Calf owner recalls wolf attack near Gadiner
By SCOTT McMILLION Chronicle Staff Writer
LIVINGSTON – The young beef calf killed by wolves on the Yellowstone National Park border last week was a bottle-fed pet that had spent most of its time in a dog kennel, its owner said Saturday.
The animal’s name was Moojoo, said Bob Beede, who owns a resort that borders the park and the Yellowstone River.
“It was a pet, basically,” he said.
He said his daughter had asked to take it home after it had been orphaned on a friend’s ranch.
He said he kept it in a kennel with a dog most of the time and the calf had been bottle fed.
“I hadn’t really thought about what I was going to do with it,” he said.
Wednesday night, the calf was left out, tied to a 50 foot rope attached to a fence post to keep it from wandering far.
Sometime that night, wolves from the Swan Lake pack killed the calf and devoured most of it.
“They pretty much turned it inside out,” Beede said.
He discovered the kill about 4 a.m. Thursday when a friend arrived to take him turkey hunting.
The friend saw a wolf run in front of his headlights and when the men went to check on the calf, they saw three wolves on the carcass.
Beede said he was armed but did not shoot the wolves because he couldn’t precisely identify the carcass as his calf. There are lots of deer on the property, he added.
He said he fired a shot into the ground about eight feet from the wolves and they ran away.
He said the carcass was about 100 feet from his buildings.
“I couldn’t imagine they would come come to the buildings like that,” he said.
Wolves come on his property frequently in the winter, he said, and he’s found signs of them urinating on his mailbox post.
The 11-member Swan Lake Pack has territory inside the park and rarely leaves the borders, Park Service wolf biologist Doug Smith said last week.
The pack has never killed livestock before, he added.
Ed Bangs, wolf recovery team leader for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said there are no plans to take any actions against the wolf pack.