Two shadows slipped across the frozen landscape and away from a freshly killed elk. Their movements quick and light as they navigated a maze of sagebrush, the pair of wolves made their way toward me. The darker one led the other, a younger wolf in the pack, just as she had done during the hunt.
As I watched, they moved closer, their warm breath momentarily visible in the cold air. Soon, I could hear their rhythmic footfalls on crunching snow.
It was my third trip to Yellowstone National Park, my second as a natural sounds recordist, and my first in search of wolves. I’d come to document the sounds of these animals in January 2016, in order to preserve their voices for the park archives and for use in displays and stories for the public.
In my recordings, 926F’s voice is forever preserved. I wanted to be upset at the hunter and angry at the hunting laws that allowed her death, but I couldn’t move past grief. For comfort, I put her recording on repeat.
If the pair I watched knew I was present, they gave no sign of it. Instead, they greeted a third individual off to my right with brief sniffing and posturing. Then, as the light faded and darkness slowly overtook the day, these three members of the Lamar Canyon wolf pack spent the next 20 minutes in what can best be described as play. Just as I have seen my own domestic dogs do countless times before, these three very wild dogs ran, jumped and wrestled with each other, tails wagging as they brought the day to a close. Though millennia of evolution separate our domestic dogs from these wild ones, I saw the evolutionary links between them in their evening play.
Had it ended there, it would have been the memory of a lifetime. But as evening fully set in, the three broke off their play. They stood still in the darkness and, along with the rest of the pack hidden in the hills, sang out in a prolonged chorus which hung impossibly long in the cold night air. Luckily, I’d hit “record.”
I work as a natural sounds recordist for moments like these. My mission is to create an aural history of the sounds of our wild lands, in sad anticipation of the future loss of species and the changes to ecological communities caused by human impact on the planet. At best, these recordings help inspire support for the conservation of species and ecosystems. At worst, I create acoustic fossils of animals and landscapes that are gone too soon. I believe in the importance of my work, but sometimes I wish it wasn’t so damn necessary.
That January sighting was my very first glimpse of a wolf pack, and a remarkable one at that. The dark leader was the famous alpha female known to park biologists as 926F — affectionately named “Spitfire” by wolf watchers. In the two years since, this memory had faded, the details blurring, leaving me with just the unforgettable outlines.
In November, 926F was legally killed by a hunter just outside park boundaries in Montana. When I first saw the story, it was just another headline noting the loss of another famous animal at the hands of a trophy hunter. Her even more famous mother had met the same fate six years prior. But then, a note of recognition rang, and my stomach slowly sank.
I scrambled around, searching through old pictures and leafing through my field notes. It was her: my first wolf, and a prominent figure in my first field recording of a truly wild and iconic predator. She was gone and her voice silenced. I sat alone in disbelief in my basement office, everything still except the humming of the ventilation system. I’d listened to her howl hundreds of times from this same spot, fondly reliving our encounter.
In my recordings, 926F’s voice is forever preserved. I wanted to be upset at the hunter and angry at the hunting laws that allowed her death, but I couldn’t move past grief. For comfort, I put her recording on repeat. As howls filled the room, I drifted back to that January day in the park where our paths first crossed, and I remembered the sounds of a group of wild creatures at play.
Jacob Job is a natural sounds recordist working for the Sound and Light Ecology Team at Colorado State University. He has recorded wilderness soundscapes in national parks across the Western United States, as well as natural areas in the Caribbean and Central America. Listen to his recordings here.
This piece originally appeared on High Country News.
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This was just the most beautiful thing to hear this morning. Thank you for posting this.
Human beings are horrible. Killing for the act of killing. Such unconscious actions make this world what it is today! Killing any of Gods creatures has got to stop!!!
That was beautiful. Thank you for sharing.
Played this for my girl friend’s St Bernard, he’s the sweetest most unaggressive dog I’ve ever seen. He got all tuned up, almost scary. What do you think they were saying?
That recording is awesome. It caught me a little off-guard with its power and beauty. I hope someone stands in that same spot one day in the distant future, and hears the calls of a wild wolf.
What kind of animal kills for fun or “sport”? No one eats wolf meat.
I have respect for hunters who hunt to feed their families (I eat meat myself), but killing for trophies, especially endangered, social animals like wolves and elephants makes me sad.
You all need to do your research. The hunting of wolves is a part of the management of their species. It’s critical for not only their survival, but for the survival of all the other wild creatures you adore. There is a balance that needs to be stricken. Humans have encroached on the wild lands that these animals once occupied. That’s you and me, the houses we live in, the stores we shop at. They no longer have the space to run wild without management. It is highly trained biologists that are calling the shots here, not “trophy hunters”. Do yourselves a favor and research what hunting really is.
“Management” of a species who was here LONG before we ever moved into the picture. I don’t doubt that we now have to figure out a way to co-exist, obviously, the human race isn’t going to just move out and leave. Maybe we are the ones that need to better manage our relationship with this wild place we call home…
When you do the research, you’ll discover it’s development committees calling the shots here. Trophy hunters are merely soldiers used to prevent nature from interfering with our greed.
Wolves kill for sport. They often kill more than they will consume.
Sorry, but blatant falsehoods aren’t helping your case.
“Unlike humans, wolves do not kill for sport. Wolves and all other predators kill for sustenance and survival. Sometimes carcasses are found that are only partially consumed, leading to the assumption that the kill was abandoned and wasted. The reality is, wolves are very wary and alert, and are therefore easily chased from their kill if other predators or people approach. Wolves are usually long gone before people realized they’ve chanced upon a kill. Research reveals, however, that wolves return to their food repeatedly, sometimes over weeks and even months, and most often eat the entire animal.
Like many other predators, wolves occasionally kill more than can be immediately eaten, sometimes resulting in the death of multiple prey animals. This uncommon behavior, known as “surplus killing,” has been documented in many predator species. Surplus killing by wolves is more likely to occur in late winter, when having a supply of food caches to return to is critical for survival. Nature is rarely wasteful, if ever. Whatever the wolves don’t eat first, is welcomed nourishment for countless other animals.
Something entirely different (and unnatural) happens when predators pursue domestic sheep. Not only do sheep lack natural defenses but their instincts often do not serve them well either. Instead of fleeing, as wild prey would do, sheep tend to run in circles. This chaos can trigger a prey response in predators that can result in multiple kills. In the Northern Rockies this behavior has been recorded with mountain lions, bears, coyotes, wolves, and domestic dogs. However, many of the incidents where multiple sheep have been killed have been the result of panicked sheep stampeding themselves.”
https://www.livingwithwolves.org/about-wolves/tackling-the-myths/
Hunting is one of the oldest human activities, and allows us to connect with our environment in a very unique way. Any death of a wild animal is violent and often slow and agonizing—death from a hunter is definitely on the more humane side of things. While I don’t believe everyone should hunt, I believe hunters and non-hunters should respect each other. If the two groups join instead of divide, we can accomplish exponentially more on a conservation level. However beautiful this peace is, it anthropomorphizes the wolf in such a way to deepen rather than heal that divide.
Translation:
Personalizing the beauty of the innocent animals we murder makes it harder for us to convince everyone it’s super good thing.
Well, I did my research and found that EVERY justification for hunting and killing wolves is loaded with the word “ranchers”.
Sorry, but it all ends up being selfish rationalizations for human greed.
And to think this wolf never even knew it had a cute name and a fan following.
This wolf is a killer just like every other wolf. Its not a bad thing it is reality and the way nature works.
Giving these charismatic mega fauna cute names and pretending they are pets in a zoo does a great disservice to these wild animal.
You know what “does a great disservice to these wild animal(s)”?
Murdering them from long distances, mounting their heads on walls and telling everyone it’s done for their own good.
Nice try with the little pet/zoo straw man though.
Thank you for this. As hard as it was to read and listen too, it was a beautiful glimpse into a world few ever get to see or experience.