Wyoming hunters hoping to target the matriarch of a famous Yellowstone wolf pack, when hunting begins Tuesday, might be out of luck.
That’s because the Mollie’s Pack, which had been living outside of Yellowstone National Park since early summer, is "mostly" back within the protection of park boundaries.
Yellowstone Wolf Project Leader Dan Stahler told WyoFile on Friday: "They’ve mostly been back in the park, and that includes the pups. The last couple months, they’re back in their home core territory."
At least three hunters have announced intentions to kill the 12-year-old matriarch, Wolf 1090F, during the hunting season. One non-resident hunter, from Texas, boasted: "The matriarch 1090F is going down."
The Mollie’s Pack, whose lineage dates to
1995, when gray wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park, is the park’s oldest pack. Its home territory is the park's southeast region.
The pack spent most of the summer east of the park boundary, presumably in search of better prey opportunities. The area is within Wolf Hunt Area 1, which is where several hunters plan to be on Tuesday.
It remains unclear if the entire pack is back in the park, or how many pack members might venture outside park boundaries before or during hunting season.
Wolves, of course, do not know where safe boundaries exist and hunters in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho have harvested Yellowstone wolves outside of the park in prior seasons.
This article originally appeared on For The Win: Famous Yellowstone wolf pack might have outsmarted Wyoming hunters
