Yellowstone Wolves

Last week I assisted a class called Yellowstone Wolves. Someone must have told the wolves we were coming because they put on quite a show for us. The Druid pack has five eligible females, we were able to see them from the road with spotting scopes. Sadly, they have mange and look a bit bedraggled but that did not stop a very nice looking grey male from hanging around nearby. It is getting close to mating season and the assumption was that he was hoping for a chance to woo one of the females. Up on a hill on the other side of the road were two other males. At first we could not see them but could hear them howl. Later in the day a big horn sheep came running down the hill where it found a nice cliff to hang out on. A short while later a black wolf came down the hill and crossed the road moving towards the five sisters. One sister was in a bit of a ravine so that we could not see her but it seemed like he might have gone over to flirt with her. He wasn't there very long, however, before he recrossed the road and went back up the hill. Unfortunately all of this took place far enough away that I couldn't get any good photos.

One other day of class we walked up to the pens (see photo above) where the wolves lived when they were first brought to the park (1995). The idea of using the pen was to acclimate the wolves to this area so they wouldn't run back to Canada. Oddly, when they first opened the gate to the pen the wolves not only did not flee north, they didn't even leave the pen at all. Finally, the biologists decided to put a carcass outside the pen to lure them out. As they hauled the carcass up the hill to the pens they saw one of the males out on the ridge ahead of them. They hurried down to a creek bed below and made their way back to their truck!

Another field trip was to an abandoned den. The hole that the mother wolf excavated was quite impressive. Sadly, it was only used one season, presumably because the pups born there did not survive. They were last seen near a swollen riverbank and may have drowned. Apparently mothers will not return to a den if the first time they use it the pups do not live. If the pups had survived that first time the mother might have continued to use the den again even if she had some years in which the pups didn't make it. There is something about that first time that is very important