One-eyed wolf matriarch killed by rival Yellowstone pack was 1 of 17 dead in 2024
Seventeen Yellowstone National Park wolves were killed in 2024, and among them was the fabled one-eyed female, 907F – the fifth -oldest wolf recorded in the park at 11.7 years old.
She was killed by the Rescue Creek pack three days before Christmas, according to the Yellowstone Wolf, Cougar and Elk Project annual report. Due to her longevity, it’s likely that an individual in the pack that killed her was a close or distant relative.
“Even in her death, defending her family and territory from a rival pack, 907F embodied what Yellowstone is all about,” the report noted. “It’s a place where these carnivores have a chance to live a successful life and die the way of the wolf.”
Doug Smith, who led Yellowstone’s Wolf Project before retiring in 2023 and studied the animals for 30 years called 907F a special wolf.
“Most wolves die young, she didn’t, living twice as long as most wolves do,” Smith wrote in an email. “Although hard to know, this can be attributed to her wisdom as she was socially adept as she navigated pack social interactions like few wolves did – gaining, losing then gaining again dominant status within the pack.
“I also know this because I captured her three times, watched her stealth and cleverness up close, and after the first capture, she had lost vision in one of her eyes,” Smith added. “Thinking she would be handicapped she was far from it – watching her in the field you could not tell she had only one eye.
“The last time I caught her she looked through me with that one eye, stopped against a log, and I felt bad pulling the trigger on the dart gun. I missed that time but hit on the second dart as she took off from the refuge of the log.”
Wolf deaths
Clashes between wolf packs are the leading natural cause of wolf deaths in Yellowstone. However the majority of wolf deaths, 77%, are human related.
A record 25 wolves known to inhabit the park were killed in the winter of 2021-22.
The average lifespan for wolves in Yellowstone is four to five years. That drops to two to three years outside the park. The oldest known wolf in Yellowstone was also a female, 478F of the Cougar Creek pack, who lived 12.5 years.
Park wolf mortalities in 2024
Montana has gained a reputation as a state hostile to wolves, thanks to the passage of bills in the state Legislature that allow hunting at night on private lands using thermal imaging and night-vision scopes and over bait – tactics deemed unsportsmanlike for other wildlife.
Politicians have also authorized the reimbursement of fees to wolf hunters and trappers, reminiscent of wolf bounties paid to eliminate the predators from much of the West, while also pushing to increase wolf hunting and trapping quotas.
In 2024, 12 park wolves were killed by Montana hunters and two died at the hands of poachers. One of the poached wolves, the alpha male, and two of the hunter-shot canines were members of 907F’s Junction Butte pack which took a “rare extra-territorial foray out of the park,” resulting in their deaths, according to the park report.
907F (the number refers to the wolf’s collar number, the F denotes female) was no stranger to wolves being killed by hunters or wolves being killed in pack rivalries.
“Wolf 907F and her pack were responsible for the deaths of at least five wolves during pack-pack conflict and lost at least five of their own in those fights during her lifetime,” Wolf Project biologist Kira Cassidy wrote in a short eulogy for the matriarch. “She was likely present for most of the deaths of her pack mates, including 15 shot by hunters outside of park borders.”
One other Yellowstone wolf was killed the day after 907F in a pack rivalry and one adult female died outside the park, but the carcass was so heavily scavenged that the cause of death could not be determined, the report noted.
Following the deaths, the Junction Butte pack had 10 wolves, five adults and five pups. The Wapiti Lake and Rescue Creek packs are now the largest in Yellowstone, with 25 and 20 wolves, respectively.
Wealth of research
Some Montanans take offense to referring to the big canines as park wolves, since the animals are known to wander far from the confines of Yellowstone where they are protected from hunting.
“Our rationale for counting these as Yellowstone-based wolves is supported by GPS/VHF radio-collar data that show these packs are within the park at least 96 percent of the year,” park Superintendent Cam Sholly wrote in a letter to the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission in 2024 according to a WyoFile story.
Animals like 907F are well known to park researchers who have studied the animals diligently since their historic and controversial reintroduction in the 1990s. Animals like 907F have significantly advanced knowledge about the predators, given that they are so visible and accessible to biologists.
“From a scientist’s standpoint, the length of time she was studied with a radio collar resulted in remarkable numbers: she was tracked 473 times from the air, 1,898 times from the ground, and her GPS collars recorded 26,085 locations,” Cassidy wrote. “Staff watched her participate in 557 hunts – usually with bison (281) or elk (239) – of which 33 (6%) were successful. We watched 907F and her pack feed on 588 carcasses and chase coyotes 76 times. They were also seen interacting with grizzly bears 31 times, including four times when the bear came too close to 907F’s den of small pups, and one bear that traveled alongside the pack for several weeks one fall.”
In 907F’s lifetime she gave birth to 10 litters – “the most for any wolf in 30 years of YNP wolf research” – was alpha female four different times and lived her entire life in the Junction Butte pack.
“Many other wolves, if they want to become a breeder or a leader, have to disperse at some point in their life, start a new pack or join one,” Cassidy told the Billings Gazette in a 2024 interview. “And she never had to do that.”
Family misfortunes
In her lifetime, 907F experienced what humans might consider a series of family tragedies.
In September 2016 the Prospect Peak pack killed her father, 911M. He was the founder of the Junction Butte pack. At the time of his death, 911M was limping and malnourished due to a broken jaw. Yet he was killed after defending a cow elk he had brought down and was feeding on.
The year after her father’s death, 907F ousted her sister, 969F, to become the lead female of the Junction Butte pack. As the alpha female, 907F mated with a male wolf from the rival Prospect Peak pack. 907F’s mate probably took part in the attack that killed her father.
In 2019, when 907F’s pups were about 2 weeks old, her sister killed all of her pups, eating some and burying others.
“It’s extremely rare, it actually has not been confirmed in other wild wolves, killing a packmate’s litters,” Cassidy said. “But it probably does happen. We just happened to have such a great view of that Slough Creek den that we’re able to see things that are maybe pretty rare but just haven’t been documented before.”
“Despite being one of the most well-documented wild wolf lives ever, there are so many ways 907F’s life remains immeasurable,” Cassidy wrote. “While scientific research is often about reporting general patterns with averages and expected variations, the depth of a living being’s existence remains, beautifully and wondrously, mysterious.”
Smith said of the old matriarch, “She was a classic in style and look, and she contributed to her pack and our knowledge of wolves like few other wolves did.”
The complete Park Service report for 2024, as well as previous years, can be found online at nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/wolf-reports.htm.