By Jake Nichols
Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Something about the wolf threatens us.
The rancher holds disdain for the depredation. His is an unending war with an ancient antagonist presumed eradicated nearly a century ago. Perhaps the hunter envies the wolf’s killing skillset. For a human, a weekend in the mountains requires permits, expensive gear and hi-tech weaponry to take down an elk. The wolf takes what it wants when it wants.
Psychologists would say the wolf represents the id – the blind obeyance of the most base of urges. The wolf sees no right and no wrong in its actions. It lives by instinct, fulfilling its basest desires according to the pleasure principle. The wolf credo is, “If you can’t eat it or fuck it, piss on it.”
Deep down, mankind recognizes itself in the wolf: a tamed-down, ego-driven version of a wild animal at the top of the food chain. Our lives were also once consumed with chasing red meat. Running after tapirs and mammoths made early man feel truly alive. Today we put on pants and become clerks and assistant managers. Hunger pangs are eliminated with microwaves and John Deere. Man hears the howl of the wolf as another jeering reminder that he now bleats with the sheep.
It could be a jealousy issue. The wolf is a competing predator. On its best behavior, it removes wild ungulates from the population and makes the remainder harder to hunt. At its most destructive, it devours meals intended for human consumption and destroys backyard pets. It’s the perfect killing machine. And there can be only one top dog.
From den to death – a dog eat dog world
A big bad wolf is born deaf and blind, and weighs no more than a box of Frosted Flakes. Statistics say the pup will have two or three littermates. It will likely be born in late April, after just 63 days of gestation. Within a month, wolf pups are aware and eager to explore their den site. By July, they are fully weaned and crave only meat. At six or seven months of age, pups are 80 percent their full size and have a complete set of adult teeth. They are ready to travel great distances with the pack. Their first winter is trial by fire. Many wolves never survive to their first birthday.
Wolves are highly social animals. They travel in packs of 2 to 15 members. The average-sized pack in Wyoming in 2011 was 6.1, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Estimates peg the total number of wolves in Wyoming at any given time to be about 230 to 328, comprised of 38 to 48 distinct packs.
The alpha male runs the show. He decides who eats and who doesn’t. He does all the mating in the pack. If a subordinate male wants to have sex, he must leave the pack or keep it on the down-lo. Alphas fight and sometimes kill other wolves in keeping the peace and defending their territory. An alpha male typically kills one to three wolves in its lifetime.
The life of a wolf is arduous and short. Of the wolves that survive their first six to nine months, most are dead by three or four years of age. Alpha wolves tend to live the longest, commonly from six to nine years. Most wolves die soon after leaving their pack. Though life in the pack means safety and food, most males opt to disperse in order to reproduce. Maybe one or two wolves in 10 rise to the level of alpha. Most die without ever reproducing, and few live long enough to grow old.
Myth, legend, mystique – “Homo homini lupus”
The wolf issue is so polarizing that the mere mention of the species sends blood curdling or boiling. No other animal is so demonized in popular culture. From Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood to Aesop’s The Dog and the Wolf, Canis lupus gets worse than a bad rap.
“Wolves are in a class of hatred all by themselves,” admitted Doug Smith, project leader for the Yellowstone Gray Wolf Restoration Project. “The grizzly kills a lot more people than wolves. It’s really rare when a wolf even bites somebody.”
In fact, there are three documented cases of wolf attacks on humans in North America with no proved fatalities. The fate of Canadian geological engineering student Kenton Carnegie, killed in 2005, is still hotly debated.
Grizzly bears kill and injure far more humans and are easily more lethal. But thanks to Theodore Roosevelt, griz are personified as teddy bears, a childhood companion, while wolves represent a cunning slaughterer labeled by Roosevelt himself as a “beast of waste and desolation.”
Still, Western etiquette demands one is either for or agin’ the fabled beast. The clash plays out on Dodge Ram back bumpers. “Wolves – Government Sponsored Terrorists,” and “Smoke a pack a day,” with a bull’s-eye over a wolf silhouette are a couple of beauties. Several website braggarts claim they have purposely gut-shot wolves with a .22 so the animal dies a slow, painful death.
Franz Camenzind, a wildlife biologist specializing in wolves and coyotes, calls the character assassination of wolves a simple matter of prejudice. “There is no rhyme or reason to it,” Camenzind said. “It is maybe a fear based on the cunningness of the creature and its ability to survive.”
Smith agreed. “They are generalists. They are resilient,” he said. “They will kill everything they can to survive.”
Revered and reviled, the wolf exemplifies society’s strained relationship with nature. Ranchers have never attempted to coexist with the wolf. It’s been all-out war from the start.
Early settlers poisoned, trapped, and blasted the beast into extirpation. No method of exterminating the wolf was considered illegal or underhanded. Dens were dynamited, bait was tainted with glass shards or strychnine, and federal bounty hunters were paid by the pelt to gun down wolves. In 1905, the Montana legislature went so far as to pass laws permitting the practice of biological warfare on wolves. The state’s plan was to capture wolves, infect them with mange, and release them back into the wild where they would spread the highly contagious disease and wipe themselves out.
By 1935 or so, wolves in the Rocky Mountains were gone, save for some isolated pockets in northern Idaho. Some old-timers, like outfitter Gap Pucci, claim they still saw timber wolves on rare occasions through the 1960s and 70s. They were smaller and more leery of humans, according to Tom Kemery, a lifelong trapper and hunter in Idaho. He also participated in wildlife studies for Idaho Fish and Game.
Kemery maintains that Idaho had native wolves in existence when the 66 Canadian greys were reintroduced in Yellowstone in 1995. Those indigenous males ranged from 85 to 105 pounds, less than the greys which were selected for size and can get up to 140 pounds or more. The reintroduced wolves, Kemery says, travel in much larger packs and show little fear of humans or man-made structures or roads.
Are wolves fitting in?
The debate over whether the imported wolves are native to the Rockies seems moot. They’re here and, according to nearly every wildlife biologist and wolf expert, they are pretty much the same devil dog hated by Westerners a century ago. Their size will be dictated by availability of habitat and game. Wolves naturally adjust their litter counts and overall body size quite rapidly in accordance with external forces. It is hoped, by Smith and other wolf managers, that hunting will restore the wolf’s fear of humans and keep the animal away from subdivisions and ranches.
Smith was there in 1995 when the first wolves from Alberta, Canada left their cages in Yellowstone and, much to everyone’s amazement, took to the country like they’d never been gone. He watched proudly as those first few wolves seeded a movement. “It’s been a success beyond anybody’s wildest dream,” Smith declared.
About the same time wolves were released in Yellowstone, three dozen others were also loosed in Idaho’s Frank Church Wilderness. They were so gung-ho to get free, several scaled a 10-foot-high chain-link enclosure around their acclimation pen, and then dug a tunnel under the fence to let out their companions. They were 40 miles into the Idaho wilderness in less than a week.
Wolves’ impact on the elk population was immediate. Until an awareness of an age-old nemesis was rekindled, wapiti got whacked. By 2005, wolves were killing 3,000 a year in Yellowstone alone. Outfitters are still screaming bloody murder about the predation, saying the moose and elk population is being decimated by the new predator. But the numbers indicate otherwise.
According to the Endangered Species Coalition, total elk population in the Northern Rockies has in fact risen since wolves were restored – from 312,000 to 371,000. While certain areas in and around Jackson Hole like the Gros Ventre Wilderness have been hard hit, elk numbers overall, remain healthy.
According to USFWS, kills made by Wyoming wolves in 2011 included 267 elk (78 percent), 15 bison (4 percent), 18 deer (5 percent), 14 coyotes (4 percent), 7 wolves (2 percent), 13 unknown prey (4 percent) and 1 moose, 2 pronghorn, 2 bighorn sheep, 2 badger, 1 jackrabbit and 1 raven (all less than 1 percent). The composite breakdown of elk kills was 27 percent calves, 3 percent yearlings, 44 percent cows, and 18 percent bulls.
Yellowstone Park officials have been extremely satisfied with the results. With wolves back on the prowl, elk quickly got smarter. They spent less time overgrazing and damaging stream banks, allowing willows and aspen groves to flourish again. This in turn spurred the beaver population to an eightfold increase. Beaver depend on those trees to build their lodges. With more beaver ponds came increased habitat for insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, even moose. The additional trees also created more shaded sections of water, cooling the temperatures and increasing the native trout population.
Livestock depredation continues to be a problem. USFWS officials take a ‘no tolerance’ approach. Wolves that make it a habit to hang around ranches or livestock are killed. The State of Wyoming paid $123,703 to compensate cattle producers and wool growers who lost livestock to wolves in 2011. There is some evidence these and other losses have been grossly overestimated, however.
From 2010 to 2011, 2,561 Idaho cattle were reported to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service as lost to wolf attacks. When Fish and Wildlife investigated, it found that only 75 of the attacks could be verified. According to the USDA, sheep killed by wolves in 2010 to 2011 came to 900, but Fish and Wildlife investigators could only verify 148.
A killing machine
Another argument often used against wolves is an objection to their killing methods. A wolf attack is not pretty to watch. Wolves typically attack the nose and hamstring area of an elk, moose or bison, slashing the tendons and laming their prey. For larger game they often work in unison, turning the ungulate back into the waiting pack or into deep snow. Feeding often begins before the prey is even dead.
“If you don’t like wolves their method of killing can seem cruel, mean, and horribly vicious,” said Mike Jimenez, USFWS Wyoming wolf recovery project leader.
Wolves are always cautious when attacking. They have an innate ability to detect weakness, illness, and other signs that make one elk preferable over another. Wolves always take the easy way out. Contrary to popular belief that wolves run down their prey with superior stamina, studies show a wolf will usually break off a fruitless chase after 1,000 yards.
Wolves always test prey. Wolves attack only about one out of every 10 moose that they chase down. Typically, if a moose or elk runs then stands its ground to fight, it is left alone. If a moose or elk chooses to stand its ground first, it’s an indication the animal is old or weak and ripe for the taking. When wolves do attack, their success rate is about 90 percent.
The alpha eats first, usually taking the choice rump sections. Internal organs are next. Wolves usually gorge themselves on a kill, especially if they haven’t eaten in a while. A wolf requires about four pounds of meat per day though their eating habits are more feast-and-famine in nature. Wolves can, and often do, go two weeks or more between meals. If they are famished, wolves can consume 22 pounds of food in one sitting.
An attack saps the wolf’s strength. They often remain with a carcass for days, resting and consuming it. A wolf will burn calories at a rate of up to 20 times their resting levels when chasing and attack a moose or elk. By comparison, a world-class athlete is capable of increasing their caloric burn at no more than five times that of resting levels.
Allegations that wolves kill for sport are numerous, though rarely observed definitively. Wolves are sometimes driven from carcasses by other wolves, or they may leave a kill with the intention of returning. If prey is abundant, however, wolves do feed on the choicest parts of their prey and leave.
“The greatest impact of the introduction of an exotic wolf is not what it kills to survive but the impact of its ‘sport reflex killing,’” Kemery said. “The Canadian grey wolf has a capacity to take down large numbers of ungulates.”
Surplus killing is mostly observed when wolves meet sheep, Camenzind admits. Something snaps in the wolf and lots of sheep die. In the wild, though, wolves rarely kill what they don’t need.
Managing the monster
Wolves are no longer federally protected. They were removed from the endangered species list in May 2011. Idaho and Montana instituted wolf hunts in the fall of 2011. Wyoming still awaits permission from Washington to manage the wolf population in its state. That word is expected to come later this year. State legislators drafted a wolf management bill at the recent budget session.
The bill designates certain areas of Wyoming where the wolf would be classified as trophy game and other zones where the wolf could be shot on sight. The intent is to both manage the population and curb the wolf’s appetite for destruction on livestock.
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Wolf, coyote or husky?
Is it a small wolf or a really big coyote? Telltale signs include overall size, of course. Wolves are much bigger than coyotes. Look first at the tail. Wolves carry theirs straight out and level with their body. Coyotes’ tails are always at a downward angle. The head is also a good indicator. A coyote head is small in comparison to its body. A wolf’s head is massive and heavy in proportion. Also, like a grizzly bear compared to a black bear, the wolf’s ears are much more rounded and closer cropped to the head than the coyote’s.
A wolf’s gait at the walk is heavy and deliberate compared to that of a coyote, which seems to have a springier step. At the lope, a wolf has a clunky, bounding gait. The coat color is also a great indicator. Coyotes are usually a dull or grizzled grey. The grey wolf is also typically grey, but a black coat is a popular variation appearing in about 15 percent of GYA wolves.
Paw prints of the wolf are similar to that of the coyote but twice as large. The middle toes of the wolf are more closely spaced than that of the coyote. One way to tell a large domestic dog’s tracks from that of a wolf is to look for the placement of the hind feet. Wolves step completely into their front paw print with their hind feet. While most domestic dogs’ back foot over-strides and is slightly inside the front print.
Another dead giveaway is the track. Domestic dogs zigzag, following their nose. Wolves walk a straight line. For an animal that walks as much as the wolf – up to 40 miles a day and 4,000 miles in a year – they deviate very little from their course.
Wolves complete a circuit of their territory about every two weeks, almost always in a counter-clockwise pattern. Scientists don’t know why. They hunt primarily into the wind for obvious reasons. With 280 million olfactory receptors in their nasal passages, wolves can detect scents from two miles away. They also have keen eyesight.
No matter the weather, the wolf does not seek shelter. They prefer to ride out blizzards by burrowing into the snow and covering their nose with their tail, much the same way sled dogs learn to sleep outside.
Keeping the wolf from your door
Ever see those pennants hanging from a line? The triangular-shaped flags hung from a fence line are there to deter wolves from crossing underneath. It’s called fladry and many ranchers swear by it. There is some evidence fladry works, although most wolves are quick to learn that the flags are not life-threatening so change is always the key.
Non-lethal ammunition like cracker shells, beanbag shells, paintballs and rubber bullets are also fairly effective in keeping wolves from livestock and off private property. Sheepherders have found great success with guard dogs bred for protection. The Great Pyrenees, Akbash, Anatolian, and Komondor are the most popular breeds. The Karakachan dog of Bulgaria has been known to chase a wolf away from the flock for nearly a mile and a half. It has been reported that after such encounters, wolves leave that flock alone and turn their attention elsewhere.
courtesy HOWLING FOR JUSTICE
Quit bitching and learn to live with the cunning canine.