Leslie Bigham was driving her 7-year-old daughter Berklee to school on Oct. 1 when she was surprised to hear her daughter say, "Look mom, it's a bear."

Bigham didn't see what her daughter was pointing at so she found a safe place to turn around went back to what she figured was a misidentified cow. As they neared the property on Wyo. Highway 114 near Deaver, she realized her daughter was right. To her surprise, it was a bear with an obvious shoulder hump.

""What in the world?," Bigham said as she realized it was a grizzly. "We've seen a few black bears out here, you know, but never a grizzly bear."

The family spends a lot of time in the mountains and enjoy seeing bears inside of what the federal government has determined as appropriate habitat. However, the neighborhood near the Big Horn County line isn't appropriate habitat, she said. Bigham also has a toddler, Presley, as well as pets whose safety concerns this hard hunting mother.

"Wildlife is expected out here, but the amount of grizzly bears that have been seen in the area is concerning. I mean, a moose, you know, elk, whatever, one here or there, but them just hanging out that close to town and houses and stuff is very concerning," she said, with her protective inner lioness fully engaged. "Our neighbors have twins that are the same age as Berklee. We let them play outside together all the time, you know, over by the horse corral or jumping on the trampoline or riding their bikes. I don't know if we should be doing that anymore."

Bigham immediately called the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and reported the sighting. While it's hard to know for sure, the sub-adult is possibly one of the two grizzly bears that visited the Powell area in September.

The two sub-adults avoided being trapped by Game and Fish large carnivore biologists after being sighted in agricultural fields just north of Powell. They were frequenting an area adjacent to a lamb operation and were not welcome.

These weren't the only grizzly bears reported in surprising areas. Game and Fish Cody Region Wildlife Biologist Luke Ellsbury said a grizzly sow and two cubs-of-the-year (COY) have been sighted near Otto and have also avoided agency live traps.

"It has been probably more than two weeks since we've had a verified sighting of them," Ellsbury said in a Monday morning interview with the Tribune. "It appears to be a female and two COY that are working on the Greybull River down there between Burlington and Otto. We have looked for them quite a bit just to make sure that they're not causing conflict, or they're not in cornfields, that sort of thing, and they've just kind of stayed on the move as far as we can tell."

Ellsbury said (based on anecdotal evidence) it will be remembered as a "pretty substantial" conflict year in the Big Horn Basin. It hasn't just been grizzly bears that have been turning up in surprising places. Black bear and mountain lion conflicts are keeping the large carnivore team running, he said.

"On years like this we kind of have to do a little bit of a triage with calls that come in, just because it's tough to keep up with all of them," he said. "Across the whole state, this has definitely been a higher black bear conflict year than I can remember."

Bear, moose visit Willwood home

Black bears are prone to becoming food conditioned or habituated, just like any bear. Once that happens, they can present a safety concern if they're actively seeking out human foods aggressively. While grizzly bears seem to be more concerning to a large percentage of the population, black bears are more likely to see humans as food than grizzly bears.

Willwood resident Christina Peterson said she knew something was up because her dogs were 'going crazy." When a black bear wandered into her yard on July 21, she secured the dogs and called Game and Fish.

They told her that there is a high population of black bears on the Shoshone River and she shouldn't be surprised to see them.

"I've lived here 11 years and this is the first one we've had in the backyard," she said.

The bear may have been the same black bear that was removed from a home in Byron before being euthanized for food conditioning concerns. At least that's what she was told. But it's not the only excitement that backyard has seen, she said.

"I was drinking my coffee and here comes a bull moose walking up my driveway," she said of the July, 2025 surprise.

The moose was a little bit less surprising due to the property being in eastern Park County.

"I could throw a rock and hit Big Horn County," she said.

Ellsbury was more concerned by the bear, although every local knows moose can be dangerous.

"They definitely seem to come into contact with people more because of human food conditioning," Ellsbury said, not suggesting that Peterson fed the bears because nothing could be further from the truth. Human food conditioning can mean a grill left outdoors, bird or animal feed and even garbage pails left by the curb. Food conditioning is a deadly recipe for carnivores, he said.

Another part of that recipe is due to populations. There are roughly 800,000 to 900,000 black bears in North America, compared to a much smaller grizzly population, around 55,000, with only about 1,900-2,200 in the lower 48 states, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Yet, other environmental conditions are contributing to bears moving into areas designated as residential neighborhoods. A warm winter last year, droughts and the carrying capacity of what has been determined to be appropriate habitat has been met, according to Ellsbury.

"This combination of a lower natural foods year with a high population density means there's just not as many resources to go around for the bears and it creates creates a little bit of a higher conflict year because you get bears searching further [from appropriate habitat]," he said.

Mountain lions

It has also been a high conflict year for the area's big cats. The large carnivore team has been seeing an increase in mountain lion conflict calls this year, Ellsbury said.

"The ones we've been dealing with seem to be younger lions, which might be because we had a higher birth rate last year, so we're seeing a lot more [juveniles] get kicked off right now," he said.

The warm 2025-26 winter may have increased kitten survival rates, Ellsbury theorized.

"Our deer herds are doing really good right now. Same with elk. There's no shortage of prey base out there. Typically mountain lion survival for kittens is about 50% and we may have just had a good enough year that we exceeded that. We're seeing a higher rate of subadults on the landscape now,"  he said.

When Bridget Gallagher, of Gallagher's Corn Maze and Pumpkin Patch in Clark, noticed a mountain lion hanging out in the popular maze, she took the matters into her own hands. With a big cat tag in her pocket, Gallagher harvested the young female lion. Ellsbury said her effort was helpful.

"It was kind of nice on our end that somebody was able to harvest it and it didn't become a conflict cat in that area," he said.

Moose

A moose was reported on Lane 11 1/2 lby Christy Muecke. She posted a video of the young bull trotting down Lane 11 1/2 last week. In July Christina Peterson posted a photo of what appears to be the same bull as it hung out in her Powell backyard. Ellsbury said it's rare, but not unheard of in the region.

"In the past we've had them in Byron and around Lovell. I'm sure they work the Shoshone down a little bit, come off of there," he said.

However, Ellsbury said it's not strange to have a young moose to go looking for adventure outside of typical habitat in the Bighorns, Absaroka and Beartooth mountain ranges. The surprising news this year belongs to the area's predators.

Predator predicament

According to the U.S. Forest Service, due to drought conditions and erratic weather patterns impacting high-country flora, poor berry crops have been reported across the Bridger-Teton National Forest. This lack of natural forage has forced grizzly and black bears to travel much further and lower down the mountains than usual to find food, leading to increased human-bear conflicts and trail closures near Teton Pass.

Ellsbury said residents in the Big Horn Basin should adhere to the same food attractant prep that folks near the mountains have been doing for decades.

"If you do have a bear hanging around or you have some sort of conflict with [carnivores], just to reach out to our regional office and let us know. You know, especially if you have bear sightings in unusual areas, we'd like to know about those," he said, adding "I think reminding folks that we're gonna have bears out for at least another month, so don't let their guard down when it comes to attractants or safety. Park County is still kind of a wild place. We have plenty of wildlife out and about. No matter where you're at."

As for the grind answering the many carnivore conflict calls this year and worries about future conflicts during the current hunting seasons, Ellsbury is excited for hibernation to begin.

"I'm ready for November," he said. "We're on call 24/7 for the whole Big Horn Basin. So, it's pretty easy to get stretched out thin."