I have been gone for a while
I have been in the Yellowstone Country for the last week, so I have made no reports, but I have learned a lot. Articles will follow soon.

I went out wolf watching with Kevin Sanders. On the trail, we surprised one of the Druids, no. 42F, with an elk calf in her mouth near the bottom end of Soda Butte Valley. She dropped the calf and ran. '

Earlier, from the road, we watched though Kevin's scope as a huge grizzly sow (est. 400-500 pounds) with her 3 yearling cubs patrolled the meadows at the bottom of Specimen Ridge for about an hour.

Later I spent several days on the Beartooth Front between Red Lodge and Nye, Montana. This is natural wolf country if I ever saw it. There are mule and whitetailed deer and coyotes in every draw (and there are lots of draws as well as farms and ranches). No matter how much some of less progessive ranchers dislike the idea, wolves are going to keep coming to the Front. The wolves might even reduce the coyote population.

I saw fairly fresh wolf scat in West Rosebud Creek, indicating that one, or both of no. 27's pups from last year, unradio-collared no. 49 and 50, may still be in the area of the Beartooth Front.

The Greater Yellowstone Coalition was holding its annual convention in Bozeman. A number of field trips were made to Yellowstone. Almost every group saw grizzlies and wolves. The story a I liked best was seeing two yearling wolves learn about porcupines. One learned the hard way!

I also spent time trying to retrace the tracks of Chad McKittrick as described in Tom McNamee's new book on the Wolves of Yellowstone. In a week or so I'll have photos up of the Mount Maurice/Bear Creek, Montana area (although I will attach them to the Yellowstone Wolf History page rather than to the updates.).

There are lots of new pups
The number of new pups in Yellowstone may be fairly astonishing, but I don't have enough of the numbers yet to make a report. I have heard it said that every female wolf that was in a position to have pups probably did so.

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