Mid-October 1998
A good count on three packs
10-16-98 (update 10-18)
Email addresses for members of Congress, the media, and other officials.The latest Yellowstone wolf tracking flight got good visual observations of three of the largest packs. Dr. Doug Smith told me that they saw twenty of the Rose Creek Pack together in Slough Creek. It is possible the pack has even a few more members. If every pup survived the summer (unlikely), this huge pack would be even larger -- 24 wolves. The pack seems to be moving down into its winter range.
They also observed eleven wolves in the Leopold Pack on its winter range north of the highway on the Blacktail Deer Plateau (note: their summer range is a few miles further south). The only radio-collared wolves in the pack are the venerable alpha pair no. 2M and 7F. The rest of the new collars from last winter have been chewed off. Smith is fairly certain that there are five pups in the pack.
The most amazing observation was fifteen wolves in the Crystal Creek pack bedded down together in the Pelican Valley, with their new alpha male 104M, and a grizzly bear. This huge pack was bedded with a grizzly! The grizzly got up and walked within a few feet of a yearling wolf, and all the wolf did was stand up and move so the bear could pass. Smith hypothesized that grizzlies are so common in the Pelican that the wolves and bears may only be tense around each other when there is a kill. Not too many folks ever make it into the Pelican because it is "grizzly central," and there are strict closures and restrictions on human travel for safety reasons.
Smith thinks there is one more wolf in the pack, bringing the total to sixteen wolves.
Other news:
No. 16F and her pups were finally located, and only about six miles from their previous location in Cottonwood Creek. They were about four miles north of Yellowstone Pack above the mining town of Jardine in Bear Creek. The entire area around Gardiner and Jardine is deer winter range. This is probably how amazing no.16 has been able to keep her pups alive. She is one Yellowstone wolf who lives on deer rather than elk. The pups normally don't' contribute much to the hunt until about February so she still has her work cut out. Howver, the deer population in the area is greater in the winter than in the summer.
The Chief Joseph Pack was back in the headwaters of the Gallatin River in the Park after killing a sheep dog northwest of the Park in Tom Miner Basin. There seems to be good cooperation between the rancher the wolf team. The Chief Joseph Pack visits Tom Miner Basin about once a month as part of a big loop they travel.
The Druid Peak Pack remains fairly scattered around the Lamar Valley, on Specimen Ridge, and in the upper Lamar around Cache Creek and even further upstream.
The Nez Perce Pack -- five adult wolves, and maybe or maybe not, pups -- was radio tracked in Nez Perce Creek. They have rarely been observed visually. It's the only pack in the Park for which there is no pup count even this late in the year.
The Soda Butte Pack was in their normal range -- this time on the Yellowstone River Delta as it empties into Yellowstone Lake. They had killed a moose. Amazingly 3 year-old female, no. 24F, the pack's beta female, remains with the pack despite a number of lone Thorofare and Washakie males in the general area. The pack is led by female 14F. There is no alpha male. "Old Blue," no. 13M, the former alpha male died of old age in late winter 1997.
The Sunlight Pair moved into the Park and was located in Miller Creek, a headwater tributary of the Lamar River near the east boundary of the Park.
It looks like the Thorofare and Washakie yearlings have dissipated as any kind of packs. Lone wolves and maybe pairs are wandering the Teton and Washakie Wilderness and the southern part of Yellowstone. I ask the annual question, "as the ten thousand or so elk migrate south into Jackson Hole for the winter, will any of these yearlings follow them?"
We spent the weekend wolf watching, or trying to. We briefly saw eight of the Druid Peak Pack in Jasper Creek, south across the Lamar Valley from the Buffalo Ranch. Extensive efforts to locate the Rose Creek 20, or so, were unsuccessful.
Compared to our mid-October trip a year ago, the Park is warmer, there is less snow, and the elk remain high.
The Park was beautiful and uncrowded, but I felt an air of sadness that the bison may soon again be under the gun in Montana Department of Livestock's ceaseless campaign against the bison.
Here is a fine academic paper on the bison issue.
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