Wolf Stories – Part 1

By great good luck, I was assigned to Yellowstone National Park as a resource management specialist in March of 1980, at the same time the first Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf Recovery Plan was released.  By 1987, when the second Plan was signed, I was in full swing giving talks in the region about the proposal to restore wolves.  As the principal interpreter of  wolf recovery for the Yellowstone Center for Resources, I gave 400 talks, and mailed out thousands of custom responses to inquiries about the project.

I was motivated by the knowledge that something was missing from the Park’s fauna – wolves.  In 1988, I took administrative leave, and traveled to several Canadian parks to find out what problems they had in hosting wolves.  -None.  Wolves were just a non-topic there.  I was on a team of reviewers of Wolves for Yellowstone? reports to Congress done in 1990 and 1992.  In January of 1995, I helped place Canadian wolves in pens in the Park, and helped feed them for the weeks they were kept in the pens.  For my work, in the face of occasional opposition, I received an NPS Meritorious Service award, the 1988 NPCA Stephen T. Mather Award, the  Greater Yellowstone Coalition Stewardship Award in 1991, a Wolf Education group’s Alpha Award in 1997, and the International Wolf Center’s Who Speaks for Wolf Award in 2015. 

I led fifty field courses on wolves for the Yellowstone Association Institute from 1999 to 2005, and have been engaged in restoring wolves to my home state of Colorado since 2013.  Recently, I became a founding member of the Wolf-Moose Foundation.  I serve on the board of the Southwest Colorado Wolf Cooperative, and have reviewed several books for their website.  I support a number of conservation organizations that work to conserve wolves. So as you can see, wolves have been a major part of my life.

Theriophobia, fear of the beast, surfaces in conversations (and propaganda) about wolves.  One often hears expressions of fear for the safety of people, particularly children.  These fears can be eased by true stories from North America.  In this series of posts, we will share some.

Barstool biology has it that wolves must be hunted to make them fearful of people.  A report from Prince Maximilian of Prussia, who explored North America in 1833-1835, suggests that the Native Americans who lived with wolves had a different explanation for why wolves did not see humans as prey. A clip from Casey & Clark’s Tales of the Wolf (1996) offers one view.

In a Mandan legend…The lord of life once told the first man, that if the Numangkake should go over the river they would be devoured by the wolves, on which they both crossed the river, and killed all the old wolves.  They ordered the young wolves not to devour men in future, but to confine themselves to buffaloes, deer, and other wild animals. 

Earlier, on their 1804-1805 Voyage of Discovery, Lewis and Clark encountered many wolves.  Here are a few comments by Meriwether Lewis. 

“. . we scarcely see a gang of buffaloe without observing a parsel of those faithfull shepherds on their skirts in readiness to take care of the mamed & wounded.”

May 29th, 1805, having observed a huge number of bison that had been killed at a buffalo jump along the river, Lewis wrote, “We saw a great many wolves in the neighborhood of these mangled carcasses they were fat and extreemly gentle.  Capt. C.who was on shore killed one with his espontoon.”  [No mention of any perceived threat to the party]

“game is still very abundant we can scarcely cast our eyes in any direction without perceiving deer Elk Buffaloes or Antelopes. The quantity of wolves appear to increase in the same proportion;”

Adolph Murie studied wolf-Dall sheep relationships from 1939 to 1941 to determine if it was possible to permit moderate representation of the wolf in the fauna of the park. His book, THE WOLVES OF MOUNT MCKINLEY was printed in 1944.  We see no mention of a weapon being carried by Murie. 

Murie wrote, “The strongest impression remaining with me after watching the wolves on numerous occasions was their friendliness.”

Murie observed wolves near their dens.  At the East Fork River den, he walked to within 4 yards of that den while the male wolf, which had been resting 70 yards from the den ran about a quarter mile away, and howled and barked.  The female dashed from the den and joined the male in barking and howling at him until he left.  Murie crawled into the den and pulled out three of the six pups, put one in his knapsack, and returned the other two, then departed.  From May 15 to July 7, Murie spent 195 hours observing the wolves at the den, twice observing them all night. 

Murie took the pup he named “Wags” to check on the development of the pups at the den.  He wrote that Wags was a good wolf, but a bad dog.  She played too rough for Murie’s little daughter.

In his 1970 book, THE WOLF (Pp 289-298), L. David Mech included a chapter on Relations with Non-game Species, and wrote on The Human Being.  He reported on predation on man in  Eurasia and  North America from available sources,  The final source he quoted was Alaskan R.I. Rausch, who wrote him that “In earlier years, before wolves were so much persecuted in Alaska, I several times had wolves come rather close to determine what kind of animal I was, but they were of course quite harmless.”

Mech continues: “In my own experience, I have never come close to danger.  Several times on Isle Royale I (and successive workers) have even chased large packs away from prey that they had just killed.”

“During the first such incident I learned how some of the stories of ‘close calls’ with wolves might have originated. I had just watched from an aircraft as a pack of sixteen killed a nine-month-old moose calf in a small cedar swamp, and had directed the pilot to land me as close to the scene as possible.  From a nearby lake I snowshoed in toward the kill, while the pilot circled above.  A half hour later I arrived in the immediate vicinity of the carcass.  According to the pilot, most of the wolves ran off when I was within 150 yards.  Two others, which continued feeding, quickly left when I got to within seventy-five feet of them.”

“I then spent the next forty-five minutes examining and photographing the carcass while the wolves rested on a ridge some 250 yards away and out of my view, with the plane circling over them.  As I was inspecting some of the internal organs of the moose, however, the aircraft suddenly changed course.  It began approaching in a series of low dives, and I quickly realized that the wolves were returning.”

“I looked up from the carcass into the surrounding brush just in time to see two large wolves bounding toward me over the blow-down some seventy-five yards away.  I immediately drew my revolver, preparing to fire above them.  But I never needed to.  At my very first movement, the wolves halted abruptly, turned and fled back to the pack. 

Evidently the smell of the fresh carcass had overcome my own odor, and the wolves had not realized that I was still there.  When suddenly reminded, they departed quickly.”

Dave Mech after that had  some experiences with curious or playful wolves.  On Ellesmere Island, where he studied wolves for 25 years, he had his cap blow off once, and a wolf retrieved it, played with it a while, and then Dave was able to recover it.  Another time, he was monitoring the den, and noticed the wolves looking past him with interest.  He looked back, and saw a young wolf extracting his sleeping bag from his tent through a ventilation port.  Dave huffed at him, and the wolf scurried off, with a guilty look.  Another time, at the den, a tiny pup waddled over and untied Dave’s boot laces.   Finally, Dave told about lying on the ground on his side beside his ATV, and a huge wolf they called Brutus approached from behind him and nosed his pack.  He says it was the only time he felt fear of a wolf.  

Mech wrote: D.H. Pimlott (1967a: 38) of Ontario, wrote the following about wolf-man relations: “Perhaps even more powerful testimony is that in spite of some of the highest wolf populations in the world in that area, thousands of children come and camp in the wilderness section of Algonquin Park each year and there are no reports of any of them having been attacked or even threatened by wolves.”

“In summary,” he wrote, “there is no basis for the belief that healthy, wild wolves in North America are of any danger to human beings.”

Wolves and Visitors in Yellowstone

From 1995 to 2023, 121,647,558 visitors have enjoyed Yellowstone. From 1995 to 2023, 1,188,146 backcountry use nights have been recorded.  That’s people sleeping out in tents or on the ground away from developed campgrounds.  Millions of day hikers also enjoy Yellowstone, but no data is available on them, because no permits are needed for that activity.  Not one visitor has been hurt by a wolf in the  29 years wolves have been in the park.

Wolf encounters in the wild

In TALES OF THE WOLF (1996), Denise Casey and Tim W. Clark compiled fifty-one stories of wolf encounters in the wild.  The following are lifted from their book, with their permission.

Rufus B. Sage published a book on his travels, “Scenes in the Rocky Mountains” in 1846.  In it, he wrote of a nocturnal encounter with a wolf.

“A pack of hungry wolves, attracted by the scent of camp, were our regular nocturnal visitors. and proved a constant source of annoyance.  On one occasion they carried off a bake kettle to a distance of several hundred yards; — at another time, they took away a tin pan, which we never afterwards recovered;—and, stranger yet, one night these piratical pests stole a fur cap from off my head while I was sleeping, and in the morning, after a diligent search, no trace of it could be found.”

Sage also reported this event.  “The above induced the narration of a circumstance, happening to an individual of my acquaintance two or three weeks previous.  He had been into the mountains after deer, and was on his return to the Fort for a fresh supply of ammunition, and having occasion to camp out at night like a genuine mountaineer, he took his saddle for a pillow.  This, being covered with raw hide, excited the cupidity of a marauding wolf.  The hungry beast felt ill-disposed to let slip an opportunity thus favorable for appeasing his appetite with a dry morsel, and so, gently drawing it from beneath the head of the unconscious sleeper, he bore off his prize to devour it at his leisure. In the morning, our hero awoke minus saddle, and nothing save a number of wolf tracks at his head furnished clue to the mystery of its disappearance, and. after spending several hours in fruitless search, neither hide or hair of it could be found.”

In THE WILD WITHOUT FIREARMS, Denise and Casey share a chapter from Enos Mills’1909 book, Wild Life on the Rockies.  It goes on for 4-1/2 pages, so this is abbreviated to suit short attention spans.

“One autumn afternoon I was walking along slowly, reflectively, in a deep forest. *** All was calm and peaceful around and within me, when I came to a little sunny frost-toned grass-plot surrounded by tall, crowding pines. I felt drawn to its warmth and repose and stepped joyfully into it.  Suddenly two gray wolves sprang from almost beneath my feet and faced me defiantly.  At a few feet distance they made an impressive show of ferocity, standing ready apparently to hurl themselves upon me. *** They made no move to attack.  I was afraid to attack, and I dared not run away.*** Both sides were of the same mind, ready to fight, but not at all eager to do so.***I had not moved, but something had to be done. *** I believe both sides had been bluffing.  In attempting to use my Kodak, while continuing the bluff, I brought matters to a focus.  ‘What a picture you fellows will make,’ I said aloud, as my right hand slowly worked my Kodak out of the case which hung under my left arm.  Still keeping up a steady fire of looks, I brought the Kodak in front of me ready to focus, and then touched the spring that released the folding front.  When the Kodak mysteriously, suddenly opened before the wolves, they fled for their lives.  In an instant they had cleared the grassy space and vanished into the woods.  I did not get their picture.”

More in the next installment…