Rancher kills wolf eating calf
Associated Press
LIVINGSTON (AP) – There are very few legal ways to kill a federally
protected wolf, but rancher Randy Petrich found one Thursday.
He caught a wolf in the act of eating one of his calves.
It is only the fourth time since wolves were reintroduced here in 1995
that a wolf has been shot in the middle of a kill, said Joe Fontaine, a
wildlife biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Two cases were
in Idaho and one in Big Timber.
“I knew you could only shoot a wolf if you saw it killing one of your
cows,” Petrich said. “I saw a black wolf right on top of this calf,
feeding on it. I knew the green light was on and all systems were go, so I
let him have it,” Petrich said.
He used a .22-250 rifle he keeps in his tractor.
Petrich frequently sees wolves on his land and is sure that wolves have
killed three or four head of his livestock. Thursday was the first time
he’d ever seen one on a kill.
“After I shot him, the wolf ran off about 30 feet before falling down.
When I got up to the calf, his middle was eaten out of him and he was
still steaming. You could see the tracks in the snow where the wolf
brought him down, I must have gotten there just after,” Petrich said.
Petrich came upon the kill about 6:30 a.m. while he was out to feed his 60
cow-calf pairs. He thought it was odd that the cattle were bunched
together in a corner.
Just as he was finishing feeding the cows he looked across the field about
40 yards and saw the wolf.
“He looked up at me once, never even moved, and went back to eating,”
Petrich said. “I was up there with the tractor, two dogs and the cattle
and it didn’t bother the wolf at all.”
He said it was a small wolf, about 100 pounds and probably a 2-year-old.
Petrich called a federal trapper, who took pictures of the wolf and calf
carcasses.
The next step was to get a federal special agent investigator to verify
that Petrich had the right to kill the wolf.
“I was kind of shaken by the whole deal. You know you’re dealing with
something that’s such a protected animal,” Petrich said.
He said the agent investigated the scene and told Petrich he’d done
everything right.