Breakfast of Champions

Prakash Mandalia
Jun 22, 2018
3 min read

Updated: Dec 27, 2019

After waking at 4:00 am and out of the house by 4:30 with a strong cup of coffee in hand headed out to Kananaskis country. Making sure I had enough coffee( never have enough) , water ,snacks and main items all my camera gear. I have a new (second hand) canon EOS 7D camera and I need to take it through the paces to make sure it works as required and if I need to make any adjustments.

I love the early morning drives to the mountains. I decided to take the back road to Kananaskis country through the Sibald Creek area, the road is gravel and this way I also test my new Procom shocks that I just had installed. I was the only car throughout the drive to Kananaskis as expected at that time of the morning, didn’t see a single soul not even birds flying. I guess even the wildlife wanted to sleep in this Friday morning😉.

I got to the junction of Kananaskis country around 6 and started seeing some life, deer looking at me like , what is wrong with you . I stopped by the road side in my usual spot and got my camera ready for my first encounter with a grizzly bear, well that was the plan in my head but you never know what you will find and many a times have gone home empty handed .

Driving down to my favorite spot I already had a few cars ahead of me, unusual cause they were all driving as slow as they possibly could. They were all looking for something. Apparently we had all heard the news , someone had spotted a white bear cub in the area and today just by chance was the first day the barriers to High wood pass get removed. So, I guess we were all looking for a chance to photograph the cub.

I spotted something small moving towards me in the horizon and first instinct was is it a grizzly cub, no way a mama bear would let a cub to be on the road side alone. I was starting to get excited to find out what it was and as I got closer it looked like a Fox and it was holding something in its mouth, I passed by it and this was my first time seeing a fox this close or the only time I had seen a fox. I went ahead and decided to investigate what it was holding in its mouth so turned around and went a little further down to make sure I get a chance to get ready with my camera if it doesn’t run off into the forest. And the fox stayed its course and kept coming towards my car. I was ready with anticipation to see what it had in its mouth and guess what it had a dead hare nicely tucked into its mouth. I had my camera ready to shoot and the first few shots didn’t really look good as it casually passed my car and sauntered away.

This time I went further up the road and out of the car to get a better shot and as it got closer it didn’t really seem to care that I was standing there. To my surprise and delight she decided to stop and take a bathroom break right in front of me, I am still not sure if it was male or female.

Looked at me while doing its business and gave me a chance to appreciate it beauty and got some awesome shots and could clearly see it holding a dead hare in its mouth , looked like a fresh kill . The breakfast of champions. I decided to let the fox go home and maybe it was taking food to his pups.

I continued to High wood pass thank full to the fox for giving me the chance to photograph it.

I didn’t see any grizzlies on this trip , better luck next time .