A net gun has been sucessfully used to capture three of the five pups in the doomed Boulder Pack near Deer Lodge, Montana. The pups are now too big to run them down as Mike Phillips did last year with the three Soda Butte Pack Pups. The hunt for the last two pups and three adults is underway.

According to a story in the Billings Gazette on July 18, this pack is slated for elimination because they have killed livestock three times this year and 40[!] times in the last four years. This is the first time I had heard the latter figure. Ed Bangs of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was quoted "For some reason, this pack learned to attack cattle and now considers them a prey item, . . . and we just can't seem to break the pattern, and we have to start over."

The three captured pups are now in the Running Creek enclosure inside the Selway/Bitterroot Wilderness in Idaho. The three pups are apparently now with Idaho wolves B7M and B11F. It is hoped this pair will adopt the pups and that the pups will forget the taste of beef.

I would speculate that based on the experience of the Sawtooth pups brought to Yellowstone in 1996 under similar circumstances that the enclosure time for the two adults and the Boulder pups will be less than it was for the Sawtooth pups.