Amy Anderson was rapt. She had spent about 30 minutes observing and photographing a great gray owl in Fremont County on a mild winter evening, and the bird’s agility, hunting prowess and splendor bewitched her.
“I had such a wonderful experience that night with that owl watching it hunt,” the Lander resident said. She heard great horned owls calling back and forth somewhere in the vicinity, and even thought she heard the call of the other great gray that had been reported in the area. She photographed from a distance, using a long lens on her camera.
Eventually, another motorist parked next to Anderson’s vehicle, and she walked over to talk to the driver. The owl had just landed on a fence post next to the road. Moments later, it took flight, colliding almost immediately with another passing vehicle as Anderson and the parked driver watched in disbelief.
“It was horrible,” Anderson recounted. She doesn’t know if the motorist noticed hitting the bird as the vehicle continued driving along the well-trafficked country lane. The owl lay dead on the road.
The death marks a tragic end to what was a rare opportunity to spot two great gray owls in the southern end of their territory, and Fremont County birders and wildlife lovers have mourned the bird’s death.
But wildlife biologists and owl experts hope it reminds Wyoming residents to always be mindful and cautious of the critters they share the state’s habitat with.
“We’re lucky enough to live in a state with really abundant wildlife, and basically almost anywhere you’re driving in the state, you’re driving through wildlife habitat,” said Game and Fish Statewide Nongame Bird Biologist Zach Wallace. Driving the speed limit and maintaining awareness of the roadside might seem obvious, he said. “But we live in a place where that matters more than it does in a lot of places.”
Wintertime risks
The great gray owl is a large, powerful and elegant raptor known to roam mountains and forests near the Teton and Absaroka ranges in northern Wyoming. In January, several sightings reported two great grays that had strayed south into Fremont County. The owls were observed hunting in grassy meadows devoid of the snow that often blankets them in winter months.
Great grays are not unheard of in Fremont County; birders occasionally report sightings of individual birds. A biologist even discovered a nesting female on the Shoshone National Forest in July.
The owls were likely drawn south by prey accessibility, said Colorado State University research scientist Katherine Gura, who has studied Wyoming great gray owls for a dozen years. Several rain-on-snow events in the Tetons this winter have created severe crusts in the snowpack that make hunting difficult, she said. Gura also believes they weren’t mates, as breeding pairs rarely winter together.
Either way, the birds persisted in Fremont County, where they delighted wildlife watchers, photographers and unsuspecting residents who happened across their hulking silhouettes hunting at dawn or dusk.
But the run came to its sad ending on the evening of Jan. 30. Game and Fish staff collected the body, which may be taxidermied for educational purposes, Wallace said.
In 2025, another great gray owl was killed in a vehicle collision in almost the same spot, he noted. And perhaps these deaths illustrate the importance of wildlife observation etiquette, attentive driving and how to respect an animal’s space, Wallace and others said.
Gura has investigated many great gray owl mortalities as part of her work banding and tracking the birds. “One of the leading causes of mortality is vehicle collisions here in Wyoming,” she said, estimating they caused roughly half of the mortalities she’s investigated.
In addition, she noted, when great gray owls expand their habitat in the winter, they are often drawn to lower elevation areas where there is more human presence. “Wintertime is definitely a riskier time for them in terms of how they’re interacting with anthropogenic activity, including vehicles.”
Finally, Gura said, when great gray owls hunt, they hone in on their prey with focus so intense it often excludes other external surroundings.
“They essentially get hyper-focused when they detect that prey, either by sound or by sight, and they kind of lose awareness of everything around them,” Gura said. “So that’s why you’ll have owls, kind of swooping in front of cars.”
While winter is often an optimal time to see the bird, she said, those other factors also heighten the need for caution.
Good etiquette
Great gray owls are tall birds with intense yellow eyes, speckled gray plumage and a serene demeanor.
“People love to see them, and they’re an amazing animal, and it’s inspiring and exciting to see them,” Wallace said. But it can be easy for humans to be swept away in the moment and not be mindful of the ways they could be stressing the bird, he said.
“Great gray owls, like some of the other owls that evolved in the northern boreal forests, are kind of famously tame in their behavior around humans,” he said. They aren’t exposed to humans much, and as a result, many allow humans to approach pretty close, he said. But “just because you can walk up to an animal doesn’t mean it’s not negatively affected.”
Gura echoed that. A person might think that walking up to an owl briefly to snap a phone picture is harmless, she said, but if dozens more people do the same thing, “even if your action is kind of brief, it compounds with the actions of everyone else.”
In terms of vehicles, both Wallace and Gura said tools like roadside signs don’t really make sense when it comes to owls because, unlike ungulates, they don’t have as strong a fidelity to migration paths or previous habitat.
But it’s important to be mindful of a whole range of wildlife that could get in the path of an oncoming vehicle, Gura said.
“I think [the risk of hitting ungulates] is something that’s kind of in the back of our mind when we’re driving through Wyoming, but not everybody’s thinking about the raptors that are really utilizing those fence lines or those power poles and are right along roadways,” she said. “So I think it’s good to remind people.”