The Rise of Wolf 8. Rick McIntyre
On January 11, a local rancher reported a missing sheep. An Animal Damage Control officer found a partially eaten lamb the next day. 8’s brother was in the area and likely responsible for killing the lamb. He was captured two days after that and later released in the middle of the park in hopes he would stay there.
The errant wolf returned to the sheep ranch on February 2. That night a sheep was attacked, and the black was tracked to within two hundred yards of the ranch’s barn. He stayed near the ranch for the next few days. The original protocol set up in the park’s wolf management plan called for giving a problem wolf a second chance after it kills livestock. If the wolf returned and caused additional problems, it would be destroyed. Because he had failed to take advantage of the second chance given him, 8’s brother was shot and killed by an Animal Damage Control officer on February 5. The second part of the prophecy had come to pass. One of the four sons of the mighty alpha male had indeed died young and in disgrace.
Another Yellowstone wolf was lost that winter. One of the Rose Creek male pups was hit and killed by a delivery van on December 19 in Lamar Valley. The other seven members of the litter survived their first year.
IN JANUARY 1996, I flew from Texas to Bozeman, Montana, then drove down to the park, where I had a brief sighting south of the Institute of the Crystal Creek alpha pair and one of the black yearlings. The wolves paused to watch some of the thousand elk in the valley, then turned around and disappeared into a forest.
I settled into Jim’s class to learn more about how wildlife copes with the harsh winter conditions in the park. While we were in the classroom on January 28, we heard a commotion and walked outside to see what was going on. A big truck pulling a horse trailer had just arrived at the parking lot. It contained the five members of the new Druid Peak pack, named after the 9,583-foot mountain northeast of the Institute. Each wolf was in a sturdy metal cage, four feet long, two feet wide, and three feet high.
We had already heard the story of one wolf in that truck: wolf 38. He was a big male and weighed 115 pounds. Somehow, he had torn his cage apart during an earlier stage of the transport. A crew member checking on the wolves had found him casually strolling around inside the trailer. He had to be tranquilized and put in another cage for the rest of the trip. Everyone involved with the shipping of the wolves was impressed by the big wolf and a bit intimidated. His story reminded me of King Kong tearing off his chains and escaping into New York City. This guy, I concluded, was not a wolf to mess with. If he could tear apart that cage, what could he do if he got in a fight with another male?
The other four wolves in the trailer came from the Besa pack: a white alpha female (39) with three female pups, one gray (40) and two blacks (41 and 42). The alpha male from that group was not captured and probably had been killed by trappers. The formidable new male was from another pack. He would be put in the Rose Creek pen with the four females in hopes that he would bond with the alpha female, just as the lone male in the Rose Creek pack had with 9 the year before. We went back to our class, happy that we had just witnessed the arrival of a new pack.
Three other packs were brought down from British Columbia at that time. The Chief Joseph pack was placed in the Crystal Creek pen. There were four wolves in that group: an adult male, an adult female, and two pups. The pen we had helped prepare last fall in the Blacktail Plateau area would hold two adults, one male and one female. They would eventually be named the Lone Star pack. The fourth pack, known as Nez Perce, was put in a new pen near Madison Junction, about twelve miles north of Old Faithful. There were six wolves in that group: two adults and four pups.
Those seventeen wolves from British Columbia, along with the fourteen that had arrived from Alberta in 1995, added up to a total of thirty-one. The park had authorization to bring in more wolves, but those original ones did well enough that no additional wolves from Canada were needed. I checked the weight of the seven male pups in the two batches of wolves and 8 was still the smallest. Of the eight female pups, only one was smaller than him. Another one outweighed him by 28 pounds.
Wolf 8 and his new mate were seen breeding in late February, and 9 gave birth to three pups in April. 8 was just two years old, equivalent to a man at age twenty, when those pups were born. He was now responsible for protecting and feeding his mate, her seven yearlings, and the three newborn pups he had fathered. That added up to eleven wolves. It would be a big job for a small wolf.
I FINISHED UP my third winter in Big Bend and began my long drive north to Yellowstone. I arrived in the park on May 12, 1996, a few days before my job started. The first thing I did was drive out to Lamar Valley to look for the Crystal Creek wolves where people said they were denning, a few miles east of the Yellowstone Institute. I knew the alpha pair in that pack well, and I was anxious to see how the family was doing. I did not see them or the newly released Druids.
Early the next morning, I returned to Lamar and climbed the steep hill above the confluence of the Lamar River and Soda Butte Creek to look out over the valley. I soon spotted 8’s mother, wolf 5, about a half mile away. She raised her head and howled several times. Then she walked off slowly, limping on her front left paw. I spotted one of 8’s black brothers out in front of her. Now two years old, he was the only one of the original four brothers who was still in the pack.
The female frequently stopped to howl and look around. I figured she was looking for the pack’s alpha male. The young male, wolf 6, was traveling at a normal pace, and the limping female was having trouble keeping up. She bedded down, and I sensed something more than a sore paw was wrong with her. 6 turned around, went back, and sniffed her. She got up and followed him when he trotted off.
The male went to the bank of the Lamar River, saw two Canada geese in the water, jumped in, and dog-paddled toward them. They easily outswam him and got away. Swinging away from the river, the wolves headed toward a small group of cow elk. The male picked one out, chased her, and easily caught up, even though he was running at only half speed. The cow had something wrong with her, and 6 had detected her vulnerability. He ran alongside her for a few moments, then leaped up and bit into the side of her neck. She stopped and stood still as the wolf balanced on his hind legs, maintaining his grip on her throat. A wolf has four sharp canine teeth and 1,500 pounds of pressure in its jaw. A bite to the throat of an elk can kill it in a few minutes.
In what seemed like a gentle move, the wolf twisted his jaw and upper body and forced the elk to the ground. She did not resist. As he maintained his hold, I could see through my scope she was still breathing, but the force of his grip was slowly suffocating her. When he let go, four minutes after beginning his chase of the cow, she was dead.
The young wolf started to tear into the elk’s underside, but soon walked off to check on the alpha female, who was watching a cow bison with a newborn calf. When the cow moved toward her, she had to retreat. 6 returned to his kill and the female followed. They both fed, but 5 walked off after only a minute, another indication that she was either injured or sick.
6 pulled a choice part off the carcass and carried it toward the female. She excitedly trotted to him. I lost both in a gully, then saw that she was eating the prized tidbit. The male was standing a few yards away watching her eat. It looked like he had brought her food because she was hurting. He returned to the carcass and fed. Later both wolves walked off to the south. The female did a squat urination next to a tree, and the male did a raised-leg urination over it. That double-scent mark would usually be done by the pack’s alpha pair.
The Crystal alpha male, wolf 4, was nowhere in sight, and I now wondered if something had happened to him. I noticed one more thing about the female. She had distended nipples, a sure sign she was nursing pups. Perhaps her mate was at the den while she took a break and went out hunting with the young male. But why was she limping?
Later in the day, I went to the Wolf Project office to tell the staff what I had seen. Doug told me that he had talked with a visitor who had seen a wolf pack chasing a single black wolf near the Crystal den a few days earlier. Black was the color of the alpha male’s coat. Then Doug discovered 4’s radio collar was transmitting a mortality signal. Doug and a crew hiked out to that area and found his body. They determined he had been killed by other wolves, probably on May 7, and the Druid wolves were the prime suspects. Apparently, the Druids wanted Lamar Valley as their territory, even though the Crystal Creek pack had claimed it a