By Mike Koshmrl, Jackson Hole, Wyoming
A Teton Valley rancher says he lost 119 lambs and 57 ewes early Saturday morning when a pair of wolves put his sheep herd into a panic and caused a deadly crush.
J.C. Siddoway, of Terreton, Idaho, was grazing his herd on a Caribou-Targhee National Forest allotment about six miles south of Victor when a pair of gray wolves moved in on the 2,400-head herd around 1 a.m. Within minutes, Siddoway said, over 7 percent of the herd was dead. Almost all died from asphyxiation, rather than being directly killed by the wolves, he said.
“It’s a pretty ugly ordeal,” Siddoway said. “There’s dead sheep laying all over.”
The sheep rancher compared the scene to the chaotic human mobs — like those in crowded bars or soccer stadiums — that occasionally trample people. Photographs he provided show a compact heap of sheep, perhaps three or more animals high in places, on the rocky slopes of a steep hillside.
“There was actually two pileups,” Siddoway said. “There’s about 150 in the pileup on top of the hill. Then there’s another pileup a little further down the hill that had about 15 in it.”
About 10 sheep died of their wounds after the wolves bit them, Siddoway said. Just one sheep out of the 176, he said, was partially consumed.
Caribou-Targhee forest officials investigating the scene Monday were not able to confirm the kill tally reported by Siddoway before press time.
Palisades District Ranger Tracy Hollingshead stressed that the two wolves weren’t directly responsible for the sheep deaths.
“The wolves didn’t attack that many sheep,” Hollingshead said. “[Pileups] happen all the time with sheep. It happens in the winter when sheep try to stay warm and they suffocate each other.”
When the incident occurred, the sheep were bedded down in between Pole Canyon and Fogg Hill, located about four miles down the Fourth of July trail. Caribou-Targhee officials advised people not to visit the scene. The bodies still are at the scene and will be left to scavengers and rot.
“We don’t want people to go up there,” Teton Basin District Ranger Jay Pence said. “If it becomes a problem, we might need to put the area into an official closure.”
The public lands grazing allotment where the incident occurred has a history of wolf depredation, Siddoway said.
“They killed probably 30 or 35 the previous week in kind of the same area,” he said.
Two Great Pyrenees guard dogs were killed last week as well, Siddoway said, but three Great Pyrenees on the scene Saturday morning all survived the wolf encounter. He has moved the herd.
For comparison, Wyoming wildlife managers report 33 “livestock and dogs” killed by wolves between January and July 2013.