PERRY BACKUS Ravalli Republic
DARBY – The black male wolf’s coat was grizzled gray on the day he and a female were shot near Lake Como about two years ago.
The pair met their demise after beginning to prey on livestock.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks wolf biologist Liz Bradley estimated the male wolf was about eight years old when it was killed. It probably weighed close to 100 pounds.
“It was the alpha male of the Lake Como pack,” Bradley said. “It was one of the first packs that established in the Bitterroot.”
Before Thursday, the last time Bradley had seen the wolf was on the day she turned its carcass over to Darby High School science teacher Nathan Olson.
The teacher had come to the biologist earlier with an idea of offering his advanced students a chance to create a natural history display unlike anything present in the Bitterroot Valley.
“I had been thinking about it for quite a while before I inquired,” Olson said. “There has been a lot of interest in wolves around here since the reintroduction. I had never seen another full wolf skeleton anywhere near here.”
The idea made perfect sense to Bradley.
And the timing of the request couldn’t have been better. Normally wolves killed for depredation are younger and smaller animals.
“The timing was perfect,” she said. “We don’t usually get older specimens like this one. We were certainly happy to do that. It’s good to see it used for educational purposes.”
For the last year and a half, Olson and his advanced placement students have been working to fully articulate the wolf’s skeleton.
Classes filled with students studying anatomy and environmental education carefully skinned the wolf and removed as much flesh as possible before transporting what was left to a beetle farm at the University of Montana.
“It was pretty smelly work at first,” Olson said. “We discovered that he had been shot before by a shotgun. We found a pellet under his hide and a hole in his abdomen.”
Once the beetles had done their work, the students bleached the bones before beginning the arduous task of putting them back together one by one.
They used a photo of a running wolf taken by Olson in Yellowstone National Park to create the pose for the skeleton.
“Most of it was put together using epoxy,” Olson said. “We did use some metal rods and screws in some places. It turned out to be a really good learning experience for all of us.”
The skeleton work is complete. Students are now working to put together a natural-looking base for the display, which Olson hopes to eventually encase in glass.
Some day, he would like to see the display mounted on wheels and coupled with other information that could help people understand wolves a little bit better.
“No one around here really knows much about it yet,” Olson said. “We’d like to have it displayed in a place where it could do the most good. It would be nice to create a natural history display that could include some information about the elk study that’s happening now in the Bitterroot.”
Bradley said she doesn’t know of another full wolf skeleton on display anywhere in the western Montana.
“We get requests every once in a while from schools,” Bradley said. “Most often people are just looking for skulls. This might be the first request that I know of in the region for a fully articulated skeleton.”