The Man Who Cried Wolf

Mr. Hawkins

 There was once a boy who cried wolf.   The boy would cry out and the villagers would come running to save the community from the big bad wolf.   The villagers would arrive only to find out that there was no wolf present and return to their homes.   One day the boy cried wolf and there really was a wolf and none of the villagers came when needed.   Friday morning , July 5, 2013, was the last day of our Summer Wildlife Institute course in  Northern Yellowstone near the Lamar Valley.   I had hoped to see a wolf on our trip and had done much research so I would be informed on the history and the habits of the wolves that had been  returned  to the Yellowstone ecosystem in 1996.  

I personally was interested in the wolf.  I had studied how the packs in the park area had developed buffer zones between each other and how a wolf from another pack would be killed if entering a territory not his own.  I knew that wolves would den up when it came time to have pups and that the whole pack would find a central location in which to bring food to the new wolf pups.   Every wolf in the pack will contribute to this endeavor. 

We arrived in the valley only to find a large group of people on a high hill with high power spotting scopes.   You can learn a lot about watching wolves from watching people.  If you see a traffic  jam it might be a wolf jam, a bear jam, a moose jam, or even  an elk or bison jam.  I thought it would be funny some time if we would go to a high point and set up our equipment in the direction of a low stump or other topographic feature and see how many people we could get to come to a stump jam.  Now we return to the wolf story.  Rick McEntire, a retired Yellowstone biologist, is an authority of spotting wolves and identification.  He has spent much time on wolf research in the park.   He has his own crowd of followers that keep radio contact with him when a wolf is spotted.   This morning we found Rick and his group in the Lamar Valley near a rendezvous site where a den of pups was located on a tree-line point about a half mile away. 

Rick McEntire, seated, and his wolf "groupies"

I am pretty good most of the time at locating wildlife.  This time it took me awhile to see the young black wolf as it worked its way in and out of the sagebrush flat in front of us.   I hate to say it but I would have never had the thrill of seeing this wolf with my low power binoculars.   I saw and watched him for over twenty minutes in the spotting scope off and on by sharing the scope with my teammates.  I knew where the wolf was located in the scope by using features such as the two trees that make a V-shape or looking just to the left of the lodgepole pine point.  When I would look with my binoculars, I would only barely see a dot  that moved.   I would have never had my thrill of a wolf sighting without quality spotting scopes provided for our Yellowstone Institute Field Seminar.  We were not disappointed.  

I am a loud person and when you get me excited , I do not think about the noise I make at times.   I had to be shushed when I first saw that black beauty of a wolf.  I cannot tell you what joy it brought to me to see this magnificent creature placed back in its natural habitat.  According to other rangers in the park, there were 174 wolves in Yellowstone a few years back, but the numbers have dwindled to about 69 adults this year.   It has been reported that we have 20 young pups this year.   Distemper and mange have taken some.  Other animals have been harvested outside park boundaries by hunters in adjoining states that allow wolf hunts.  You must understand the size of this animal.    Remember me telling you about the dot in my binoculars.   This dot face to face can stand 36 inches at the shoulder and has a paw print the size of your hand minus the fingers.   This is an impressive killing machine.  An adult wolf can weight from 90-130 lbs.   It is three times the size of the coyote I would see in Oklahoma.  Yes indeed.   The man who cried wolf.

I guess you can tell what animal gets my blood flowing.  

I do not want you to think this is all that Yellowstone has to offer.   Brad Bullins was our guide for the week from July 2-5,2013.  He works for the Yellowstone Association.   The Yellowstone Association is dedicated to educating and gathering support for conservation efforts in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.  Brad did not let us down.  He took us out all day every day, and there were days we spent 11 hours out viewing wildlife.  He did a phenomenal job putting us on the various wildlife species.   I toured a bookstore in Grant village and found out that I was familiar with over 60% of the common wildlife species available in this area.  We went to small ponds and saw 4 inch blotched tiger salamanders and a banded garter snake.  

We saw bald eagles in the nest. We found out that the bald eagle does not gain the characteristic white head and tail feathers until they are at least four years old.  We saw a fight between a bald eagle and several ravens.  We heard distinct calling sounds.   We also laughed at the commercials you see on TV where there is a long high pitched screech made by an eagle on the commercial.  That sound on TV is really the call of a Red Tailed Hawk.

Eagles make a chirping sound with several short pauses.  Eagles sound like an overgrown tweety  bird rather that a loooooong pitched scream.  I have learned on this trip that I have so much more to learn about wildlife.   It is sad to think that we continually destroy habitat and natural areas for our own selfish concerns.  We also saw golden eagles nesting on a high cliff.   You can often find a nest in the distance by locating the whitewash below the nest.   It will look like someone splattered a white can of Walmart paint on the cliff below the nest.   You could lay down in this nest.   These birds are huge.   We saw two quite large chicks in the nest and we saw the female land about 100 yards away to keep an  eye on the nest and protect her young.

We encountered a tennis match when we located some bears at the same time we were looking at the wolf.   We would switch our scopes to see the bears which were less than a mile away when the wolf was not visible.   We did not find anyone in the group that was bored.  We came along a jam and could not find a place to park so we continued on .  When we came back shortly and found out that it was moose.   I had never seen these animals in the wild.   This was a huge bull moose with palmated antlers and very long points coming off of the front.  He was about 150 yards off of the road.   The only thing that is disappointing is that many of these beautiful animals are too far for quality photos unless you have very expensive photographic lenses.

Several times during the week I would spot what I thought was a coyote going through tall grass away from us only to find a sandhill crane in my binoculars.  These birds have been on the endangered species list.  They are beautiful birds that are quite large and from a distance to have the sandy brown coloration of a coyote.   We saw huge white pelicans around the waters.   They are easier to spot because of the white color.

We saw mule deer bucks in velvet.  We saw pikas that look like fat little rabbits with curved ears like an Ewok from Star Wars.  We traveled out to Trout Lake and took a hike up into the backcountry to view otters and cutthroat trout.   We saw the Columbia spotted frog that loves to hide in the marsh grass.   This grass provides cover for the frogs and young fish from predation and allows a suitable number to live long enough to become breeding adults that travel up the inflow creek to spawn by laying pink eggs that are sticky and attach to the rocks of the inflow.  

We saw an Engelmann Spruce tree that had died that had an age of  1,000 years +.   The trees in this area are being attacked by the spruce budworm that begins eating the trees at the terminal buds causing eventual death.  We saw Golden Eye ducks that fish in these inland waterways.  These ducks have a brightly colored golden eye with a dark pupil.  We saw a mother otter and her two kits.   Otter young are referred to as “kits”.  We saw an example of elk thistle which is a thistle with a spiny purple top and spined leaflets that can be used for survival if caught out in the wilderness.   We were told it tastes like celery and is a preferred bear food.   We learned how to look for evidence of bear feeding activity.   Many times a bear will roll over rocks to expose worms or ants below.  If you find a rock that has lichen or colored growth on it and one part of the rock does not this is evidence the rock has been rolled over recently.  Bears will also tear rotten logs apart or steal pine cone caches from red squirrels. 

We pulled into the Lamar Buffalo Ranch for a bathroom break and we saw a mature badger and her two young kits just outside the freshly dug den.   A badger will move her den several times during the time she raises her young.   The young badgers we saw were beginning to be mobile and were approaching the time that the female would take them on hunts with her.   We simply sat there in the bus watching the behavior of the badgers.   We had to be extremely quiet.  We witnessed them scratching fleas just like a human would scratch under an armpit.  It was hilarious to watch these youngsters.  None of us were in a rush when wildlife was available.

Well the best way to tell a long story is not to tell it.   I just could not help sharing with you all the wonderful things that we saw in only one last 24 hr period on our trip.  To me this was a trip of a lifetime.   I will always remember the sounds, sights and events that made up this trip into Yellowstone.

Wolfffffffffffff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!