One Black Wolf: Searching for the Junction Butte Pack

June 1, 2026

After a weekend of cold, rainy weather, the sun coming over the mountains is a brilliant sight.  We headed straight for the northern range, hoping to see the Junction Butte Pack, where the pack has localized around Slough Creek during the denning season.  But this year has brought a disappointment: a litter born to an uncollared female, who is not the alpha female, did not survive.  While the pack stayed near the den for weeks, going back and forth, bringing food to the mother wolf, the last week of May the mother wolf was seen with the rest of the pack in Lamar Valley, far from the den.  A bad sign.

So now the pack travels wherever the hunting is good and is difficult to track, but Slough Creek, Little America and Lamar Valley are the pack’s preferred territory.  The morning was quiet as crowds gathered at turnouts searching the valley for wolves and bears.  A grizzly foraged high on the mountain slopes across the Lamar River.

We drove as far as the Soda Butte Picnic area.  Though there is still snow capping the mountains, the valleys and meadows are a deep emerald green.  Arrowleaf balsamroot covers the roadsides; glacier lilies, larkspur, and phlox are sprouting.  Bison with calves are everywhere, while pronghorn in Little America.  It seems so quiet, even as spring is bursting with new life.  The disappointment of no Junction Butte puppies is a dark shadow; we’ve become so used to seeing them.

At Slough Creek a mother badger goes back and forth hunting, feeding her two kits.  One kit pokes his head out of the dirt mound, swiveling his head with its black and white stripes, sharp pointed nose.  He or she is big; mistaken for the mother badger until she returned carrying a ground squirrel in her mouth.  She is much larger, and her thick fur is a brownish color.  We watched for a long while until a group of four bison marched past our spotting scope, interrupting our viewing.

We were about to leave when someone spotted a black wolf trotting west across the Slough Creek Flats.  Its studded collar glowed in the sun as it hunted through the sage and found a nice spot to roll.  We learned later the wolf was a male yearling, probably dragging behind the pack.  He would curl up and lie down every now and then, but gradually continued west across the flats, followed by a couple of magpies, until he disappeared behind a berm.

Since it was a beautiful day, we stopped in Hayden Valley, hoping we might catch sight of the Wapiti wolves, but they were not out – or just not visible.  Given it was past noon already, it was not a surprise, and the heat waves didn’t help either.  These wolves are usually seen in the morning and late afternoon and evening.  Still, we did see one wolf, a grizzly bear, a bull moose near Trout Lake, and two black bears along Tower Road.

– Christine Baleshta