Life, Wolves, Dogs & Coyotes...

Posted by jennifer on November 05, 2007 in Yellowstone National Park Wolf Expedition.

Hi Everyone~
Where do I start when it comes to my latest adventure in the wild? Let's see... Sandrine & I camped out in prime Grizzley & wolf country for 5 nights. We were actually in the territory of one of the largest wolf packs in Yellowstone- the Slough Creek wolf pack. This pack includes 20 wolves. To give you an idea of how close we were to them, not far from our tents were two Elk carcuss's they had eaten. One was realatively fresh. There were tracks & wolf scat all over the place and as we hiked around, we ran face to face into 3 bison coming over a hill, saw many coyotees and a Grizzley had recently been spotted in the area.
Everytime I do these adventures in winter camping, I always learn something new. This time I learned never to put my tent next to a creek in the winter as the humidity made the temperature about 10 degrees cooler. To give you an idea of how cold it was, my temperature gage got down to 12 degrees. When I woke up every morning, not only were my boots frozen but mice had a nice little house to sleep in at night. There was mice poop inside my boots so I used my pen to check for any overnight guests. Next time, I will block my boots off from visitors in the winter- lol.
Sandrine & I woke up every morning at 6 a.m. and the cold makes it very hard to get out of your sleeping bag but we did it to watch the wolves.
Much of what we captured on video was unbelievable footage and I just hope the zoom on my camera picked up things in detail. What I learned was beyond my expectations. It's night and day to observe wolves in their natural element vs. working with wolves in captivity. The wolves looked unbelievably healthy with muscle and winter coats and the pack behavior was amazing. This trip has certainly given me so many new ideas to apply into my work with domestic dogs.
We were very lucky to have met Rick McIntre- a leading wolf expert at Yellowstone. For the past seven years, he has not missed one day of observing these packs from morning until night. I think if he had night vision goggles, he might be out there right now- Ha!
I think the most incredible things to witness were the wolves playing with each other and eating elk. It's one thing to watch stuff on video but to see it unfold in person gives you so much more insight. There were things I saw that I had never seen on any video or tv show before- it was amazing to say the least.
We had other things to deal with such as constantly carring bear spray, dealing with the snow, getting across the freezing cold water in the creek to saw dry firewood and roaming about Yellowstone to just see it's natural beauty.
For now, it's one trip down but I will be on my next adventure in January or Febuary so stay tuned for more... It will either be Paris to work with the SPA (like our SPCA), The International Wolf Center or another winter camping trip to Yellowstone where the temperature at that time gets down to 42 below zero. Either way, more trips are scheduled as I continue my two year mission into wild canid behavior.
Hope you're well and staying warm!
- Jennifer

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