• Gray male, the oldest Wyoming wolf ever documented, lived a mysterious existence amid human development, perched in the mountainsides overlooking Teton Valley, Idaho.

 

By Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com

Biologist Ken Mills sensed a shrewdness and smarts in Wolf 840M, a gray male canine that lived longer than any of the other 1,500-plus Wyoming wolves that have been ID’d and tracked since the species was reintroduced to the state three decades ago. 

First captured and collared as a 1-year-old living west of Cody in the Ishawooa Pack in April 2012, Wolf 840M had a way of escaping detection and threats for the dozen-plus years that followed. 

“Super savvy wolf,” Mills said, summing up an animal that lived 13 years and a few months.

That’s longer than any research wolves from Yellowstone National Park or Minnesota have survived. Only one wild wolf on record — Idaho’s B7, the last animal introduced into the U.S. from Canada in 1995 — lived longer, making it to at least 13.75.

Just two months after being caught in a trap on the east end of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, Wolf 840M, like many young adults, boogied west toward the Tetons. His travels terminated along the mighty mountain range’s western slope, in a sliver of wolf habitat overlooking Teton Valley, Idaho. 

There, wolves share the landscape with traps: Wolf trapping is permitted on the west side of the Wyoming-Idaho state line, an invisible boundary that splits the territory used by Wolf 840M’s Chagrin River Pack. (Appreciative U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists let a local resident who reported the west slope Teton wolves name the pack. The person chose to name the pack after a Cleveland, Ohio river.)

“When he was collared, he was caught in a trap,” Mills said. “So he knew what traps were.”

That learned experience and recognition of a life-threatening device — traps killed some of Wolf 840M’s packmates — might have extended his life, Mills said.

Mills learned from experience that Wolf 840M was equally adept at avoiding remote game cameras. 

“I’ve been running cameras up there since 2013, and I didn’t get photos of him for a decade, until 2022,” the longtime Wyoming Game and Fish Department biologist said. “I’d have parts of the pack coming through and he would not be there.”

The camera-trap sighting three years ago was a shocker.

Wolf 840M’s first tracking collar died in 2017, five years after he was collared up the South Fork of the Shoshone as a yearling. So by 2022, he would have been 11, already well beyond the typical wolf’s lifespan.

The next winter in 2023, Mills’ contracted capture crew was flying and collaring wolves west of the Tetons when they came upon an animal moving unusually slowly. 

“When they were chasing him, he just kind of ambled on downhill,” Mills recalled. “When I got the [dead] collar back, I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, I can’t believe he’s still alive.’” 

By this point, Wolf 840M was at least 12. Remote camera footage from around this time — his avoidance skills had evidently waned — showed that he moved around with an old dog’s gait. It wasn’t even a lope. 

“Very arthritic,” Mills said.

It’s unclear if Wolf 840M fed himself on the deer and elk herd that dwells on the Tetons’ west slope in his twilight years, or if he relied on packmates. But Mills’ best guess is that his mate, Wolf 1309F, did the heavy lifting, providing for the pack. 

“Based on the capture crew’s observations from when they caught him, and the camera footage I have, I’m not sure he would have been able to be fast enough [to catch prey],” Mills said.

The old wolf did still have some spunk, however. He bred 1309F in 2022 and 2023, siring litters at 11 and 12 years old. 

Best biologists can tell, Wolf 840M succumbed to old age. Wyoming Game and Fish’s contracted pilot picked up a mortality signal flying last July. Mills went to investigate the site and quickly found the carcass.

“The pilot was 9.5 yards off,” Mills said of the impressively accurate coordinates he trekked toward marking the remains. “He’s nuts.” 

By the time Mills got to him that summer, keeled over right next to a small spring, Wolf 840M’s remains were pretty well melted back into the ground in the west slope Teton territory, where he spent almost his entire life. 

That’s a pretty remarkable landscape for a wolf to exist at all, let alone to survive until 13 years and change. 

“They’re on the edge of a human-dominated landscape,” Mills said.

Wolf 1309F — Wolf 840M’s former mate — even sometimes crosses Teton Valley, Idaho, passing by towns like Victor and navigating subdivisions, a highway and the Teton River to access hunting grounds in the Big Hole Mountains. 

Mills repeated his earlier observation.

 “Super savvy wolves,” he said. “Most people don’t know they’re there.”

WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.