Tourists At Grand Teton National Park Crowd Around Grizzly Bear Feasting On An Elk

You don’t poke the bear, and you don’t bother it while it’s trying to eat either.

Some people just don’t understand that. From the looks of this video that’s gone viral on social media, a large group of “some people” were visiting the beautiful Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming and showcased their lack of knowledge when it comes to outdoor safety.

As I’ve repeated in outdoors articles time and time again, the National Park Service advises tourists to stay at least 100 yards away from wild animals. And if you want my advice, I’d give a little bit more cushion than that if you were to spot an apex predator in the form of a grizzly bear – especially if you fall under the category of “touron.”

These people not only went against that guideline and got out of their cars to get a closer look at a bruin, they did so while the grizzly was chowing down on an elk carcass. And some of them got their KIDS out of the vehicle to idiotically invade this grizzly bear’s personal, meal-eating space. Whoever was videoing this from a distance even noticed that the bear was getting a little “freaked” with all of the human activity around it.

The caption below the video explained why approaching a grizzly bear while it’s feeding – and I know this is shocking – can be one of the most dangerous things a human can do:

“Some might think that this grizzly would be too occupied to care about the tourons, but this is probably one of the most dangerous positions to be in.

Grizzly Bears become very protective when it comes to their food, the grizzly might think that these people are a threat and it would take him literally seconds to reach one of these tourons.”

If there’s one animal that you really don’t want to test the 100 yard buffer zone on, it’s the grizzly bear. They can sprint as fast as 35 miles per hour, and it could have easily seen any of these people (or kids) as a threat to his food. It would have only taken a couple of second for the sizable bruin to climb up the hill and add to the dinner pile.

Thankfully, or should I say miraculously, that didn’t happen: