Famous former Druid wolf 103F killed by pickup truck

Another famous Yellowstone Park wolf has been killed. This time is was 103F, the next to the last of the famous "litter of 1997" in the Druid Peak Pack, fathered by the original alpha male 38M and female 40F.

She was killed last Sunday near the Petrified Tree exit a few miles west of Tower Junction, apparently hit by a pickup truck that did not stop after the accident.

103F was a small wolf (70 pounds, 2 years ago). She raised at least 2 litters. While protecting her first litter she might have helped her older sister 42F kill the first Druid matriarch, her mother, wolf 40F.

When the Druid superpack split up in 2001, she traveled with several other wolves, leading an attack on the "Tower Pair," from which that pair never recovered. Later she joined the new Agate Pack, but disappeared from that pack about 6 months ago. Her second radio collar prematurely failed after 18 months and her whereabouts had not been known.

Doug Smith necropsied her and found she still weighed 70 pounds. Her stomach was empty, save a bone, although an elk carcass was nearby. She might have been traveling with another wolf, but she was not pregnant. Smith found some cysts on her liver (possibly a stage of some parasite). Her teeth were still in pretty good condition even though she was born in 1997.

Only her sister 106F, the alpha female of the Geode Pack, from that famous litter is known to be still alive. 106F is another small wolf, about 70 pounds.

Her original siblings were 104M (a bold male who was once alpha of Mollies Pack), 105F (killed last spring by other wolves after bearing her first pups in the Buffalo Fork, off Slough Creek). 106F, and 107F (dispersed, fate unknown).

In other news, the Swan Lake Pack has returned to the Park from the Cinnabar Basin area to the north, and is now in its home territory in Gardiner's Hole.

Dr. Doug Smith reported that the winter study, which ended yesterday, showed for the first time that the wolf kill rate of elk did not increase as the winter progressed. This may be an indication that the declining elk herd is weakened from the drought. Smith said many of the kills showed the elk to be in "horrible" condition, not what you would expect if the only factor was wolves and other carnivores "culling the herd." Were it not for the drought the elk herd, regardless of its population size, should show surviving elk more and more difficult to kill and the wolves having a much harder time.

4-1-2004