3 Among the Wolves

by Helen Thayer

  Finally, when the sound had died away on the gentle breeze, all the adults filed into the forest. The evening hunt had begun. This was the first time the family had left the pups entirely alone.

  Four hours later, just before dawn broke across the ridges, distant howls signaled the hunters’ return. Arriving with the back leg of a sheep and two hares, they lay everything on the ground for the pups, who tore into the offerings. As was often the case, the hunters’ distended bellies showed that they had eaten their fill at the kill site.

  Wolves are remarkable eating machines. They gobble their food at tremendous speed and crack even large moose bones easily. Biologist David Mech has calculated that an adult’s stomach can hold as much as twenty pounds of meat at one time. When prey is available, wolves gorge themselves and then sleep.

  Although wolves eat formidable amounts when they find prey, they can endure long periods of fasting. In some places such as the polar Arctic, distances are vast and food is scarce. Hunts sometimes take wolves twenty or more miles from a den.

  It is important for wolves to hunt successfully during the summer months to ensure that they enter winter in good condition. Judging by how much food these wolves carried to the den and rendezvous site, they ate well. They appeared healthy and content. Because they lived in an area of abundant prey, they seldom traveled far and never went more than two days between hunts all summer long.

  Soon after dawn the sun climbed over the mountains to turn the frost crystals into millions of sparkling diamonds. Bill, Charlie, and I set out to explore a low ridge a mile from our camp. The low tundra plants had reached their full autumn splendor of fiery red, and the deciduous willows blazed yellow and orange. A faint game path led upward, then faded as we left the valley and began a gradual climb through scree and scattered trees.

  We had just paused to drink from our water bottles when Charlie whimpered and turned to face the direction we had come. To our surprise, Beta and the two pups were following us. When we stopped, they sat and waited until we hiked ahead. We trekked across the slope with the three shadowing us. Although we slowed often to see if Beta wanted to catch up, he traveled no closer. Similarly, Charlie showed no desire to join Beta and the pups, calmly striding ahead of Bill and me with hardly a backward glance. We scaled a gentle slope to a low ridge and sat on a boulder. Charlie still showed no interest in our companions.

  While we rested, the pups explored and dug for lemmings, which lived in the burrows between the rocks. The sight was hilarious. The pups scratched at such a furious pace that dirt flew in all directions. Thrusting their heads into each hole, they twice emerged with a tiny, squirming bundle that they quickly dispatched with a crunch and a gulp. Obsessed with the burrows, they seemed unlikely to be attracted by the smell of our food, but we kept our munchies in our packs anyway, agreeing that it was better to take no chances.

  After an hour’s entertainment, we returned to camp with Charlie in the lead. Beta and the pups remained on the ridge, and later accompanied us at a distance, just as any group of friends might enjoy a stroll in the wilderness. Now and then the youngsters leaped at something on one side of the trail, and Beta stopped to scent-mark twice. Once he rolled and squirmed on something on the ground, all four feet in the air. The pups copied him, more clumsily, in the same spot.

  Back at camp the rest of the wolves were spread out, still sleeping off their early-morning meal. As we passed, Alpha raised his head, yawned hugely, and went back to sleep. Instead of stopping at the rendezvous site, Beta and the pups continued behind us for the short distance to our camp. The threesome inspected the old den site for a few minutes before returning to their area, where they lay down for a nap in the shade of boulders. Charlie lay in the shade of the tent. The walk was over, and all had earned a rest.

  One cool afternoon at the end of August, while all the wolves except Mother and Beta were out hunting, the thirteen-week-old pups were moved to a second rendezvous site only two hundred yards from the first. Mother set out with the brothers frolicking close behind, while Beta brought up the rear. The spot was a shallow dugout, sheltered by dwarf spruces and rock buttresses, with a beaver pond a quarter mile away. This flat area provided more space for the fast-growing pups. When the hunters returned, they dropped a meal of a partially consumed Dall sheep at the new site. The pups, Mother, and Beta ate their fill.

  By the time the family established the second rendezvous site, we were even more convinced that the family was unwilling to leave the area’s safety to establish rendezvous sites farther away. The pups weren’t yet ready to move long distances with the pack. Perhaps the episode with the aerial hunters had caused the wolves to seek increased security, even if it meant delaying movement of the pups.

  With winter just around the corner it was time to decide when we would leave the area and begin our preparation for the second phase of our adventure, our winter expedition to northern Canada. After our departure, this pack would begin their winter travels throughout their hunting range as soon as the pups were ready for extended travel.

  We knew we wanted to stay into the first weeks of October, which necessitated a re-supply. To avoid subjecting Charlie to another unhappy parting from his wolf friends. Bill volunteered to hike out alone and return with food and fuel. Charlie and I would remain behind, an arrangement that would also prevent the possible destruction of our gear by curious wolves.

  Although temperatures were already hovering around freezing, Bill left his sleeping bag and the spare tent behind to allow more room in his pack for supplies. After calling Margaret on the radio, he packed and headed down the valley. Charlie followed him as far as his lead would allow, watching and barking until Bill disappeared. At the sound of Charlie’s barks Alpha, Denali, and Omega came running and silently watched Bill walk away. Then they set out to follow, returning four hours later.

  When a game becomes too serious, a showing of long white fangs warns off the offender.

  Later Bill told me he was surprised to find himself accompanied by the three wolves for the first few miles. After a two-day hike he met Margaret, loaded his pack with all he could carry and headed back. At night he snuggled into his bivvy sack wearing all his clothes to keep barely warm.

  Charlie and I spent the next five days hiking to the ridge tops. On the fifth evening Charlie signaled Bill’s return by bounding about and barking excitedly. After helping Bill unload his heavy pack I cooked dinner, and as we ate Charlie sat at Bill’s side. That night he slept across Bill’s sleeping bag. Clearly he was glad to have Bill back in camp.

  One early September morning we hiked out of camp as shafts of light filtered through the mountains. The wolves had already left for a hunt. We climbed to our lookout spot above the junction and scanned the tundra, but saw no sign of the wolves.

  The early brilliance highlighted the red and gold carpet of low plants that persisted through the shallow snow. In the spare, wide-open space, plant life is so fragile and the air is so incredibly fresh. “This is what makes me come alive,” I said, taking a deep breath of the crisp air. “I could live here forever.”

  Bill said it was the tundra that fascinated him. “So many times I’ve flown over tundra without really appreciating it,” he said. “When I look at the plants and realize what they have put up with to grow at all, it makes everything else seem unimportant. We’re looking at vegetation that’s taken hundreds of years to grow inches.”

  We sat for an hour, saying little, enjoying the quiet beauty that settled over us as gently as a feather. By now we both knew it was going to be harder for us to leave than we had ever imagined.

  Later, some distance away, an antlered caribou trotted from the trees onto the tundra, soon followed by a dozen more. Through binoculars we sighted seven wolves, led by Denali, bursting from the forest and charging after the caribou, who took instant flight.

  Then two dropped back. The wolves split up and chased both. One whirled to face its pursuers. Three wolves closed in, careful to stay out of
range of hooves and antlers. As the caribou spun again, a wolf leaped at its flank, slashed its hide, and jumped away. Bleeding heavily, the beast lunged. The three wolves charged, knocking the caribou to the ground. It kicked for only seconds. The hunters tore through the thick hide. The other four wolves had already pulled their quarry down and ripped open its belly.

  Seconds later, fifteen caribou breached the trees, saw the wolves, and bounded away in long strides across the tundra. As the feast continued, a dark figure emerged from the woods.

  A grizzly bear walked toward the wolves, his nose raised, having caught the caribou scent. Twenty yards from the carcass, the bear paused. With a snarl, Alpha lunged at him. The bear hurriedly backed away a few paces and sat down. Alpha returned to his meal but looked up now and then to check the bear, who remained motionless. Minutes later, the three wolves nearest the grizzly left their carcass to join the others at the second kill close by. The grizzly walked to the first, then set about gnawing and tearing at the partly consumed body. Four cawing ravens, who had been circling in wide loops above the kill, landed to share the meal. The bear showed no visible reaction to the ravens, who pecked greedily at the far edge of the carcass. As the wolves tore into the second animal, they seemed oblivious to their feasting neighbors. In twenty minutes the pack had eaten their fill and sat cleaning themselves, while the bear and the ravens continued to eat.

  After the wolves had licked themselves clean and rolled in the coarse sedges, they rose as a group. With raised hackles, they charged the bear and ravens. The bear ambled to a low rise a short distance away, while the ravens, with loud squawks of protest, swirled overhead. After ripping chunks of meat off the carcass, the wolves headed home, each with as much as they could carry. The bear and the ravens now had the leftovers to themselves.

  As the food disappeared, though, it was the bear’s turn to chase the ravens away. They hopped barely out of range of the bear’s snapping jaws. The last scraps were the bear’s to keep.

  Two formidable hunting species, wolves and bears are normally considered enemies, but here they had agreed to share food. Even the ravens were welcomed. The wolves appeared to readily tolerate the bear’s presence, on their terms. Perhaps the wolves, who had the upper hand in the encounter, had sensed that there was plenty for all. The episode contrasted dramatically with the pack’s behavior in an earlier grizzly encounter, when they had fiercely defended their pups from a bear approaching the den. The difference? In that case their young’s lives were in danger from an adversary capable of killing and eating them.

  I wondered how prevalent such sharing was. It is generally believed that animals defend their kills from other species and even from each other, and that sharing is not a survival skill in the wild. But we had seen something different.

  Throughout North America, wolves and bears share the same territory. Bears have been known to kill pups, but usually only when a bear stumbled onto a den defended by a single wolf. Although bears’ sharp claws, powerful shoulders, and massive teeth that can crush a skull are formidable weapons, and evidence of bears killing adult wolves does exist, biologist David Mech has found that the species usually avoid each other.

  As we returned to camp, Bill wondered aloud. “Is it possible that some species instinctively understand, at a primitive level, that they’re just a single link in the environmental chain—that to survive, everyone must survive?” We hoped to explore such questions further in the winter, when we would travel farther north to encounter arctic foxes and polar bears as well as wolves.

  Close to camp, we startled a group of caribou grazing on spruce boughs. In an instant they raced away, almost without a sound. Because the wolf family’s territory was situated in the northern region of the Porcupine caribou herd’s wintering grounds, the supply of prey would remain adequate throughout the winter. For thousands of years the herd of about 240,000 has continued a pattern of migration four hundred miles north across the Porcupine River to the coastal plain of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, where their calves are born. In August, with new calves at their side, they migrate back to overwinter in their traditional grounds.

  The annual migration is the basis of sustenance for the Gwich’in people, a native culture of about 7,000 who live along the migratory route. Calling themselves “the people of the caribou,” the Gwich’in have a lifestyle that is traditionally interwoven with that of the Porcupine caribou herd.

  My journal writing prompted some interesting interactions with the wolves. One day a loose page from my journal fluttered on the breeze to land ten feet over the wolves’ boundary line. The page contained my notes carefully describing a howling session.

  Without thinking, I crossed the invisible scent boundary and bent to pick up the page, but looked up just as my hand reached the paper. Alpha had silently approached and stood three feet away. He glanced at the page for a moment and then, with his head cocked to one side, his yellow eyes met mine with a soft but inquiring expression.

  I straightened slowly and stepped back. Alpha came forward, took the page in his mouth, and turned toward the rendezvous site. I hoped I could get him to drop the notes. They represented many hours of work, and I wasn’t about to give them up without protest. I forced myself to extend my hand. “Alpha, that page is mine,” I said softly.

  At the sound of my voice, he stopped and looked back. His steady eyes gave me a look of understanding. Keeping my hand extended, I continued to speak to him in quiet, even tones. With his gaze still fixed on mine, he dropped the paper and then strolled to a shady rock with a barely perceptible fanning of his tail.

  I retrieved the page, hoping I appeared more at ease than I felt as I walked back to the tent. Bill returned from washing a shirt in the stream, having watched the entire episode. We agreed that it was another signal of acceptance. Alpha could easily have kept my precious notes, or even urinated on them in a display of dominance, but he chose to treat me as a friend instead.

  During an eight-day spell of unusually mild weather, the mosquito swarms that had survived the early August frost blossomed again. Seeking to escape them, we decided to flee to the windy ridges. Bill and Charlie climbed eastward to explore, while I chose a spot closer to camp to catch up on my journal. I sat on a just-right rock, one with a backrest conveniently carved by nature.

  Shortly my attention turned to Denali, who was hurrying up the trail toward me to seek refuge from the mosquitoes. The trail passed within two feet of me. I bent over my notes, pretending not to notice him. He hustled by without so much as a pause or a sideways look, ignoring my existence entirely. He had places to go, and this human he had studied for so long didn’t warrant his attention anymore.

  Denali endures mosquitoes by the stream. Breezy ridgetops are the wolves’ only escape.

  I expected him to continue on to a place of his own choosing. Instead, with his back to me, he sat down directly behind me on the path, twenty feet away. We were two friends sharing the same desire to escape the whining pests. Later Omega passed by, also without visible reaction. Some sign of recognition would have been nice, I thought, but then again, I had been paid a compliment. I was so trusted there was no need to keep an eye on me.

  I wrote in my journal, describing this new and surprising event, for another hour. Before returning to camp, I tossed a small rock a few feet along the ridge to see if I could gain the wolves’ attention. Denali opened a sleepy eye but, seeing that it was only me, went back to sleep.

  That night I read my journal notes to Bill. The last entry read, “Today these wolves taught me the real meaning of unconditional trust. To be so trusted is an experience I shall never forget.”

  Parting

  A HARD SEPTEMBER WIND Swept through the mountains from the north to signal the first blast of winter. Heavier frosts blanketed the tundra, and a skim of ice covered the ponds, while the shallow pools were frozen solid. Temperatures dropped into the 20s. Snow showers blanketed Wolf Camp One every few days, covering the mountains in a whi
te mantle. Yellow willow leaves drifted to earth, and fiery red tundra plants disappeared beneath the snow. The shimmering greens, pinks, and blues of the aurora borealis, or northern lights, were visible in the lengthening darkness. An Arctic winter’s deep cold had begun its slow spread across the land.

  Although the pups now traveled longer distances, they still had not joined the pack in a hunt of large animals. They caught lemmings and other rodents close to home and now and then returned with a hare.

  One mid-September morning, more than five months after we first arrived at Wolf Camp One, we explored an area three miles away. We crossed ridges dusted with snow and traversed valleys where drifts had accumulated in pockets of willow thickets. Inches-deep surface water lay frozen in the 24-degree air.

  After a two-hour trek, we climbed to the top of a ridge and walked along its crest above a deserted beaver swamp. A quarter mile beyond we saw a picturesque lake, rich in aquatic plants, no more than two feet deep and two hundred feet wide, nestled in the tundra at the edge of a taiga forest. Animal tracks in the scant snow cover radiated from the water’s edge. As we approached the lake, a startled lynx scurried to the protection of willows and spruce.

  At my approach the mother raises her head with a loud snort, warning me that my unexpected interruption to their foraging is unwelcome.

  At the sight of two hares hopping past the far shore, Charlie tried to give chase. We pulled him back. Disgruntled, he barked in protest. The shadowy form of a female moose, barely visible through the branches on the far side of the lake, quickly withdrew into the dense undergrowth.