June and July 2004
I worked on the Idaho wolf recovery project as we tried to monitor how the wolf population was growing. Most of the packs in the state had a least one animal that had a radio collar. We would start with a flight over the area, to find where the pack we were going to be going into the field to find was currently at. The next day we would head out into the field for ten days, we would start by driving the forest service dirt roads looking for wolf tracks and scat. When we would find then, we would get out and scout the area for more signs. When we found an area that had lots of wolf activity we would set up a trap line. Each line would have approximately ten traps on it. The traps are modified in a way to minimized injury to the animals. Each line was monitored daily. A pack of wolves can move twenty miles in a night, so frequently they would have left the area. So frequently we would return after ten days without a catch or a siting.
My partner and I had not seen any new signs near one trap line. We had decided that this line was no longer active. One trap was only a 1/3 mile (1/2 K) off the road but it required walking through a wetland. Since we were sure there wouldn’t be a wolf we decided only one of us would go check (Every trap must be checked every day, no exceptions!). I lost the coin toss, so I headed across the wetland. After a while I was in the woods on a dirt trail. As I came around the curve in the trail I paused at the site of a mound of dirt. It took a second for it to sink in. We bury the traps, when they are sprung there would be dirt flying up into the air and leave a mound of dirt. To lessen the chance of injury to the wolf, the trap is not attached to any thing. Instead It has a long chain with a couple big hooks on it, As the animal runs the chain will leave a trail and after a while the hooks will catch on something. I followed the trail as it went back into the wetland through tall grass. The trail disappeared, so I stopped to look around for the trail, suddenly I saw him! He was sitting there looking at me less then twenty feet (6meters) away; a chill went up my back. I was this close to a wolf in the wild! I had caught a wolf!
I backed away slowly. when I got to the woods I took off running back to the truck and my partner. Carter saw me running through the wetland and knew we had one. He hopped out and grabbed our gear and came running. When we got back to the area, he wasn’t visible. We found him hiding in the grass. The normal method of containing the animal is one person has a noose on a pole (the noose is design to be snug but not to tight on the neck), the other person has a shot on a pole to put the animal to sleep. I said that is the normal method, this wolf was so afraid that he wouldn’t lift his head off the ground, I couldn’t get the noose around his neck. Carter gave him the shot without the noose on. Since he wasn’t moving we had no way of knowing when the drugs had kicked in. After a couple minutes we decided it was safe. We began with putting a radio collar on, ear tags and recording some data, age, sex, weight etc. Then we give it a reversal drug and move away to wait for the animal to recover enough to run off. While we waited we took some photos. My first wolf! What a beautiful animal! What a thrill to be able to hold a life wolf in the wild! I love all animals and have been fortune enough to have held many different kinds of them, but none compare to this. To this day I say this was the most exciting and thrilling moment in my life!
My partner had caught many wolves, for many years. He said this particular wolf was the most timid and passive wolf he had ever seen. The very next day we got to see the other end of the extreme. We were lucky, the next day we caught another one nearby. They were both two year old males from the same pack, and yet they couldn’t have been more different. This one was the most aggressive he had ever seen. We couldn’t noose him either because he would just bite the noose and hang on to it. We finally decided that while I kept him occupied with the noose, Carter would be behind him and jab him with the shot. This shows how the personalities of animals can be just as different as people, from one extreme to the other with two males from the same litter. The second one was destine to be an alpha.
On another outing another partner and I moved in on what we were expecting to be the den site. We found it! There were the pups, some laying in the sun, some playing with each other, one noticed us and watched us just as interested as we were. We watched for several minutes always looking for the alpha female who had to be nearby. We never did see her, but left after a while so as not to alarm her.
On another occasion we were stalking a pack. We kept getting close but they would sense us and move off before we could get a visual. Finally we knew we were very close, but still not a visual, so we crept in a little closer, staying behind the trees. I grabbed on to a tree I was behind and slowly moved my head out to look forward. There 25 ft (8m) in front of me was a black wolf, doing the same as me, he was behind a tree with just his head peering around it. It was both beautiful and comical to see this wolf peering around the tree like I was,