Monty's Trip to Yellowstone National Park

Our next day of the seminar and a very, very early start. The best time to see animals is dawn and dusk. Getting out there before the sun rises meant getting into a van and on the road at 6:30am. So, we get up, load up and spend three hours watching coyotes at a carcass, viewing a bald eagle waaay off in the distance and seeing lots and lots of ravens. Oh, and the ever present bison and elk too. But, the wolves were not to be seen. That was not very encouraging. Oh well.

Many of the wolves here are radio collared and closely monitored. In fact, March and October are months where volunteers monitor various packs 24 hours a day. So, we knew where the wolves were, but seeing them can still be a bit of a problem in this vast valley. Fortunately, after the morning and early afternoon lectures, we headed out again to seek some wolves. We tried several spots and then decided to try out luck at the Soda Butte pullout. I was talking to one of the participants how I have been able to get good photos of many of the animals here already, but have never even had an opportunity before to photograph a wolf. Just as I was saying this a big bull elk came up on the rise about 100 yards across the road. Hot on his hooves were two wolves!

Wow, everybody was surprised, including the elk and two wolves. Luckily I had my 500mm lens with a doubler on and was already focused on the elk when he came up on the ridge. I got some photos of the wolves, the elk and the wolves with the elk. The sighting lasted about 30 seconds before the animals moved off. The wolves were part of the Druid Peak pack - a young uncollered female and #. This pack was up to 37 wolves, but pack's are not stable at that size and now they have split up into several smaller packs. The territories of these packs overlap considerably and there may be trouble brewing in the near future. In case you are interested, there are approximately 78 wolves in this northern part of Yellowstone National Park, 148 in the total park and 273 in the greater Yellowstone area overall.

We then spotted a wolf they were calling half black. This wolf was not as close as the other two. In fact, it is very rare for wolves to get that close to people. This faded black wolf was more like a half mile away. I used my 500mm lens with two doublers on to make a 2000mm lens. Even then she is small in the frame.

This wolf is a former female of the Druid pack and was back visiting. One thing about wolves in the wild, they do travel between packs and may go back and forth a bit between the pack they came from and the pack they now belong go. Of course this does not last forever and can be risky...