A GORP Content Partner
Adapted from
The Yellowstone Wolves
by Gary Ferguson
The Death of Wolf Ten
A Tragic Chapter in the Yellowstone
Wolf Reintroduction Project
Part I
Number Ten's last look at the world comes midmorning on a warm Saturday in April, from atop a sage-covered hill outside the old coal mining town of Bearcreek, Montana. Edge country, where the mountains and the high desert come hip to hip, cradling a patchwork of croplands that spill across the bottoms toward the Clarks Fork River. A place of magpies and mule deer, of big spring winds and soil that puddles to grease in the wake of melting snow. The ground Ten is wandering over yields sweeping views— south toward the oil patch country of northern Wyoming, east to where the sun hovers above the tilted plateaus of the Pryor Mountains, some forty miles away.
Wolf number Ten, alpha male of Rose Creek Pack, shortly before release in March, 1995.
While it's true there's no shortage of mule deer in these draws and coulees, not to mention elk roaming the pine and aspen woods to the south, it's probably safe to say that this is the extreme edge of what most wolves would consider good home turf. Downslope the lands are increasingly dappled with ranch houses and small towns, the ground parceled by barbed wire. Country worth exploring, maybe. But not settling.
To say that some of the people living in those ranch houses and small towns aren't overly fond of wolves is like saying some Baptists don't seem overly fond of the devil. A few are more than willing to give wolves powers of evil that would make Stephen King cringe with embarrassment, stuffing wolves with a depth of gloom and viciousness that strikes those who don't live in the rural West— as well as a great many of us who do— as utterly inexplicable.
Interested in Wolves?
See the questions and responses by Yellowstone Wolves author Gary Ferguson.
Against that background it's easy to assume that the man on the road above Scotch Coulee this morning pulling a borrowed 9mm rifle out of the back of his pickup, leaning in against the cab and setting an uphill aim over some one hundred and forty yards, pulling the trigger, killing number Ten with a single shot, is acting with clear intent to rid this country of wolves. And in a strange way, casting it like that, as the work of a zealot, might somehow make it easier to take. Easier than a killing that's little more than a thoughtless act, a bit of brazen swashbuckling fueled by a few beers and a little weed, the latest in a long line of firing guns at coyotes and dogs and God knows what else— often intending to kill, but on occasion shooting with the intent of scaring, of coming close.
"I can't believe it," Chad McKittrick will tell me later in a rare moment of shell shock, sharing what, if true, would bring new meaning to the notion of wandering around with a black cloud over your head. "I just can't believe I actually hit it. Shit, I've been shooting at stuff for years, just messing around. But this is one of the few times I've hit something."
Chad is a broad-shouldered man, balding, quick to flash the people he knows a grin from under his worn, smudged, black cowboy hat. Along with a muscled chest and arms, he sports a slight paunch, both traits gleaned from long seasons spent cutting Douglas-fir in the Pryors, hauling it back to Red Lodge, and as often as not, selling it by parking the load in front of the Snow Creek Saloon and waiting at the bar for customers.
Wolf Ten, the first Yellowstone wolf to die.
Though born and raised in Montana, Chad can't really be described as a good old boy, at least not in the usual sense. Like a number of forty-something men in these mountains, he's at various times been a ski goon living for fresh snow, a carpenter, a cowboy, a devoted follower of that getrich-quick pony ride that's forever booming and busting in the oil fields to the south. Up until now, if you'd have run into him some night in the Snow Creek or the Blue Ribbon, straight or twisted, as likely as not he might have struck you as a genial, even gentle sort. In the eight years I've lived here I've rarely heard anyone talk of Chad as being either overly sour or mean.
His friends will tell you that the times he's bared his teeth and started barking all came after an accident years ago, when he was forced to dive out the door of a drilling truck with no brakes careening down a steep Colorado mountain road, smashing his head open against the pavement in the process, immediately after which the good doctor introduced him to a muley mix of pain-killers so full of kick he ended up popping them long after the pain had up and left. But on first meeting, or second or third or even fourth, a mean streak probably wouldn't be something you'd suspect.
In truth Chad shouldn't have been in these sagebrush hills today. Wouldn't have been within five miles of wolf number Ten had he not been out yesterday looking for bear at the foot of the mountains and gotten his truck stuck in that greasy mud that forms above Scotch Coulee every year about this time. After which he walked back down the road to the house of an old friend from high school, Dusty Steinmasel, and made arrangements to shuttle another of his own trucks back this morning to pull out the stuck one out. It was shortly after pulling the truck free that the two men spotted Ten on the top of the hill— Chad pulled out his rifle, looked through the scope, pulled the trigger, and blew him away.
Yellowstone Wolf project leader Mike Phillips (left foreground), Mollie Beattie, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit, and Yellowstone Park superintendent Mike Finley release the first wolf into Yellowstone.
While at his trial the prosecution will suggest that Chad did in fact know what he was shooting at, that's a question that'll never be fully answered. What's perhaps most outrageous is that after the two men walk up the hill and discover that yes, this really is a wolf, they drive over to Belfry for a twelve pack of beer and then, at Chad's insistence, come back and grab the wolf carcass, skin it out and take the head, carry the booty ten miles to Chad's house, drive back to Dusty's, all the while with the collar sitting in the back of the pickup still transmitting location signals. More evidence, many will claim, that Chad is a staunch member of the local screw-the-feds club.
Then again, it could be just another example of the guy's almost child-like tendency to be forever in the moment, with no thought of what might wait around the corner— a little-boy trait that at its best makes Chad worry free, quick to forgive, and at its worst leaves him at the mercy of some dark and dangerous whims.
Death of Wolf Ten; Part II Death of Wolf Ten; Part III
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