The Wild World of Buck Bray: The Missing Grizzly Cubs
For the Gleason kids who hiked up a mountain with me in Denali National Park and Preserve Your hiking buddy Judy Young I With special thanks to John One-Take Bake Baker an Emmy Award winning director for consulting with me about cinematography and Brady Baker a conservation agent for sharing his firsthand experiences about crawling in bear dens and darting hibernating bears J Y
A Take 1 D Did you know moose attack more people than bears and wolves combined Sunday August 11 Buck knew he shouldn’t be walking through the dense Alaskan forest by himself but he and his dad had been driving for more than a week When they finally reached a campground each evening Dad said he was too tired to do any exploring And each morning Dad was busy writing scripts But Buck was ready for some action He wanted to see a grizzly but he wasn’t going to see any thing sitting in a camper all morning Buck hadn’t gone far down the trail when he heard splashing noises He quickened his steps A swampy pond t 1t
lay around the bend His heart beating fast with antici pation he sneaked behind a bushy willow and peeked through the leafy branches It wasn’t a bear but Buck wasn’t too disappointed In the pond was a moose calf It stuck its head in the water and came back up with strings of grasses slopping from its mouth Buck smiled It looks like it’s slurping green spaghetti he thought Buck pulled his camera from his pocket and took some pictures Then he stood perfectly still watching the young moose eat bite after bite Suddenly there was the sharp crack of a stick breaking behind him Buck turned and immediately froze Standing only forty feet away was the calf’s mother She was enormous Busy eating leaves she hadn’t noticed Buck Slowly Buck raised the camera Although it was bright over the pond it was dark in the forest and the camera’s flash went off automatically The mother moose’s head shot up She looked straight at Buck Then she looked at her calf It was still in the pond Buck was between the cow and her calf Uh-oh not a good place to be Buck thought The moose snorted and stomped glaring at Buck Buck t 2t
talked quietly to her trying to calm her with his voice You’re okay Big Mama he said softly Don’t you worry about little ol me I’m not going to hurt you or your baby You just go back to eating your breakfast Again the moose cuffed the ground with her hoof As he spoke Buck slowly backed up but hit a wall of willow bushes too thick to even crawl through Little by little he inched to the side trying to put some distance between him and the agitated moose The moose stepped toward him easily covering ten feet in only two steps Buck knew he shouldn’t move but fear took over He darted behind the trunk of a spruce Ears back the moose lowered her head and charged The spruce wasn’t very big and it didn’t offer much protection from the thirteen-hundred-pound wall of muscle that came straight at him Suddenly the sound of their camper’s door slamming echoed through the forest The noise startled the moose As her head turned slightly toward the sound her shoul der rammed into Buck and slammed him violently into a tree trunk Buck fell to the ground as the moose easily stomped past him crashing through the thick wall of t 3t
