American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West

It is December 2009. Rick McIntyre watches three wolves bring down an elk and feast on the huge beast. Rick works at Yellowstone Park and is devoted to its wolves. In fact, this is his 3,467th consecutive day spent scouring the park for them. Researchers have attached transmitters to at least one animal in each of the park’s packs (firing tranquilizer darts from helicopters to sedate them first). This allows Rick and others to follow their signal and to watch them through scopes as they roam the protected landscape. Today, a female wolf nicknamed “O-Six” (for her birth year) draws Rick’s gaze. She is a beautiful specimen, albeit one without a radio collar.

O-Six faces a predicament. She has left her birth pack and, for the last two years, has searched for a mate and territory. She is about three and a half, middle-aged for a wolf, many of whom die at age four or five in fights between packs. Time is against her, and she does not seem cut out for a role as a nonbreeding beta female. She won’t be able to stick too long with her current hunting partners, but prospects for lone wolves can be bleak. So far, O-Six has defied the odds, making her one of Rick’s favorites.

O-Six’s great grandmother was one of the first wolves reintroduced to Yellowstone Park in 1995. That’s after humans nearly hunted wolves to extinction across the continental United States by the 1920s, including in Yellowstone Park. Yellowstone’s early conservationists thought wolves needed eliminating to protect the park’s bigger beasts, its elk, moose, antelope, and bighorn sheep. But these species evolved in tandem with wolves. Left with no predators, they actually overgrazed or damaged the environment. By the 1930s, officials had to intervene, culling large number of these species, which angered hunters outside the park, who had become used to big herds migrating in their direction. The result was a boom-and-bust cycle, and even by the 1940s, wolf proponents were ruing their elimination from the park.

In the 1970s, federal officials began to wonder if reintroducing wolves might be viable. Hunters and ranchers in the states surrounding Yellowstone (Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming) vehemently opposed the idea. They thought their livelihoods would be threatened if wolves returned to prey on livestock on or the elk herds that propped up the economy. Despite opposition, Wolf Project biologists led by Doug Smith introduced Yellowstone’s first new wolves from Canada in March 1995, leading to the scene in front of Rick 14 years later.

Rick began his career as a seasonal interpretative ranger in 1976, interpretive meaning he helped visitors interpret what they were seeing. Fascinated by wolves, he joined the summer team in Yellowstone in 1994 and saw the animals flourish. Despite occasional poaching, the wolf population quickly grew and dispersed. By the winter 2003, Yellowstone boasted 174 wolves in 14 packs. By 2009, with wolves introduced in some surrounding parks and with populations pushing down from Canada, the wolf population in the Northern Rockies had swollen to 1,700 animals. Yellowstone is a hotspot for wolf-spotting and research.

One of its main attractions is the Druid Pack (their territory includes Druid Peak). They descend on the elk felled by O-Six and chase off the roving trio before they can fully feed from it. It is another day in the life of Yellowstone’s battling wolf packs that plays out before Rick, who notes it all in his logbook of the species’ movements and behavior.

The Druid Pack formed after the Wolf Project introduced a second batch of wolves to Yellowstone in 1996. Researchers released them into the Lamar Valley, where they bested the incumbent Crystal Creek Pack to claim the area as their own. The outbreak of violence was shocking, even sad, but it taught observers like Rick and Doug Smith how precious the Lamar Valley was as a habitat.

By December 1997, the pack was roaming ever wider, following Crandall Creek east and out of the park. This trek occurred during elk-hunting season and led them to a deadly encounter with humans, as someone illegally shot dead a beta male. They also injured the pack’s alpha male, 38, who then died of starvation at the bottom of a ravine. Authorities never found the culprit.

The pack bounced back under a new alpha known as 21. At first, 21 sired pups with the existing alpha female, 40. But soon, he became interested in her sisters. At first, 40 fought them into subdual, but in spring 2000, 21 impregnated 40’s sister, 42, as well as one of her adult daughters. This led to three dens of pups spread across the valley. Rick feared they might not survive the conditions or 40’s murderous instincts, but the pack’s subordinate females turned on 40 and savaged her. She died, and 21 consolidated his pups into one huge brood. By August 2001, the pack numbered 37 wolves and bestrode the Northern Rockies as its biggest force.

Rick spent every spare minute watching this lupine drama. He guided visitors to where they, too, could spot the park’s star pack. The park, though, was not yet prepared for wolf tourism, and the visitors overwhelmed its infrastructure. Rick’s boss chastised him and moved him far away to Old Faithful (the park’s famous geyser). But nothing could keep Rick from the wolves. He drove to the Lamar Valley and back every day to observe the Druids. After four summers of this back and forth, he scored a full-time job with Doug Smith and the biologists, on the condition he kept out of management’s hair.

Wolf tourism began to boom, bringing thousands of visitors to Yellowstone. That included President Bill Clinton and even celebrities like actor Cameron Diaz and rapper DMX. Rick became something of a celebrity himself; visitors knew their best chance of spotting a wolf was to tail his yellow Nissan and watch over his shoulder during his daily vigil of the Lamar Valley. The Druids thrived there until factions peeled away in 2002. It was a female from this exodus who would eventually lead the Agate Creek Pack and give birth to O-Six.

The Druids continued under 42 and 21 for another two years. In February 2004, though, invading wolves from the pack the Druids originally displaced killed 42 and ended her reign as matriarch. Her death left 21 grieving and howling for his absent mate. He sired one more litter of pups by another female, but he was old. In July, a guide found his collar, and Rick and Doug Smith soon found his body nearby. He had climbed a peak called Specimen Ridge and curled up and died under a tree that he and 42 had marked with their scent hundreds of times in their reign of the surrounding area.

It is January 2010, six weeks after the Druids chased O-Six off the elk she killed. Despite that show of strength, the once mighty pack is suffering from weakened leadership and an outbreak of mange, a disease that makes wolves lose patches of fur. In Yellowstone’s harsh climate, this can severely weaken them. O-Six capitalizes on the pack’s struggles and one night draws away two yearling brothers in the hope of making one of them her mate. The Druids’ females—including their alpha female known as White Line—are unable to fight off O-Six as they might have in the pack’s heyday. It is a decisive power shift, and O-Six marks a territory known as Little America as hers. Her two new companions do the same.

Eight days later, Doug Smith darts and collars the two brothers, though the wily O-Six eludes him. The younger dominant brother becomes known as 755, his older submissive brother as 754. Smith christens them 755’s Group. Soon, the trio are taking down elk together in Little America and raiding inside the Druids’ territory of the Lamar Valley proper, although O-Six is the group’s best hunter by far.