WILDLIFE -- A gray wolf that had been radio collared in North Idaho has hoofed it to a new home 850-miles south as the crow flies into Utah.

The 4-year-old male has been verified on the south slope of the Uinta Mountains in Duchesne County by Brian Maxfield, a biologist with the Utah Division of Natural Resources who was doing telemetry monitoring on other wildlife, according to Brett Prettyman of the Salt Lake Tribune.

The wolf is wearing a radio collar, which is losing its battery power, with a frequency indicating it's from the Boundary Pack that roams North Idaho near the U.S.-Canada border.

It was spotted later by people calling in coyotes, and also by elk hunters before it appeared to be heading into Colorado or Wyoming where contact is likely to be lost from the dying transmitter, Prettyman said.

Idaho Fish and Game Department biologists have not responded to my calls for comment on the wandering wolf or why it would want to leave North Idaho, where hunting wolf hunting seasons are open year-round on private lands.

But I don't feel so bad after hearing back from  my query to the Salt Lake reporter.

Said Prettyman:

The Utah game mammals coordinator told me she has left a couple of messages with Idaho over the last three weeks with no response other than the initial call when the only thing the guy said was, "Do you want some more?"

Contacted later, Jim Hayden, Idaho's lead wolf biologist, said the wolf had been trapped  14 miles south of the U.S.-Canada border and fitted with a radio collar as a three-year old on July 28, 2013.

"We lost communication with it three weeks later," he said, indicating that the wolf had quickly roamed out of the territory being monitored by Idaho researchers.

"The collar is designed to go off around Sept. 1, 2016," Hayden said. "I sure with they'd capture it in Utah to get that collar. All of the information on where it's been since 2013 is stored in that unit."