It could be good fortune or arrested development: A large adult grizzly hanging around the South Fork near Cody is still sporting a “tuxedo,” or white band of neck fur, that most bears lose as cubs.
Cody native Chris Parsons was lucky enough to spot the tuxedo grizzly, which might be a mature male, during a wildlife-watching drive Sunday up the South Fork.
They’d been watching a herd of elk along the river until they retreated back into the trees. So, they decided to turn around and head back home.
“As I’m about to flip around, my wife said, 'What's the black thing over there?’” indicating a lone animal in the distance on ranch property, he said.
A better look revealed it was a large grizzly, with a distinctive white patch in the neck area.
“At first, we thought it was a bear with a tracking collar,” Parsons said.
South Fork area resident Thomas McEvoy said he’s certain he got video of the same bear last year.
Other bears also were spotted in the general area with white or silver markings, he told Cowboy State Daily.
399's Last Cub Had Tux
Tuxedos are somewhat common among grizzly cubs but extremely rare in adults.
Cubs usually outgrow their tuxes within a few months, as regular-colored fur grows in.
Grizzly 399's last cub, Spirit, had a distinctive tuxedo on his neck and upper chest when he first appeared with his mother in May 2023. But he soon started outgrowing it.
It had disappeared completely by the time Spirit was with his mother in October 2024, when she was struck and killed by a vehicle south of Jackson.
Spirit was last seen fleeing the scene of the collision, and there hasn’t been a confirmed sighting since.
Rare Color Variations
White patches of fur are uncommon anywhere on adult grizzlies, Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of the Grizzly Bear Foundation in British Columbia, Canada, told Cowboy State Daily.
He noted there’s one female with two cubs “right in my neighborhood” that all have distinctive white patches on their shoulders.
He also recalled a famous all-white grizzly, called Nakoda.
She wasn’t an albino, Scapillati said.
Nakoda lived in the Canadian Rockies, primarily in Banff National Park in Alberta and Yoho National Park in British Columbia.
The year 2024 was apparently a bad one for famous grizzlies. That June, Nakota and her two young cubs were stuck by vehicles and killed in separate incidents on the same day.
An all-white grizzly is an extreme rarity, Scapillati said.
Most grizzlies have basic variations of blondish to dark brown fur, he said.
Black bears, on the other hand, come in a huge range of colors.
Many are, fitting the species name, black. But they also come in cinnamon, brown, light brown, and a host of other shades.
Horses Stand Up to Griz
Parsons said when he and his wife first spotted the tuxedo grizzly, it was walking rather boldly toward a horse on the ranch property.
They tried to find the main ranch house “to give them a heads up,” but decided to not go past “no trespassing” signs, he said.
As it turned out, the ranch’s horses knew how to handle a grizzly.
“By the time we came back, there were about a dozen horses there, squaring off with the bear, and he took off back over a hill,” Parsons said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
