Tonight after work, Colin and I headed to the Lamar Valley in the Northeast section of the park to look for wolves. I hadn't seen any wolves all summer, and really wanted to before I leave at the end of the week. We arrived in the Lamar Valley at around 7:30 PM and there were already several big groups of people out there with their big scopes searching the valley for wolves.
Lamar Valley
We just had a pair of binoculars, but they worked pretty well. At first, we just saw a large herd of buffalo, but then we started picking out other animals, including antelope, a coyote picking at a carcass, and several pronghorn. Some people with scopes said they could see wolves way in the distance, but we couldn't see them in the binoculars because they were too far away. We headed further down the road to try and get a better vantage point. There we were able to spot a group of three wolves far off in the valley, which was really neat! We also spotted more pronghorn, buffalo, and antelope.
As the sun set, our visibility diminished and we finally decided to call it a night. It was neat to see the wolves, but it was also great to observe all the other wildlife out in nthe valley.
Wolf-watching - that is so exciting. Next summer, I'm definitely going to come out and visit you, and bring Casey if he can get away. So much I'm going to want to do, just from reading your blog.
ReplyDeleteI was in Yellowstone for 2 1/2 weeks in July of this year (2009). We did see wolves (Im pretty sure the Druid Pack) from Jackson Overlook in Lamar Valley but that was only one night out of the first 6 days. I think that did have something to do with it being July and the Elk, along with the wolves, moving to higher elevations in Lamar. Our best luck came from spotting wolves of either the Blacktail Pack or the Leopald Pack, about 1 mile west of the Blacktail Plateau drive entrance. We spotted them 5 nights in a row, between 8:00 pm & 9:30 pm, to the south of the highway about 400-600 yards off in the distance. We were fortunate enough to have them come within 300 yards on one night and even got to hear them howl for just a bit. It was the most beautiful thing Ive ever seen or heard.
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