended, we squeezed in one last winter trip to the northern range of Yellowstone. The main attraction was the grizzly bear, but during the middle of the days we had some great encounters with other wildlife as well.

We had this red fox basically to ourselves for half an hour or so as it napped on a rock and walked around near the confluence of the Lamar River and Soda Butte Creek. That almost never happens, as a crowd usually gathers quickly at any animal sighting in the winter. I’m all for people enjoying the wildlife, but there’s something special about being alone with an animal.

We were able to get quite close as it wasn’t bothered by our presence. It looked up a couple of times but ultimately opted to continue napping. I’m not a big fan of this first photo since the fox appears to be attached to the rock, but I always take the first photos as quickly as possible because you never know if you’ll get more chances.

I tried moving around a bit to get a blue sky background. It helped but the rock was still there. The bushes and grasses don’t bother me as much visually since they are going to be everywhere, as long as they don’t cover the face.

Zoomed in 200% you can see the fox has a little snaggle tooth! It was like this on both sides. The previous two images are shown without any cropping.

After a while he finally stood up and took a while to decide where to go. I was able to walk up the hill a bit to get more on his eye level as opposed to shooting from below. This also helped to keep grass blades out of the way. This wouldn’t have been possible with a crowd of people, and I made sure nobody else was coming as to not get yelled at.

Unfortunately he didn’t do any hunting here, just more sitting down and looking around. A lot of animals seem to squint their eyes in the bright snow. Don’t they have any sunglasses?

Finally time to go…

We found it again briefly at the top of a hill from the next pull off, but after that it disappeared for good.