The Park Service has been studying interactions between wolves and grizzlies for bison and bison carcasses in late winter/early spring in the Pelican Valley. Like last winter a crew has been in the remote Pelican Valley for about a month.

Every winter Mollie's Pack, whose summer and autumn home territory is the Pelican, leaves the Park to hunt in the North Fork of the Shoshone area. There are usually few or no elk in the Pelican in the winter, but the bison winter there in the deep snow. The pack has learned that by late winter the bison are weakened and can be killed, so they return to the Pelican. Pelican Valley grizzly bears have learned that wolf-killed carcasses are available and might be emerging from their dens a bit earlier than in the past. This on-going study's goal, which the Wolf Recovery Foundation is partially funding, is to gather data on these interactions.

The 8-membered Mollie's Pack killed a bull bison on March 6, and there is a dramatic video of the battle, which will be shown at the Interagency wolf conference at Chico next week. However, before the bison was killed, it killed Molly's wolf 175F and sent two other wolves flying through the air, and also kicking them. It took the wolves more than 12 hours to kill the bison! The bison was still standing at dark, so the actual kill came during the night and was not observed by the researchers.

Several days later, despite the wolves' injuries, Wayne Brewster, Kerry Gunther, and Travis Wyman saw the pack kill an elk cow. This took just 2 minutes instead of over 12 hours. It is unusual for elk to be in the Pelican this early in the spring. The pack fed on the elk for just 1 hour before a very large grizzly came and claimed their kill. The researchers wanted to investigate the elk carcass to check its condition, but the grizzly was still on it 2 days later.

Since then Mollie's Pack has moved east out of the Park into Crow Creek in the North Absaroka Wilderness, perhaps because the going was so tough this late winter in the Pelican.

This is a truly awe-inspiring report about what goes on in a deep wilderness area.

More on Mollie's Pack-

Smith said the pack's alpha female, 174F, has a bad limp from an injury. Nevertheless, she is still leading the pack and participating in the hunt. The alpha male of the pack is wolf 193M. It has been determined by genetic analysis that he and his brother, 194M, originated from the Rose Creek Pack. Despite the death of 175F, the pack is back to 8 members. A black, radio collared wolf has joined the pack, although his membership seems to still be fragile. Smith and colleagues tried every radio frequency to try and find out who the black wolf was, without success, indicating the collar may not be working or it might be another central Idaho wolf that has dispersed into the Greater Yellowstone.

More on wolves and bison-

In western Montana there have been two wolf attempts on domestic bison. After a hiatus of several years, wolves have again appeared in Montana's congested Bitterroot Valley near Florence. According to the USFWS "On the 19^th [of March] we received a call about 3 wolves chasing bison east of Florence. The owner of the bison reported that his neighbor watched the wolves chase the bison when suddenly a bull turned and pinned one of them to the ground and tried to gore it. The wolf was able to escape an ran off but it fell down twice while doing the hundred yard dash to get away from the bison. A few days later WS saw tracks of only 2 wolves a few miles away."

Also on the 19th near Thompson Falls, Montana about 150 miles north of Florence, "WS investigated an incident . . . involving wolves chasing bison through a fence. According to the landowner 2 wolves ran 11 head of non-reproductive cow bison through a fence. Three of the bison were found but could not be brought back to the pen. Two were shot by hunters for a fee but the rancher had to shoot the last one himself. WS found wolf tracks outside of the fence but no tracks inside of the pasture. No control will be undertaken at this time."

These two incidents are first wolf attacks on domesticated bison. Bison are being promoted as alternative livestock. It's doubtful the wolves will kill any of these bison, but keeping bison requires strong fencing, and it wasn't strong enough at Thompson Falls.

A note on 175F . . . Daniel MacNulty, who has spent 10-14 days in the Pelican since the winter of 1999, says she looked very much like her mother, famous wolf 5F, even down to a mark under one of her eyes.