The rise of wolf 8, p.16
The Rise of Wolf 8, page 16
20
The Spring of 1999
WHILE I WAS working in Big Bend in the winter of 1998/1999, I thought about how I was getting only part of the wolf story in Yellowstone by being there from May to November. To take it to the next level, I needed to study wolves in the winter, and I worked out an arrangement with Doug to stay in the park year-round. I planned to devote massive amounts of time, day after day, year after year, to watching wolf behavior and recording every detail of their lives. I was on a quest to understand the hearts and minds of wild wolves, on the individual level, then tell their compelling stories so other people could know them as well. I knew immersing myself in the wolves’ world would involve many years of hard work under difficult circumstances but recalled what President John F. Kennedy said about setting goals: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” Now as I think back to that time, I realize I did not know just how hard that plan would be to carry out.
On April 30, 1999, my first full day in the park, I found five Rose Creek wolves on a new carcass north of the Yellowstone River. They moved off, and I lost sight of them heading toward the pack’s traditional den site near Mom’s Ridge. I later found out that wolf 18, 9’s four-year-old daughter, was denning there. Her black coat was getting grayer with age, and she had a distinctive white spot on the top of her head. Her brother, 21, was developing the same white patch on the top of his head that she had, but on him, being male, it looked like a bald spot. The two wolves were nearly identical twins.
This was the third year she had had pups. She would likely take over as the pack’s alpha female when her mother passed away. For now, 9 still held that position, and she had a new den site to the northeast. A younger female born into the pack in 1997 had denned west of Mom’s Ridge. Eventually we learned that the alpha female had six pups, 18 had seven, and five were born to the new young mother. That was a lot of mouths to feed.
8, at five years, about forty-two in human years, was now just a year away from the average life span of a Yellowstone wolf. As I watched him on an elk hunt that spring and saw him trailing four younger wolves who were chasing the herd at top speed, I wondered if age was slowing him down or if he was just conserving energy and letting the others test the elk. When the young wolves caught up with a cow and attacked her, he ran to the site and helped pull down the cow and finish her off. 8 might be slowing down, but he still could pull his own weight.
Toward the end of May, sightings of the Rose wolves dropped off because they were hunting in higher country, so I concentrated on the Druid pack, which still had elk in areas near their den. The last day of that month, I went up Dead Puppy Hill and saw the Druids at their denning area near the Footbridge and Hitching Post lots. The alpha pair and 42 were in the group. 42 tucked her tail when she walked by the alpha female. I saw missing fur under the belly of 40, a sign she was nursing. A few days later, I also saw that her nipples were distended.
The sole surviving pup from the Druids’ 1998 litter of two was now a yearling. He had been collared over the winter and given the number 163. We knew that he was a wolf that liked to investigate new things and heard he was getting in the habit of being around the road and cars. I watched a video of 163 sniffing a trash can in the Footbridge parking lot. He pulled trash out of the overflowing container, then casually walked around the lot and bedded down a few inches from the road. Later he picked up a piece of litter and swallowed it. We were worried that a tourist might toss food at him when he was near the road. If he ate it, he would probably start to approach people, hoping to get more food thrown at him.
The next morning, I found a bull elk that the Druids had killed during the night lying in the road. Wolf bite marks were on his throat. There were no other wounds, so an experienced older wolf had killed him, probably 21. A big male wolf measures about thirty-two inches at the shoulder, while shoulder height for a bull elk is around sixty inches. The elk’s throat is a few inches higher. That meant 21 had to jump up twice his own shoulder height to grab the bull’s throat.
I drove to the Lamar Ranger Station to report the carcass, then the other rangers and I dragged it off the road to a place where the wolves could safely feed on it. Around that time, I talked to a man who worked as a forensic wildlife investigator in Canada, and he gave me a better understanding of what happens when a wolf bites the throat of an elk. It will die of suffocation in one of two ways. The wolf could crush and rupture the jugular vein, causing blood to flow into the windpipe, and the animal would drown in its own blood. Or the wolf’s powerful jaws could squeeze the throat so tightly no air could pass through it. Either way, death would be quick, within a few minutes. I would later find out that young wolves do not know how to make that type of fatal bite by instinct; they have to learn it by seeing older wolves demonstrate it. 21 had likely seen 8 make kills that way and was now imitating his technique.
Like his father, 21, 163 seemed driven to bring food to the pups at the den site. One morning I spotted him west of the den carrying a heavy elk spinal column with several ribs still attached. I lost him heading to the den forest. He was likely bringing it home to the pups so they could chew on the bones and play with them.
Two days later, I saw him trotting toward the den from a new carcass. I lost him in the trees and figured he was on his way to regurgitate meat to the pups. After twenty-five minutes he headed back to the carcass. On the way he ran into one of his older sisters. She licked his muzzle and he regurgitated meat for her. They ran off together and soon arrived at the carcass of a bison that had likely died of natural causes. After feeding, 163 made another trip to the den and pups. On that trip he paused to make two food caches. In the coming days, if the pack failed to make a new kill, he could go back to those caches, dig up the meat, and share it with the pups. That evening I saw 21 heading toward the den from the bison carcass with a very full belly. Fifty minutes later, he went back to the carcass for another load of meat for the pups.
The repeated trips the two males made from the carcass to the den and back, along with the food caches the yearling made, were good planning. The next day a large male grizzly took over the bison carcass. When the big bear left, a mother grizzly came right in with her three yearlings and further prevented the Druids from doing much feeding. At one point, 40 and 163 teamed up to drive the bear family from the carcass. As soon as the grizzly sow left, the two wolves ran in and gulped down meat as fast as they could.
The mother bear raced back but paused to check on her three yearlings. That gave the wolves more time to eat. The sow seemed conflicted between driving the wolves off and making sure her young were safe. Two more Druids arrived, and the four wolves harassed the four bears and managed to get to the carcass several times and do some feeding. After the bears had left, I saw 103, the smallest of the Druid adults, feeding on the carcass by herself. A big grizzly approached the site, but she refused to back off. Both ate a few feet apart without any problems. She looked tiny compared to the grizzly, but despite the size difference, she was not afraid of the bear.
It was not all business at the carcass, however. When 21 and his yearling son were feeding there later, they took time out to play. The big alpha male ran at 163, and the yearling, knowing this was a game, charged at him. 21 abruptly turned around and let himself be chased. Then he became the chaser. The younger wolf soon turned back, did a play bow, and ran forward, directly at 21, who was still running at him. At the last moment, he ran past his father and avoided a collision.
21 caught up with 163 and nipped him on the rear end. The two males playfully ran side by side, then sparred and wrestled. 21 must have held back on using his full strength for the match seemed even. Falling down, they continued to wrestle on a snowfield on the side of a hill. Both wolves slid downhill on the snow and rolled over several times. When they jumped up, the son chased his father again. As I watched 21, it looked like he was reverting to his carefree younger days when he played with his siblings or with 8.
ON MAY 15, I got an unexpected wolf signal to the north of Tower Junction. It was from former Druid male 104, who had left the pack the previous fall and joined the Crystal Creek pack as its alpha male. Why would he walk away from his new pack and come back to the north? The next day, I got a report that he was on the north side of Lamar Valley, heading toward the Druid den forest. I got his signal just west of the den. When I did a check twenty minutes later, the signal came directly from the den forest. I also got signals from three adult Druids there. As far as we knew, this would be his first reunion with his family since he left the valley eight months ago.
The following morning, I saw him at the Chalcedony Creek rendezvous site with one of his sisters. Both had spent a lot of time in that area when they were pups in 1997. I could identify him from a distance because he had a crook in his tail, just like his mother, 42. There was a tracking flight later that day, and he was located ten miles south of that area, about halfway back to the Crystal Creek pack’s territory. Apparently, 104 was going back to them after visiting his relatives in Lamar.
AROUND THAT TIME, snowmelt caused the Lamar River to run at high levels. I saw 103 on the other side of the river, trying to find a safe place to cross. She waded across a small side channel, climbed up on a logjam that extended over the widest and deepest section of the river, and walked on the logs to the far side. It was a clever way to avoid a possible drowning.
A few days later, Jennifer Sands, a graduate student, and I hiked out to recent carcasses to collect information and samples: a tooth to age the elk and bone marrow to determine the overall condition of the animals. We left early when the river was at its low point for the day. By the time we got back to our crossing point, the water was too deep and swift to attempt wading. Remembering 103, we hiked to where she had crossed the small channel, waded through the water, then walked across the logjam to the other side of the river. If it had not been for her, we would have been stuck on the other side of the river for the night.
This little wolf was not only smart, but also the fastest wolf in the pack, the wolf version of sprinter Usain Bolt. I once saw her traveling with the alpha pair and 42. The wolves saw some elk and 21 charged at them. 103 joined in the pursuit and immediately passed the alpha male. Soon she was far ahead of the pack’s adult females, as well.
Over the years I saw that female wolves, due to their lighter weight, were normally faster than big males. On typical hunts, a young female usually caught up with the targeted elk first. Her job was to bite into a hind leg and hold on, even if the elk kicked her in the head. Her weight would slow it down. If her sister ran in, she would grab the other hind leg. That would protect the first female from additional kicks. Then a large male like 21 would catch up, get out in front of the elk, turn around, leap up, and grab the throat. By themselves, the two swift females might not be able to kill the elk, and an average male, if he was on a solo hunt, likely could not outrun it. Wolves coordinate their attacks, each contributing what it can, to earn their dinner. However, I have seen exceptional females, regardless of their size, make fatal bites to the throat and kill elk by themselves. And I have seen faster-than-average male wolves. Just like human athletes, wolves exhibit a range of physical abilities.
The next time I saw the Druids leave the den, they spotted a herd of twenty-five elk near Chalcedony Creek. The wolves chased that group and several other herds for the next fifty minutes, but all the elk were too fast for them. After they gave up, one of the adults began mousing, hoping to get at least a small meal. Other Druids went back to an old bison carcass and scavenged. We had visited that site a few days earlier, so I knew there were only bones and fur there. I saw 163 gnaw on a big leg bone while two adults chewed on the skull. After getting what little they could from the site, the Druids tried chasing a new herd of elk, but still could not catch any. They went hungry that day.
As I observed the Druids, I kept records on how long the pack continued to return to old carcass sites to feed or chew on bones. I once saw them revisit a bison carcass a year after the bull had died and still manage to get edible bits off it. In late 1999, I saw them come back to a bull elk they had killed on July 8, 1998, over seventeen months earlier. Five of the nine wolves chewed on the skull, and one female picked up a leg bone, dug a big hole, and buried the bone in it, like a dog burying a bone in a backyard to gnaw on later. That would extend her use of the carcass past the seventeen-month period. I have often seen hungry wolves pluck fur from old elk hides and eat the leathery skin, the way starving people have been known to eat their leather shoes.
Wolves have evolved to go without food for substantial periods if hunting is poor. As an experiment in a captive facility many years ago that would not be considered humane today, an adult male wolf was not fed for nineteen days, and he survived. But wild wolves, if they have failed to make a kill for days, have the option of going out on another hunt, then another, until they succeed. The quality I most admire in wolves is their grit, a word defined as passion and perseverance. I think they love life so much that they cannot conceive of giving up.
WOLF PACK TERRITORIES in Yellowstone average about three hundred square miles. Bob Crabtree, who did coyote research in the park for years, told me a typical wolf territory might encompass ten coyote territories. As the Druid wolves traveled through the valley, they often encountered multiple coyote packs, and some of them would try to drive the wolves out of their family’s territory.
One morning in the spring of 1999, I saw a male coyote chasing 42 near the Yellowstone Institute. She frequently turned around and confronted the coyote. Each time he backed off but continued to follow when she moved on. 42 kept her tail down to protect her rear end from bites. When she stopped to sniff a spot, the coyote ran in and nipped her tail. She turned around and chased him off, then moved on. The coyote followed and lunged at her tail again. 42 tucked her tail all the way under her belly, then turned back and drove him away.
I later witnessed the Druids get their revenge on that coyote pack. Five of them traveled to the area behind the Yellowstone Institute where those coyotes were denning. With 42 in the lead, they chased the coyote alpha female. I lost sight of the action, but I could hear the coyotes barking in alarm. People taking a class at the Institute saw 42 and then another adult female each dig at the den, reach down inside, pull out a lifeless pup, and walk off with it. I saw both of them chewing on the dead coyote pups.
Soon after that the wolves left the area. Bob’s crew told me the coyote that had bitten 42 on the tail eleven days earlier was the alpha male of this pack. Since 42 had led the Druids from their den to that coyote territory, initiated the chase of the mother coyote, found her den, and pulled out a pup, I wondered if she had gone there deliberately to even the score. The coyote researchers later told me the adults moved two surviving pups to a new den site south of the road.
As I watched the Druid wolves and other packs, I saw coyotes repeatedly stealing meat from wolf kills. If the wolves left a carcass to bring food to pups, coyotes would swarm in and consume much of the meat before the wolves got back. In Chris Wilmers’s Food for the Masses study, he saw up to sixteen coyotes at a time stealing meat at wolf-killed carcasses. Wolves probably regard coyotes the same way store owners think of shoplifters.
A FEW DAYS after the coyote incident, Doug Smith and other Wolf Project staff joined me at the Institute, and we hiked up a slope to the east. We were joined by Anne Whit-beck, a retiree from Colorado beloved by the wolf-watching community for her generous spirit and friendliness to strangers. We needed to investigate a site on that ridge. In early April, 42 had appeared to be denning up there. Her signals had come from a patch of trees near the crest of the hill. Those signals faded, got stronger, then faded again in a pattern consistent with a wolf going into her den and later coming out.
On April 9, Wolf Project volunteers Debbie and Jason spotted the alpha pair heading to that area, then saw 40 beat up her sister for four minutes, longer and more violently than usual. After that, both females and 21 went into the forest where 42 seemingly had her den and were out of sight for several hours. The signals from 42 indicated she was going in and out of her den. The next day the alpha female beat up her sister again. The bullied wolf later went to a fresh kill the other Druids had made but did not feed. Normally, a mother wolf nursing newborn pups would voraciously eat as much as possible at such a site. Something seemed to be wrong. A few days after that, she abandoned her den site, moved to the pack’s main den, and helped 40 with her pups.
That sequence of events led people on the scene to suspect that 40 had gone into her sister’s den and killed her pups, a disturbing thought. But for those of us who knew this wolf and her violent personality, it seemed like a definite possibility. She had driven her own mother out of the pack, as well as one of her sisters. Then she had gone after 42 and repeatedly beaten her up. We could well imagine 40 wanting all the pack’s resources devoted to her litter, rather than sharing them with her sister’s pups.
Our crew went up on that ridge and found 42’s den in the forest. The tunnel went straight into the hillside and was wide enough for a person to crawl into. We found nothing there, no pup remains, but that was expected. The local coyote pack, the one the Druids had attacked, would have found and eaten any dead wolf pups at the site. In the end, we did not know for certain what had happened there, but 42’s construction of the den, the pattern of signals indicating she was going in and out of it, and her abandonment of the site after 40 spent several hours there, were strong evidence that her sister did kill her pups.
How might that event have affected 21? The big male had bred both sisters in February, so if each had pups he would be the father. He had followed both females to 42’s den site and had likely watched the alpha female go into the den. Up to that point, everything would have seemed normal to him. Female wolves other than the mother often go into a den to check on the pups. But 40 had probably killed her sister’s pups when she crawled into the den. We do not know if 21 heard the killing or if he had walked off and was unaware of what was going on. Whether it was that day or a few days later when 42 abandoned her den, he must have eventually figured out that her pups were lost.
