American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West

At dawn, Steven Turnbull lines up two wolves in his sights: one black, one gray, both still, ears cocked, their eyes on him. He squeezes his rifle’s trigger. The black wolf wheels away into the brush at the shot. The gray drops to the ground, dead.

As Turnbull trudges through the snow to claim his trophy, the black wolf returns and begins to howl. From the willows behind him, more wolves emerge and join in. Turnbull shoulders his rifle nervously. He knows wolves rarely attack humans, but he is startled by this display. It strikes Turnbull that he must have killed their leader. He backs off and departs in his truck.

He returns an hour later, armed with his .44 Magnum. His trophy is still there, and the pack has now left. Inspecting the dead wolf, he notices her collar. When Turnbull takes the dead wolf to the Cody Game and Fish office, the supervisor, Mark Bruscino, confirms Turnbull has killed a Yellowstone wolf. Bruscino calls the park and leaves a message with the collar’s serial number for Doug Smith. When he hears back from the park a few hours later, he calls Turnbull.

It is not until the next morning that Rick and Doug McLaughlin find out, as they are sat in a car together watching the sun come up near Druid Peak. When Rick gets the news and shares it with Doug, the two friends sit in the darkened car and cry.

That night, Doug Smith, out of town for a conference, reaches his eccentric colleague Rick. He recalls when they found 21 together and how it crushed Rick. He hopes to console him but ends up breaking down himself. Rick does his best to comfort Doug, listing the wolves he has seen in the park that day, but Doug has to ring off, sobbing.

Smith’s bosses warn him to tread carefully with the media, but there is little he can do. The New York Times reporter Nate Schweber files another, more prominent story on O-Six’s killing. The headline reads, “‘Famous’ Wolf is Killed Outside Yellowstone.” Outlets worldwide run with the story. ABC News airs a segment that declares O-Six the world’s most famous wolf, as does National Public Radio. The story reaches millions of people, many of whom had no idea wolves were thriving in Yellowstone—or being hunted. Doug Smith’s phone rings off the hook. Many in the public are furious and demand to know why hunters can prey on wolves right on the park’s borders.

Donors to the Wolf Project are up in arms too. Why should they sponsor expensive collars if hunters can just shoot these precious animals dead? Some people even blame Smith for collaring O-Six in the first place. Others call the park, desperate to know what has become of the Lamar pack. But Smith has no easy answers for them. Four days after O-Six’s killing, the pack has not yet returned home. The only good news is that O-Six’s killing filled Crandall’s quota for wolves that season. The rest of the pack, if it is still there, should be safe.

For Doug Mclaughlin, O-Six’s killing is too much to take. He sets out on a guerilla campaign to frustrate local hunters. Using GPS logs, he finds the trails most used by wolves leaving the park and sets up high-pitched noise emitters, hoping to drive wolves back toward the park. He also sets up signal-jamming equipment, in case the hunters have indeed found a way to track the collared wolves.

But it comes too late to save the Lamars, who are now splintered and return only in dribs and drabs to the park. On New Year’s Eve, 755, 776, and 820 come back, but the remaining pack members are nowhere to be seen. Their home is now threatened by the Junction Butte Pack, and there is little 755 and his daughters can do to stop them. The situation deteriorates. 755 finds himself alone and can do little more than scavenge off kills. He shows some interest in the Junction Butte females but is unable to lure one out to him.

In January, spotters observe 755 near Druid Peak with a gray Mollie female known as 759. She seems interested in the Druids’ old den, but by spring she faces competition for it from 755’s own daughters and their new male companions. One March morning, Rick, Doug, and Laurie hear howling from the site, then spot 755 running for his life. 759 trails him as best she can, but she has been brutally attacked. The spotters surmise it was Middle Gray and 776 who did the damage. They, too, have designs on the old den, and though they are family with 755, they are doing what instinct tells them to. The next morning, curled up with 755, 759 dies from her wounds. 755 tries to reconcile with his daughters, to no avail. Forced to choose between their new mates and their dad, they can only make one choice. 755 trudges west, through the Lamar Canyon, over the Slough Creek flats, then all the way through Little America. He has lost the home he made with O-Six, and he does not stop until it is far behind him.

As the hunting season winds down, Yellowstone counts it losses. Hunters have killed 12 park wolves, including six collared ones. There is still one final blow to come, though. In late April, a Jardine outfitter and rancher named Bill Hoppe finds 13 dead sheep on a pasture near the park boundary. Montana wildlife officials determine the culprits were a pair of wolves. Instead of sending government trappers to take care of them, they issue Hoppe a special permit allowing him to shoot the wolves himself, should they return. These permits have faced scrutiny from critics who say farmers don’t have the resources to identity whether a wolf is the killer in question or not.

Two weeks later, Hoppe shoots a collared Yellowstone female known as 831. When Doug Smith hears the news, he looks up the location data from 831’s collar. It looks like she was in Mammoth, 10 miles away, during the killing of Hoppe’s sheep and most likely didn’t do it. Local gossip also suggests that Hoppe, a longstanding wolf opponent, failed to remove the dead sheep carcasses from his land, meaning a passing wolf might have been lured by the carrion rather than by his livestock.

After such a trying season, Smith cracks and reveals his suspicions to the Bozeman newspaper. The story paints Hoppe and local officials in a poor light, and though the latter leap to Hoppe’s defense, the rancher waives his right to shoot a second wolf.

The identity of O-Six’s killer, though, is still not publicly known, even if it is an open secret in Crandall. One afternoon Rick finds himself in the Painter Outpost and realizes he is within earshot of Turnbull. For a moment, he considers talking to him, telling him about O-Six and asking the hunter about her last moments. But he can’t do it and walks out of the bar, then drives away.

O-Six’s death does seem to influence the national debate about wolf stewardship. Six months after her killing, US Fish and Wildlife propose delisting wolves throughout most of the Lower 48. The agency receives 1 million comments on the proposal, the most ever submitted in response to such a move. Legal victories follow, most notably in Wyoming, where in September, Judge Amy Jackson reverses Fish and Wildlife’s delisting and returns protection to the state’s wolves. There are more legal victories for wolves in Washington State and the Upper Midwest. When members of Congress try again to attach a wolf rider to a must-pass budget bill, President Obama rebuffs them. Twenty years on from the wolves’ reintroduction to Yellowstone, the Wolf Project sees these as welcome wins.

Closer to home, the outlook is still mixed for the park wolves. In five years of legal hunting, trophy hunters have killed 2,500 wolves in the Northern Rockies, 1,500 of those in Idaho alone. Official counts show that in that time, Montana’s wolf population has fallen by about 100 to 554 animals. In Idaho, hunting has cut the population from 893 in 2009 to 770 in 2014. Despite rebounding elk numbers, many citizens in these states remain hostile to wolves.

There is some good news for individual animals. One day during the summer of 2015, Rick locates 755 in the Hayden Valley and sees him square off against a grizzly over an elk carcass. With him is the four-year-old female he has been with since the fall. The pair team up to draw the bear way, just like O-Six and 755 might have done, harrying him until they can both feed from the elk kill. The female departs first and disappears into nearby trees, where four pups await her. After two and half years alone, 755 has a new family.

Middle Gray and a new mate have also returned wolves to the Lamar Valley, after much conflict. But Rick is drawn more often to the Hayden Valley. There, he watches 755 reach the ripe old age of seven—older than O-Six at her death. The pups are hard to spot, but Rick takes great joy in seeing them grow and 755 raise his new pack.

Author Blakeslee explains the process of tracking down Turnbull after intermediaries in Crandall put them in touch with each other. Turnbull stayed out of the limelight until their first meeting in 2014, but he insists he feels no shame for shooting O-Six and would do so again.

Turnbull seems mystified by the strong emotions that wolf advocates have developed for individual wolves. He tells Blakeslee that he does not want to be branded an antagonist and says he would have been curious to attend a memorial for O-Six to understand her fans’ feelings.

Beyond that, though, he is unrepentant. He acknowledges there was a sadness to O-Six’s final moments and the way her pack saluted her, but he insists he is a hunter who acted legally and did nothing wrong. He even shows Blakeslee O-Six’s pelt. Later, he tells the author in no uncertain terms that he opposes wolves.

Rick, meanwhile, is being feted by the wolf-watching community. In June 2015, park regulars come together to celebrate his 20 years at the park. Doug McLaughlin and Laurie are there, along with many returning visitors who became enthralled with the Yellowstone wolves after encountering them via Rick. Doug Smith introduces Rick with generous words, saying, “I kind of need Rick. And I think everybody here needs Rick. He really is the glue that holds us all together” (265).

Rick has written a story for the occasion, though O-Six’s death is too painful to talk about. Instead, he tells the story of O-Six’s grandparents, 21 and 42. He comes to their story’s sad ending, the killing of 42 by the Mollies and, four months later, 21’s lonely climb to the top of Specimen Ridge. A question has plagued Rick since that day: Why did 21 choose to die there?

For Rick, it has everything to do with how wolves experience the world, how their senses create their emotional landscape. He tells the famous story of the Japanese dog Hachiko, who in the 1930s waited every day at the local station in the hope his dead master might still return from work. Rick says 21 was doing something similar. Mollies killed 42 far away from the pack, and perhaps 21 thought she was still alive, wandering the woods alone, trying to find her way back to him.

Rick surmises that 21 must have climbed that ridge with the last of his strength because it was where he and 42 had gone so many times before, marking a tree at the edge of the Druids’ territory. Might not her scent have still been present there? Even as he faded away, wouldn’t 21 have smelled it and hoped she might return? Rick ponders whether wolves experience joy or happiness and concludes that they do. It is a familiar story to everyone in the room, but Rick’s conviction reduces many to tears. This is the power of storytelling that Rick always hoped he could achieve if he shared what he knew about the wolves he loved.

There is a sea change in Rick, who in the aftermath of O-Six’s death becomes less anxious and obsessive. For all its tragedy, it has brought the story of wolves beyond the park into homes around the country. He realizes he doesn’t need to be at the park every moment, spotting a wolf every single day. He slows down a little, though it doesn’t prevent him having to undergo heart surgery later in the summer. As he recovers, he dreams vividly of the Lamars every night, seeing them running across the hills. Nine days after his surgery, he is back in the park and continues to delight visitors with tales of wolves from a car emblazoned with O-Six’s image.