Eulogy for a Yellowstone Wolf

Each year I track Montana’s wolf hunting season and write about the carnage. Much of the killing seems distant, but some happens right up the road from my home in what Montana calls Wolf Management Unit 313. I hike and ski and drive in 313—along with lots of other folks and a number of Yellowstone wolves that pass through. Sixteen park wolves were killed this season in 313. But that’s just a number. Each one of those wolves was an intelligent, sentient being with a family. 

What, I wondered, is this senseless hunt like to a wolf caught in the sights of a wolf killer? That question generated this eulogy as I imagined a young male wolf, a member of a pack that roams over nearby Mt. Everts and the Rescue Creek plateau. Of course, he doesn’t know these places by those names. He just knows them as his home where he hunts and plays and sleeps.

He was born two and half years ago. He’s as big as he’s going to get and pretty experienced. He has helped his family bring down elk. He knows how to work as a team member. He knows his place among his family, knows who he can challenge and who he can’t.

Standing on the slope of Mt. Everts, he looks at the sky and senses his world changing from warm to cool to cold. The days are cooler and a little shorter; the nights are colder and a little longer. He feels his fur changing, growing thicker, helping him keep warm. 

The elk have changed too. They are well fed and strong and fast and harder to bring down. But his mother and father know how to select one that’s injured or slow or old. Once they find it, the pack works together to separate it from the other elk, bring it down, and eat. He likes chasing away those big black birds that come to steal from his family.

But it’s not just the days and the elk that are changing; something is changing inside him. He sometimes looks toward the distant mountains and feels an urge to head there, to leave the only place he has called home. He feels a longing to find a wolf—a female—that is not a member of his family. He feels a need to have pups in the den, to bring food to those pups as his father did for him. He wants a territory of his own.

And so one day, as the first snow falls—just a dusting that melts on his fur—he nuzzles his family members one last time and begins his solo journey. He decides to go in the direction his sister went during the last change from warm to cool to cold. He remembers the day she left. He chased after her until she turned, put her ears back, and nipped at him. He put his tail between his legs and ran back a bit. He knew not to challenge her. He watched her walk away and hasn’t seen her since. No one has.

Not long after leaving his family, he sees and smells and hears a couple of those two-legged creatures that roam this land. Those two-leggeds seem to run in packs much larger than his. They appear out of those noisy, smelly dens that move so fast, that come and go. He has watched the two-leggeds step out and look in the direction of his family, then reach into their den and bring out what looks like branches and set them up. They put their eye to what looks like a little log and point it at him and his family. Then the two-leggeds just stand there as the sun moves across the sky and he naps or plays with his brothers and sisters. The two-leggeds seem strange, but they don’t harm him, never have. 

As he walks past the two-leggeds and toward the mountains, his stomach growls. He wonders if he will find an elk that he can bring down alone. If not, then he’ll find rabbits or squirrels or scraps left by other wolves. He’ll watch the sky for those big black birds; they know where food is.

He is young and strong and determined and will travel as far as necessary. He’ll stop occasionally to sniff the air and the ground, seeking the scent of another wolf. He’ll raise his nose toward the sky and call out. He’ll listen for a reply. Maybe his sister will call out. If he hears no reply, smells no scents, he’ll move on. He knows he must.

He trots on until he spots another two-legged ahead. He stops and stares at the two-legged who is pointing what looks like a stick at him. He senses no danger; those two-leggeds have never hurt him or his family. 

He turns his head to look at the sky and the mountain. Then he sniffs the air, the ground. Nothing. As he turns to look at the two-legged again, he feels a terrible pain in his side. He tries to run but his legs buckle. His nose slams against the ground. He struggles to breathe. As the world grows dark, he sees the two-legged crouched over and walking slowly toward him, that stick pointing at him. He closes his eyes. He thinks of his mother and father, sisters and brothers. He lets out one last painful breath.

His journey is over.

Here’s How You Can Speak for Wolves

Ask for wolves in the Northern Rockies to be relisted under the ESA.

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My bestselling In the Temple of Wolves; its sequel, Deep into Yellowstone; and its prequel, The Wilds of Aging are available signed. My books are also available on Amazon unsigned or as eBook or audiobook.