That episode showed me there was more to 8 than I had first thought. He was the smallest yearling, the one the bigger brothers had picked on, but he was also the one who had had the nerve to stand up to a huge grizzly and get away with it. I realized that none of the other Crystal wolves, not his brothers or his parents, had seen him turn around and confront that bear. I was the only witness to his courageous behavior. Years later I heard Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson say something that applied to the little wolf that day: “Being a hero means doing the right thing, even if no one is watching you.” A few days later I saw 8 lead the pack on a chase of a cow moose, another indication of his rapidly developing maturity.
On July 5, I went out early to Lamar Valley and spotted 8 with two of his brothers. They were wrestling each other in different combinations, and the gray held his own. Later one of the blacks tripped, tumbled, and rolled several times as he was chasing his smaller brother. Seeing the black on the ground, 8 ran back and playfully pounced on him. The two sparred with their jaws until the black managed to squirm out from under him. The gray chased him for a while, then led both his brothers off, and I soon lost them in a forest.
That was my last sighting of the Crystal Creek wolves for the next few months. The elk left the valley to feed at higher elevations, and the wolves followed their migration. The tracking flights Mike and Doug did during those weeks found the pack roaming far and wide. They were often spotted twenty miles to the south in Pelican Valley, just north of Lake Yellowstone. I wondered what would become of 8. He was the lowest-ranking male in his family, but was exhibiting qualities that might make him a successful alpha male of his own pack if he found a mate and a vacant territory. I also thought about his three brothers. The coming year would be a critical one for the four yearlings and likely reveal their long-term fate.
5
The Rose Creek and Crystal Creek Pens
THE PLAN FOR the Rose Creek alpha female, 9, and her pups to stay in the acclimation pen through the fall of 1995 was threatened when a late July windstorm blew down several large trees just outside the enclosure. Two landed on the fence, creating a pair of holes. The damage was not discovered until a few days later, when Doug rode in on horseback carrying elk meat to feed the wolves. By that time, all eight pups had gone out through the openings. Luckily their mother had stayed inside the pen, and since the pups wanted to be near her, they were all still in the area. Mike and other personnel joined Doug and tried to recapture the pups.
At first, they could not see any of them. Mike decided to lure them out by howling. His plan worked and the pups ran out from the nearby trees, thinking the howling was from their mother. Three of the pups went back through the holes in the fence. After the crew closed the openings, they tried to capture the other five pups. They caught two and put them back in the pen. The last three got away but stayed near the pen from then on. Park Service crews left meat outside the pen for those three pups each time they brought carcass parts into the repaired pen.
On October 9, Mike and Doug went up to put radio collars on the five pups in the pen. When they got there, they saw that six pups were now inside. The only way that sixth pup could have gotten in was to climb the ten-foot-high fence surrounding the enclosure, then jump down. They captured the six pups in large fishing nets and placed radio collars around their necks. The average weight of the five-and-a-half-month-old pups was 65 pounds.
In those early years of the Wolf Project, all young pups and uncollared older wolves were assigned numbers. Some were later radio collared, but most were not. That system became impractical when we lost track of many of the un-collared wolves, due to death or dispersal. Eventually the system was changed so that only collared animals were given numbers. As wolves settled in sections of Wyoming and Montana adjacent to the park, we shared our numbering system with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks. If they planned a new round of wolf collaring, they would contact our office, find out the last number we had used, and assign the next consecutive numbers to the wolves they captured. The collars allowed us to get a signal from a wolf from as far away as ten miles if it was on a high ridge. If the wolf was behind a ridge, the signal would be blocked and probably would not be picked up even as close as half a mile away.
In September, I twice helped Mark Johnson, the project veterinarian, when he went into the pen to feed the wolves. We carried meat up to the pen, opened the gate, dropped off the pieces, then left as quickly as we could to reduce the chances the wolves would get used to our presence or associate people with the sudden appearance of food. When we entered the pen, the mother and pups ran to the far end of the enclosure, then raced back and forth, trying to get farther away from us. After we left, they soon calmed down. As they walked around the pen, they discovered the meat and fed on it as they would on finding a carcass in the wild.
During my moments in the pen, I briefly glanced at the mother wolf and pups, then concentrated on getting out. The first time I was in the pen I saw a big black wolf I assumed was the adult female. Then I saw a bigger black that was obviously the mother and realized my mistake. The other big black wolf was a really large pup. After Mark and I left the pen, we looked around for the two pups still at large but did not find them. When we went back to feed the wolves a week later, I spotted several large wolf droppings outside the pen that looked old. They were probably from alpha male 10 when he had waited patiently for the two females to leave the pen and join him.
Mark fed the wolves far more often than I did. Years later he told me a story that profoundly affected me. He had gone into the pen to leave meat for the pack. After dropping off the meat, he noticed that one of the black pups was acting differently from the other wolves, who were running around at the far end of the pen. That pup positioned himself halfway between Mark and the rest of the family, then repeatedly circled around him. To Mark, it looked like the young pup was acting like the pack’s alpha male, protecting his mother and siblings from a threat. The pup never approached him, and Mark did not feel threatened, but the message was clear: do not come closer.
Mark realized that he had seen that behavior before. When the original three wolves had been in the pen the previous winter, the big male would get between Mark and the two females, then circle around him in a calm and confident manner. That black pup had never known his father but was behaving the same way the alpha male had to protect his family. The pup was literally walking in his father’s footsteps, doing what his father would have done if he had still been alive. As I mentioned earlier, Mark is an expert at identifying dogs and wolves as they get older. He finished his story by telling me he believed the brave pup who took on the responsibility of defending his pack was 21, who would grow up to be the park’s heavyweight champion. I then realized that the big black pup I had seen when I had been in the pen was also 21.
THE STORY OF the Rose Creek wolves, the killing of wolf 10, and the return of the mother wolf and her eight pups to the pen became well known to the public through many reports in the media. In late August, President Clinton and his family were vacationing in Jackson, Wyoming. It was his administration that had approved Yellowstone’s wolf reintroduction proposal. White House staff had contacted the park superintendent and asked if the Clintons could come to Lamar Valley and see the Rose Creek wolves. On August 25, I drove by the Yellowstone Institute and saw the presidential helicopters parked nearby. Mike and Doug took the first family up to the pen, and the Clintons helped bring in meat for the other famous family: wolf 9 and her eight pups.
Because of all the media coverage, there was tremendous public interest in the wolf acclimation pens. In addition to helping visitors see wolves in Lamar Valley, doing roving interpretation there, and giving my evening slide shows in park campgrounds, I also led twice-weekly hikes to the Crystal Creek acclimation pen. Normally, ten to thirty people show up for park ranger–led hikes. I had