Quiet Day

WS Day 21 YNP as follows:

The day was very calm and quiet, cold, too. Not much happened, really. We saw the pack near their 1997 rendezvous site near the Western base of Mount Norris and then they promptly moved up the Lamar River towards the confluence with Cache Creek and remained out of sight for the rest of the day. We didn't even get a good view because the wolves moved when the sun was rising and we were blinded for a while.

A short time later we heard a lone wolf howl and it turned out to be one of the gray pups, alone and seemingly following the trail of the others. The pup went out of sight and Rob and I took the opportunity to collect data on two previous kills. One "kill" wasn't actually a wolf kill but rather it seemed that an old cow elk just fell over and died. We couldn't find any evidence to suggest that wolves had anything at all to do with her death.

Before we did that, however, the plane did fly over the [Druid Peak] pack - they made a count of 7 wolves, and with our one pup that means that one wolf, most likely the black pup as we saw #40F (whose collar is broken) moving up the Lamar. Unfortunately, my email server was not working right yesterday and my message with Day 19 and 20 are in limbo; I will strive to get that resolved ASAP. In case you didn't hear, the Crystal Creek and Druid Peak Packs had a monumental encounter on top of Specimen Ridge near Agate and Quartz Creeks. To make a long story short, the Druids got whipped and thoroughly chased. If the pack is out of view tomorrow Rob and I will most likely hike up to the chase area (where Druid also killed an elk calf) to search for any wolves that might have been killed, and to pick up the calf carcass. At this time it is very premature to suggest that any wolves were indeed killed in this encounter - but we won't know unless we find a dead wolf and/or we get a decent count of the Druid pack.