Season Ends with no wolf kills on National Elk Refuge, or was there one just the other day?

4-19-2001

I've written several articles this year basically saying the wolves have not been on the National Elk Refuge much this winter. They spent their time in the surrounding mountains, especially up the Gros Ventre River working the state elk feedgrounds as they mostly did the previous winter.

At the recent Inter-agency Wolf Conference at Chico, Montana, Dr. Bruce Smith, a Refuge biologist gave figures on the wolves and Refuge. He said that elk had been artificially fed there for 90 years except for 9 mild winters that required no extra feed. Mortality has been very low in the winter with little starvation coupled with few predators.

Typically from 7000 to over 13,000 elk winter on the Refuge with the rest nearby or up the Gros Ventre on the three state feedgrounds. This was the second mild winter in a row, and so only just more than half the huge Jackson Hole herd actually wintered on the Refuge.

In the winter of 1998-99 the Soda Butte Pack and the Jackson Trio (forerunner of the present Gros Ventre Pack) discovered the Refuge. The Soda Butte pack claimed the north end of the Refuge and the Trio the south end near the small city of Jackson.

In January 1999, wolves killed their first elk on the Refuge, a 29 year old cow! That winter 60 elk were killed or died and 30 of these were killed by wolves -- 20 elk calves, 9 cows (with an average age of 19 years), and one bull. All kills were at night, and the wolves got to eat but a portion of their kill because the carcasses were quickly scavenged with coyotes, ravens, eagles and others.

The next year, a very mild winter, wolves killed 11 of the 49 elk known to die.

The area's wolves appeared a couple times just a couple times on the National Elk Refuge. They fed on a dead horse, but they seem to have killed no elk at all, although on April 17, 4 wolves (probably the Teton Pack) were spotted on the NW corner of the Refuge feeding on a carcass.

Wildlife are presently migrating north from the refuge  -- thousands of elk, hundreds of bison, about 40 moose, plus a few mule deer from the surrounding buttes.  My thanks to Bob Caesar for this last minute report.

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