The wolves in Grand Teton National Park are apparently hungry this time of the year.
It’s always cool to see videos of the Animal Kingdom in action. For us humans, picking out what we want to eat for dinner can often times feel like a chore. You’ve either got to plan ahead and cook something, or do the dreaded dance of asking, “What’s for dinner?” That’s a conversation that can go on forever, as most of you probably know.
But as painstaking as the process can seem, it’s nowhere close to what animals out in the wild have to go through. For a pack of wolves, if they decide that they want elk for dinner, they’ve got to go out and get it… and it’s easier said than done. A wolf would rarely ever try to hunt an animal the size of an elk on its own, so it usually has to band together with other canines to try and bring down an animal large enough to satiate an entire pack of wolves.
According to this wildlife photographer who frequents Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, the wolf pack you’ll see in this video below has been working together since last winter (one could assume the winter of 2024). They’ve apparently been patrolling the National Elk Refuge there, taking down elk of all shapes and sizes one by one. This photographer and tour guide by the name of Billy Fabian went out into the snowy terrain of Grand Teton National Park to see if he could observe them in action, and sure enough, he was able to capture five separate elk hunts this unnamed wolf pack went on.
As he explained in his caption:
“A yet to be named wolf pack, which formed last winter, has been successfully hunting elk on the National Elk Refugee for the last month. Yesterday morning, the pack crossed the Gros Ventre River north into Grand Teton National Park. Over just a few hours, the wolves attempted five separate hunts of bull elk in the park, though all five proved unsuccessful.”
That’s the good news for the bull elk.
The not-so-good-news is that the video below shows that one bull elk was targeted multiple times by this wolf pack. Though it was able to hold its own – even landing a nasty kick on one of the canines, and successfully utilizing its antlers in defense on another – the large antlered animal appeared to be exhausted by the chase both times it was singled out. That could spell to be bad news eventually, as strength in numbers is absolutely a real thing out in the wild. It could only be a matter of time before the wolves figure out the secret to bringing down the sizable bull.
All we know for now is that the wolves haven’t been as lethal as of late. The pack has been known to bring down elk in the area, but they swung and missed in every example that was captured in the video below:
