After eight months trying, wolf R27F has finally been caught and removed from the Beartooth Front. She was darted from a helicopter in the vicinity northwest of Dean, Montana last weekend. Plans are to hold her in a Yellowstone Park enclosure pen for the next two months and then she will be released.>

27F, as a lone wolf, had a litter of five pups last spring on the Beartooth Front near Nye, Montana.

The agency personnel that captured her could find no trace of her three remaining pups, which should now be nearly full-grown, if not sophisticated hunters.

Two of her original five pups are no longer in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. One pup is in a Minnesota facility after being caught in leg-hold trap set for no. 27 herself. The pup's leg had to be amputated. The second pup was caught and released in the Park last September, but it was soon killed by a vehicle.

I had long admired the pluck of no. 27, but ranchers wanted her removed after she killed about 8 domestic sheep last summer. When her pack was captured in British Columbia, she was the only wolf in the entire capture sequence that tried to attack the helicopter.

The reader will find numerous references to no. 27 in past articles on this page.

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© 1997 Ralph Maughan
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