Lone wolf stalks elk near Heart Mountain
By BUZZY HASSRICK
A lone, gray wolf circled a lone cow elk in a field north of Heart Mountain on Dec. 31 before the two parted ways.
Witnessing the incident were Carolyn Hicks, her husband and her brother-in-law. Hicks, who teaches science at Cody Middle School, said the three have seen many wolves in the backcountry.
The sighting fits reports from the area, said Mike Jimenez of Lander, the Wyoming project leader for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
“It’s scary, I think,” Hicks said Monday, because the agricultural area contains pets, livestock and 4H projects. “They’re easy pickings for a wolf.”
If the federally protected wolf causes no problems, Jimenez won’t do anything.
“We try not to micro-manage, since the (wolf) recovery area covers the entire state,” he added.
Hicks said she was driving with her companions down Road 19 about 8:15 a.m. when they saw a “cow elk in the middle of a stubble field” about 70 yards away. Initially her husband described the elk’s harasser as a “big, huge gray dog.”
“It circled her for five minutes,” she said.
Since the elk did nothing to protect herself, Hicks figured the wolf had separated her from the herd and harassed her all night.
Then the wolf looked at the car and escaped into an irrigation ditch. It had no collar.
Hicks had no doubts about the identification, based on the animal’s size, coloring and behavior.
The wolf’s presence near an area populated with domesticated animals concerns her and, she thinks, should concern her neighbors.
“It might be wise for Heart Mountain people to be careful,” she advised.
Enough wolves live in the region that some will go off on their own and not be collared, Jimenez said. This one may pass through the area and not stay.