It was back in 07, in December, one of those clear cold days, so cold little crystals of ice would fall out of the air, snow squeaked, no wind, still as death.
At first Roper had been following the Centennial Trail which was packed down from the weekend, now he was on a side canyon that would lead him up and over the gentle ridge where he hoped to spot game, it was on the elk migration route. He was pushing himself but not breathing deep, didn't want the cold air deep in his lungs. Push glide, push glide, the cross country skis were extending each stride out another three feet even uphill.
Roper had been coming to this same area since he finished high school, sometimes with friends and they'd ski the high bowls, sometimes with his girlfriend camping and fishing in the summer, but mostly by himself, looking for and finding lots of sign and wildlife. He never hunted those hills, couldn't, it was unit 44 in the Sawtooth, limited, it takes years to draw a tag and Roper had no interest in accumulating points to draw one of the coveted tags for the huge bull elk.
No Roper didn't even hunt here with his camera, though he enjoyed wildlife photography. The Sawtooths for Roper were special, a mini heaven where animals were plentiful and people few, the wildlife and the time lived only in his memory. It was there that he saw the tracks of the wolverine, not once but four times, he learned to predict where they might be found. It was here he knew of the secret elk calving grounds, but he always kept a far distance.
The area was a non motorized use area, National Forest, not Wilderness. A place of very few trails and even fewer people.
Today Roper was kind of hoping to spot an elk he'd been looking for. For five years now he'd been seeing the same monster bull stealing alfalfa at a friend's ranch. Elk in the winter are forced down into the narrow valleys of the lower elevations. It was a bull for the record books and it had a peculiar cheater tine, a branch in the antlers where there shouldn't be one, and it must have been genetic because that same cheater tine showed up at exactly the same place on other bulls of that herd. Last winter he and his friend had glassed the small herd with a spotting scope and seen that horn on a 4x4, a 5x5, a 6x6, a 7x7, and the big old bull himself a massive 8x9.
Since 03 or 04 a lot of the bulls stayed high when the cow herd came down. Escaping from the wolves he figured. Wolves didn't want to waste too much energy looking for solitary bulls eating the grass where the wind blew it free up on the ridges. The bulls exhausted and lacking reserves after the rut hid in the timber needing time to regain strength and to gain weight.
Some of the bulls were already down on the flats with the cow herd. Not so many as most years but quite a few. Usually his favorite bull would be down just after the end of the last hunting season. Going to look for him was mostly an excuse to go skiing. More than likely the elk were already down in small groups scattered along the banks of Willow Creek at lower elevations eating bushes and ungrazed grasses.
Squinting to look south towards the ridge further up the hill Roper thought he saw a faint line in the snow, a line he was looking for. The hill was on the migration route for elk and if there were any coming down they'd be walking single file leaving just such a track. He slipped his sun glasses over his eyes but he was still unsure of what he was seeing, too much sun.
Roper changed his direction slightly so to crest the ridge at the tracks instead of lower as he'd been intending. Over the twenty minutes it took him to get there he'd glance up once in a while but it was impossible to tell much from a distance. The line of tracks came down from the top of the hill and disappearing half way down after heading down the far side of a bench out of sight.
From up close it was as he expected, a trough of plowed snow and some hair rubbed off from the belly deep snow, post holes from all the hooves punching through down to the ground. Ten or fifteen elk, small herd, probably bachelors. On top of the elk tracks were dog (wolf), lots of them, more than a few. All of them a couple days old, well three if you counted the morning. After the snow stopped completely. The wolves were able to follow on the packed snow with ease.
Roper pointed his skis downhill and cut a couple big lazy telemark turns down to the bench. At the edge of the bench he could see what was hidden from above and even though it was no surprise it was still shocking. Strung out over the three hundred yards to the bottom of a draw were the intact carcasses of a bunch of elk. Lotsa blood, lots of churned up snow.
Skiing slowly now, barely gliding on the lower angle, Roper checked out the first elk he came to. It would have been the slowest one. Hamstrung, torn up perineum, (the part between the hind legs above the sex. Only the guts eaten. It was mostly the same on the other elk, all bulls, guts gone, some noses very bit up. An elk is a large, very tough animal with a thick hide some of those elk took a long time to die despite massive blood loss. You could see by the snow where their legs were still kicking in the bloody snow.
One bull had made it to the creek in the draw which must have been open water but was now frozen solid. That bull was unmolested, dead from the cold and now frozen in six inches of ice. Roper tried to cut a back strap off that one but gave up on the frozen hide, too much violence in one place already.
Up out of the draw Roper counted a dozen carcasses if you included the one in the water. None had the antlers with the cheater horn, they weren't "his" elk. The wolves had bedded right there, eight of them, at least a day old. Roper never did see those elk that winter, some fed on the alfalfa but they were different elk. Never saw that unusual rack with the cheater horn in exactly that place again.
Ought Seven was the beginning of the decline of that unit. For a while the place was lousy with wolf tracks and then they too were gone, moved to a place with more food, starved or killed each other, who is to know. Still some beaver down in Willow Creek, mostly up high they disappeared. Roper hasn't seen wolverine tracks since.
Below unit 44 the black line.
How much truthiness? His name isn't really Roper. He's not sure of the year, thinks it was 07, sure it was Willow Creek and December, 12 elk, killed as described, even the one in Willow Creek. It was unit 44, he never hunted there, only animal watching. Smaller things like adjusting the sun glasses I made up. Roper says he went 50 miles up in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness mid July this year with a string of horses and normally he'd see a lot of fresh wolf and elk tracks covering the tracks of his string on the way out, didn't see one. Unit's 33, 34, 35.
Why and what? Who knows. A wolf pack has to be one of the best land predators, they're made for it. The perineum is the safest place to bite a bull elk, skin is thinner, lots of blood close to the surface. Elk liver is big, maybe ten pounds or more, packed full of vitamins to last the winter, heart is good too, covered in fat no bones. I've heard of wolves revisiting old kills to eat bones and skin. I think they kill as much as they possibly can whenever they can.
In the grand scheme of things bulls don't matter, compensatory take as they say. The calves that are regular wolf winter diet , and then the pregnant cows in the spring are much more damaging. That take is additive. When hardly any calves live to become yearlings and lots of cows get eaten in late winter pretty soon populations crash.
Roper and people like him are pretty pissed off. Pissed at not only the folks that brought the wolves but at their own State Division of Wildlife for being the people that implemented what was a national policy. Pissed because there has been not enough effort at maintaining populations or even getting accurate counts for what's left.