Grizzly Bear Feasts on Moose as Couple Exchange Wedding Vows Nearby

A couple recited their wedding vows to each other in Montana’s Glacier National Park, but the mood shifted when a grizzly bear attacked and began eating a moose calf nearby.

Stanton Giles, a wedding videographer, captured the graphic moment on camera and posted it to his YouTube channel on August 18 where it was viewed nearly 10,000 times.

“A wedding ceremony was taking place on the shore of Two Medicine Lake in Glacier National Park, when most of the way through the groom’s vows, a grizzly charged out of the brush onto the north shore and attacked a moose calf as the mother looked on,” the video description said.

Here, a stock image of a brown bear. A wedding videographer captured the moment that a grizzly bear began eating a moose calf while the couple exchanged their vows.
ricochet64/iStock

According to the National Park System (NPS), grizzly bears are omnivores and more than 90 percent of their diet consists of grass, berries and insects. What they specifically eat may change with the seasons.

“They will also eat large and small mammals, fruit, bark, roots and mushrooms when they are available,” officials with the NPS said.

In the video, the camera focuses on the groom as he recited his vows when a strangled cry could be heard in the distance.

The camera cut to show the bear on top of the moose calf, who kicked its legs to no avail.

“And that’s why we didn’t go to the north shore, ladies and gentlemen,” someone said off camera.

The bear continued to eat the moose as people commented on what they were witnessing. Toward the end of the video, one person wondered if they should relocate the wedding.

Giles said in the video description that they saw the moose and the calf about 10 minutes earlier moving quickly through the forest.

“The bear must have been chasing them for at least a little bit,” he said.

Viewers were just as shocked by what unfolded not far from the wedding.

“Crazy you captured this mid-ceremony,” a viewer wrote.

“Now the question is how do you incorporate a moose being eaten by a bear in a wedding video,” commented another.

“What an omen lol,” one viewer wrote.

Newsweek reached out to Stanton Giles for comment.

Another bear crashed a wedding ceremony, as seen in a TikTok video. The now-viral clip showed a black bear walking through a wedding, knocking over a centerpiece and cutlery in the process.

A man posted a video on YouTube showing a grizzly bear that followed him as he hiked through Yellowstone National Park.

One video, also taken in Yellowstone National Park, featured a grizzly bear stealing another bear’s elk.