* * *
In 1971 I watched all nineteen wolves of the Savage River family surprise a band of eighteen sheep. The wolves had spotted the sheep from a mountaintop five miles away and then approached them undetected by a series of seven- to eight-thousand-foot knife ridges. The final approach required a climb out of a steep, narrow gorge to a high plateau where the sheep were feeding, which allowed the wolves to appear suddenly in a line over the top edge, a mere one hundred feet from the sheep. The wolves stood motionless for a few seconds, looking at the sheep; the sheep, so completely surprised that they froze where they stood, looked at the wolves. Their only escape was to run directly through the line of wolves.
After a few seconds of suspended animation, most sheep dashed straight into the wolf line, which quickly became a chaotic mixture of thirty-seven wolves and sheep. Six large rams, weighing about two hundred pounds each, led this dash, running into a section of the wolf line including six yearlings. The yearlings seemed hesitant to confront the rams and two were bowled right over when they tried. Most sheep escaped through this section, but the beta male, LT, met one of the rams head-on and hauled him down by the neck. Most of the other wolves quickly joined him and began ripping away and eating.
Meanwhile, several young wolves continued chasing a few straggling ewes in circles on the plateau; within a few minutes, all except one had given up. The persistent young wolf finally caught a small ewe and held her by the nose but was unable to wrestle her to the ground. The other wolves were too occupied at the ram carcass to notice, so the young wolf struggled for all it was worth to hold on to the ewe. Finally, LT and an adult female saw what was happening, and ran to the younger wolf's aid, quickly dispatching the ewe.
* * *
Field notes Denali #21
July 1989
The first time the wolves brought the caribou to bay, it looked like they might get it. The lead wolf was holding him and trying to grab the nose and within a few minutes 2 trailing wolves arrived—a good-sized tan and a smaller tan that looked like a yearling—it was the less-experienced wolf mentioned earlier. During the first “at bay,” the 2 larger wolves were working together to try to hold the caribou where it was (in the river) whereupon the 3rd wolf arrived. However, within perhaps 20–30 seconds this 3rd wolf began trotting away, to the South, along this channel. This looked very strange to us, but I assumed that wolf might be going to position itself upstream in order to cut off this escape route.
* * *
Not until they are almost two years old, or about the age of sexual maturity, do wolves reach the fourth phase and become effective hunters without guidance from older wolves. During the approximately two years of training that the young require to gain full skill at hunting, it is obvious that they closely watch and follow the moves of adults, learning as they go, with much trial and error during that first winter.
This prolonged period of dependency on the adults in proportion to their total life span provides the means by which knowledge can be passed from one generation to another. This is a general characteristic of intelligent animal societies, including our own. And as with the young in many primitive human societies, young wolves have the added advantage of being raised in an extended family, where the presence of many adults caring for them—not just one or two parents—exposes them to the broadest possible opportunity for learning.
It Takes a Family
Reproductive relationships are the strongest, most durable bonds in an established family of wolves, but the bonds between yearlings and the current litter of pups can be surprisingly important. When the pups are old enough to leave the den, and the fall forays begin, the close bonds between yearlings and pups remains strong, and in some instances appears crucial for the pups' survival.
* * *
Field notes Denali #21
July 1989 continued
Within a couple of minutes, the caribou did begin fleeing away, with the two larger wolves pursuing, and we thought the third wolf—who was ~100 yds away, about the route where the ’bou was running—would close off this escape route. But we were astounded to see it just run off farther to the south, leaving the escape route wide open. It was as if this young, inexperienced wolf had no clue whatsoever as to what the hell was going on—or perhaps it was a little afraid. In any case, the caribou got away and ran up the upper W branch of Polychrome Flats. The young wolf did eventually join in the chase, and ultimately helped a little in the final kill. But in general its ineptness and lack of experience was very obvious, compared to the other two wolves—it was likely only a yearling wolf, based on its size and body appearance.
* * *
During a late August 2009 research flight in Denali National Park, I watched as three females of the Toklat family moved three pups to a new location within the group's territory. The alpha female had produced nine pups in May, and both she and a larger female had nursed them into June. The third female, a fifteen-month-old yearling, is likely the same female who I believe also nursed the nine pups. The following photo sequence shows highlights of the yearling female's attentiveness to the pups as observed on the late August flight. They also convey a good sense of the wolves' intelligence, expressiveness, and emotional depth. Photo directions vary, because we are circling.
* * *
Snapshot: Son
Troy Dunn
One of my favorite wolves was an alpha male Gordon called Son, because he was the son of a prior alpha couple. First time I saw him, he was just a little black pup. The whole Toklat family was together; the adults, subadults, and pups were on a Sanctuary River sandbar, eating a caribou kill. The pups were tucked under some brush several feet away. Also on that caribou was an adult grizzly, so here we had the Toklat adults on one end of the remains of a caribou and on the other mere feet away this grizzly. Amazingly, everyone was leaving everyone alone.
As we watched, another bear showed up: a subadult grizzly that was about a half mile downstream caught a whiff of the caribou, and started on a dead run upriver. When this subadult bear got within sight of the big bear and the wolves, it acted just like a teenager. It jumped into the water, pounding its paws and slapping the water; then it sat in the water with its feet up and bobbed back downstream, out of view.
The adult grizzly started ambling off upstream. Suddenly, that little black pup came out of the brush and walked right behind the bear, following it. We wondered, what's that little pup doing? It was like that little wolf was thinking, OK, bear, hit the bricks, as if he was pushing him off that kill. The bear didn't turn around, but the adults saw what was happening, and two of them flanked the little pup, one on each side as escorts. The bear didn't care, didn't turn around, and walked off across a small section of water where the pup and escorts returned to the caribou.
Gordon said to me, “That pup has the makings of an alpha male.” And then years later, that pup did become the alpha male. Way back then, Gordon could tell.
* * *
14 See more on ravens and wolves in chapter 9.
CHAPTER 5
GOING WITH THE FLOW: THE DAILY LIVES OF WOLVES
IN A POETIC RESONANCE WITH THE CABIN HIS PARENTS BUILT ON A WILDERNESS lake in Ontario, Haber bought some land and built a cabin on the banks of the Nenana River just outside the park entrance. Haber's childhood experiences at the cabin on Lake Huron, said his sister, Mary, fostered his love of nature and wildlife and were his first steps toward his life in Alaska with Denali's wolves—wolves who, he soon learned, may have lived in a nationally designated wilderness but were not well protected.
In the winter of 1982–1983, the Savage River family group, who, along with the Toklat, was his primary study group for seventeen years, disappeared. Haber concluded they were all killed by illegal hunting, possibly aerial hunting. He wrote a series of papers on aerial wolf hunting in Alaska, and he continued advocating for a protective buffer and a more enlightened attitude toward and management of Alaska's wolves. In 1987 the National Park Service began radio-
collaring a few members of each wolf family. Haber was initially opposed to it and remained concerned about its effects, as explained in his critique of the collaring deaths described in chapter 10. However, he also began using the collaring frequencies to find wolves by air in winter, thus allowing him to follow many more wolf groups than he would otherwise have been able to, and to gather more definitive evidence about hunting and trapping deaths.
He continued to observe their daily lives, finding nothing boring, not even, recalled his pilot Troy Dunn, when all the wolves were doing was lying about “flaked out” in the midday heat. It was important to Haber to record more than just the big events of the wolves' lives in order to truly understand these animals. He didn't just record hunts, for example, but also recorded the time spent gearing up for a hunt as well as times when wolves ignored prey that walked right by them. He observed how much, and the ways in which, wolves play; he observed when and why they howled. He was enthralled by their skill in maneuvering through their environment, compared, sometimes, to his own.
WITHIN THE FAMILY GROUP, WOLVES' LIVES ARE HIGHLY COOPerative and harmonious, and demonstrate an unusual depth of emotional attachments. For example, I never observed a feeding order, not even when as many as nineteen wolves ate at a small kill. Their daily lives are filled not only with raising pups and hunting but also with much socializing among each other and navigating their vast territories.
Group socializing is a big deal for the family group. In summer these ebullient romps and howl-alongs are associated with hunting departures and arrivals, and they take place at prominent pup areas of the homesite, allowing the pups to join in wholeheartedly. In winter, socializing happens as they travel.
Playtime
In watching wolves for any extended period one is impressed with the amount of play that takes place. Play sessions are often spontaneous and can start for almost any reason. It seems that the family is never too hungry or tired to take time out for play. If a half hour passes without at least some play, it is an unusual half hour in the daily routine of a wolf family group.
Play often involves only some members of the group, although I have recorded intense sessions of rough-and-tumble play where the entire group participated for as long as forty-five minutes. In December 2002 I watched nine wolves play for over a half hour on a frozen lake in the Denali region of Alaska. Four other wolves of this family group were resting at the scant remains of a moose the wolves killed a day or two earlier.
In winter, wolf families of this region eat a significant meal of moose, mountain sheep, or caribou on average once every few days. They obtain these meals while hunting over distances averaging fifteen miles per day, including periods of rest. About half their meals come from kills, and on average 5 percent of their winter encounters with moose result in kills. The other half of their winter meals are scavenged (animals that died from other causes); the majority of the moose they eat are scavenged. They dig many of the scavenged meals from beneath the snow—from as deep as ten feet into densely packed drifts and avalanches—and must expend additional effort gnawing into the frozen remains. So a good meal is usually a hard-earned, happy event. And over the next day or two, before they begin hunting again, almost anything is likely to trigger another bout of spirited play, such as an opportunity for a wide-open run in fresh powder snow.
* * *
Field notes #134
June 2006
7:25–8 am (Stampede II) Wolf sleeping out in front of den with one black pup. Wolf returned from a hunt, very distended belly obviously from eating. She arrives at 7:35 am going straight to den in trees along bank. Initially she does not see #930 and black pup. Four pups 200 feet out on bar. But a few minutes later she comes out of trees, followed by three tan pups toward the others. The black pup sees her and comes to meet. #930 remains flaked out, not responding in the slightest. The four pups get her to regurgitate again, probably several times. Later the black pup and one tan nurse briefly while she is laying down, though she is not accommodating them much—doesn't seem to want to nurse.
* * *
Individual wolves, especially young ones, often seem to run just for the joy of it, even after an unsuccessful hunt. I once watched a young adult Toklat wolf unsuccessfully pursue caribou. This yearling and at least two others were resting with pups at a rendezvous site when a band of caribou strolled by, following the gravel bar of a nearby river. The other wolves ignored the caribou, but this wolf took off after them, chasing for about twenty minutes over various routes adding up to five miles as the fleeing caribou split into various subgroups and individuals. All the caribou eventually pulled away, but the young wolf continued running across the tundra. Even without hunting success, I'm often left with the impression that wolves simply enjoy running. It is an almost effortless loping and bounding, a thing of beauty to watch.
There are variations of play that can best be described as games. In “tag,” wolves run about attempting to pull on each other's tails. Once the game gets going and a few tails have been pulled, it is amusing to watch how the participants begin to keep their tails tucked securely between their legs. “Ambush” is another game, in which one wolf runs ahead of the group and crouches close to the ground or behind a low bush, waiting like a cat to pounce on the others when they near.
* * *
Field notes #134
June 2006, continued
2:30 pm—All seven pups (5 black and 2 tan) appear in the open and romp and play. Then 830, who had been resting ~ 100 yds away, comes to them. They mob her, food begging. She does not regurgitate. Several times 1–2 pups try to nurse and each time she reprimands them by snapping at them—definitely is not nursing any longer. She then lies down and allows them to climb all over her etc. Lots of this and pup-pup play.
3:30 pm—830 howls & looks to the S side of bar ~200 ft away. Apparently that is where 429 is resting. Then the pups look that way. 429 appears, & comes to pups & 830—pups mob him—he snaps at them but they persist.
* * *
Play can benefit members of a social group in a variety of ways. One important advantage is that it enables members to maintain a close familiarity with one another, which favors close cooperation. It isn't coincidental that wolves are at the same time probably the most playful, as well as the most socially cooperative, of nonhuman animals.
In the following photographs, fourteen wolves of the Swift Northeast family travel in the usual single-file manner on October 18, 2008, with the alpha male leading. However, the afternoon sunshine and fresh powder snow are irresistible to the younger adults and pups, and many of them break into frequent bouts of play along the way.
Heat of the Day
Wolves have extraordinary sensory abilities with their noses, eyes, and ears. Their senses are supersharp when they are alert, especially at times of hunting departures and arrivals and while hunting. Just the opposite is true when they are resting during the day, particularly in summer heat. While at their summer homesites, they hunt at night when it's cooler, and sleep during the day.
They often rest in fortress locations, such as along the high rock bluffs at the Toklat and Teklanika dens, where they can see or hear approaching intruders while remaining concealed. Nevertheless, they can be completely surprised. I have walked inadvertently into sleeping wolves, where pups detected me and showed great curiosity before the adults awoke. It takes a lot to stir adult wolves into any major action on a hot, sunny day. A wolf suffers conspicuously in such heat, even in its “lightweight” summer fur coat. It wants little more than to flake out in some spruce or willow thicket and scrape its bed a little deeper, to get at the cooler dirt below. An intruder enjoys its best chances of approaching a homesite closely under these conditions, although the most threatening intruders—bears and other wolves—are themselves unlikely to be prowling around on a hot day.
There are times when wolves are simply not in a hunting mood, notably on a hot day after a tough night on the trail provisioning growing pups, as
noted in the previous chapter. As in familiar predator-prey scenes from the East African plains, the wolves often ignore nearby prey, and the prey seem to likewise ignore the wolves. Sometimes the wolves and prey step by each other so closely with such aloofness that it seems like a game. I've seen as many as forty caribou move casually by a den less than two hundred feet away from as many as fifteen adult wolves, and all the wolves did was raise their heads for a brief, disinterested glance, maybe begin a twenty-second chorus of howls, but then with sleepy-eyed yawns drop back to sleep.
Perhaps the most astounding of these encounters was with the Savage River family in late July of 1981. A National Park Service photographer and I were watching from my usual observation point about two hundred yards away. Most of the ten adult wolves had been sleeping for a half hour after some intense socializing following the return of hunters. One high-ranking male arose to a sitting position, looked around for a minute, then dropped back down to resume his snooze. Two other adults stretched out nearby.
Suddenly, three adult moose—a large bull and two cows—appeared on the ridgeline 150 yards from the den. They continued ambling downslope, apparently unaware that they'd just stumbled into a wolf family at rest. At seventy-five yards the wolves still had not responded, but now the moose were stopping every few seconds and acting skittish. The bull and a cow ambled over to some willow, and then headed off to an area of good willow browsing about a quarter mile to the north. One cow lingered to browse on willows, and then walked to a brush-filled gully where at least two wolves rested. She browsed for about fifteen minutes with no response from any of the wolves resting not more than fifty feet away.
Among Wolves: Gordon Haber's Insights into Alaska's Most Misunderstood Animal Page 8