Wyoming’s wolf season opens Tuesday, Sept. 15, and before a single legal shot’s been fired, Mollie’s Pack has already become the center of one of the ugliest hunting conversations I’ve watched unfold in a long time.
At least two hunters have now publicly discussed targeting the pack, and particularly its famous 12-year-old wolf, 1090F.
One Nevada-based social media account has repeatedly posted about traveling to Wyoming to kill her, at one point stating, “The matriarch 1090F is going down on the 15th of September.”
A Big Piney–area hunter has also said he plans to hunt the opener and would harvest 1090F if he sees her.
Before the emails start, let me get one thing out of the way. Wolf hunting is legal in Wyoming. I’m fully aware. I’m not arguing that a hunter who legally encounters a wolf in an open hunt area and decides to fill a tag is inherently doing something wrong.
However, I am arguing that deliberately setting out to kill one particular wild animal because that animal is famous, because advocates desperately want it alive, or because killing it will piss off a whole bunch of people is, to me, inherently wrong.
I don’t believe spite is a reason to hunt. And right now, spite seems to be a huge part of the attraction in Wyoming.
Legal Doesn’t Mean Ethical
I’ve certainly written about hunting ethics before. And I’ve certainly received my share of hate from both hunters and anti-hunters alike.
Remember Cody Roberts? He’s the asshat who paraded a juvenile wolf with its muzzle taped shut around town after he ran it over with his snowmobile. He pleaded guilty to felony animal cruelty and was only given probation. Personally, I feel like a more deserving sentence would have been to have the convicted meet the business end of a snowmobile himself. But that’s why I’m not a judge.
I got an immense amount of hate for that story, and that dude wasn’t just violating a code of ethics; he was straight up committing a felony.
See, the hunters I surround myself with talk about ethics constantly, even when we don’t use the word.
We pass on imperfect shots. We make every reasonable effort to recover wounded animals, and more so, to not wound animals at all. We care for the meat. We respect property boundaries. We argue about fair chase, technology, methods, distances, and what behavior represents hunting well, both morally and ethically. We engage with conservation and habitat protection initiatives and debate where lines should and shouldn’t be drawn.
None of those conversations end with, “Well, it’s legal.”
Legality is the baseline, and typically, that bar is pretty damn low. Hunting ethics, however, require more of us.
Spite Killing Has No Place in Modern Hunting, Legal or Not
I have a real hard time watching people publicly announce their intention to kill a specific wolf, one that became famous because people are fighting to keep her alive, and shrugging it off because they have every legal right to do it.
Yeah, of course they do. That isn’t really the question here.
The question is, why this wolf?
If you’re headed into Wyoming next week because you want to hunt wolves, that’s wolf hunting. I’m not a wolf hunter, but if you happen to encounter 1090F or another member of Mollie’s Pack and legally fill your tag, there’s really not much I can say.
However, if you’re headed there specifically because you want to kill 1090F because she’s the famous wolf, because advocates have begged people not to kill her, or because you know exactly how much outrage her death would generate, then the reaction has become part of the trophy.
That bothers the hell out of me. And it should bother the hell out of any ethical hunter.
Killing wildlife to prove a point isn’t conservation. Killing an animal because its death will hurt people you dislike isn’t wildlife management. And killing a famous animal so strangers on the internet know you were the one who did it isn’t something I want held up as representative of hunting. It doesn’t make you a hunter. It makes you an asshole with a gun.
Call it spite hunting, pride hunting, or internet trophy hunting. Whatever you call it, I don’t think it’s ethical. You can’t legislate for intentions, but the intentions here are pretty damn vile.
How Mollie’s Pack Became a Target
Mollie’s Pack didn’t become famous last month.
The pack, originally known as Crystal Creek, dates back to Yellowstone’s original wolf restoration in 1995 and is the park’s longest-running pack. That history has made it unusually recognizable among people who follow Yellowstone wolves. I’ve had the great pleasure of watching this pack work over a herd of bison myself before seemingly getting bored and wandering off. They’re incredible to watch in the field.
This year, the pack did something unusual. It denned outside Yellowstone on the Shoshone National Forest, within Wyoming Wolf Hunt Area 1. That put the wolves outside the protection of the national park and inside an area scheduled to open for wolf hunting Sept. 15.
Of particular concern has been 1090F, an extraordinarily old wolf by Yellowstone standards and one of the best-known members of Mollie’s Pack.
Then the whole thing caught fire.
Wolf advocate and social media personality Jonas Black, along with others, offered $10,000 for information identifying any hunter who killed a member of Mollie’s Pack during the season. Black’s argument was that the threat of worldwide condemnation could deter hunters from pursuing them.
I Disagreed
I wrote about that offer on Aug. 6 because I thought it was a spectacularly bad idea. Oddly enough, it’s not the first story I’ve written about wolves and cash bounties.
My concern was pretty simple. The entire strategy depended on hunters being afraid of attention. I’ve spent enough time on the internet to know that humanity gives birth to both the best and worst of creatures.
Most doctors are great. Some aren’t.
Most policemen truly want to help. Some don’t.
And most hunters are genuinely good humans. And some are vile… with a gun.
Like all niches of people, there are the good and the others.
I worried that turning these wolves into an even bigger story, attaching $10,000 to their names, and promising international infamy to whoever killed one could make them more attractive targets instead of less attractive ones.
After a contentious back-and-forth, Black eventually did withdraw the reward. As I write this, I’m still hopeful the two of us can work together toward some sort of meaningful outcome, though it’s clear from the public and private interactions we have very different methods, wildly different personalities, and completely different ideas about how we can get that done.
Unfortunately, you can withdraw 10 grand. You can’t withdraw a spotlight. Arguably, this story and every other story like it does the same.
For this wolf and pack, I fear, the damage is done.
A Spotlight Cuts Both Ways
This is the part of the whole mess that wildlife advocates need to understand.
Personifying individual wild animals can be incredibly effective at making people care about them. Names, numbers, family histories, photos, personalities, and stories create emotional connections in a way population estimates never will.
But celebrity can be dangerous for a wild animal.
When you tell the world that one particular wolf is especially beloved, historically important, recognizable, controversial, and desperately worth saving, you’re also telling anyone looking for a fight exactly which animal’s death will produce the biggest reaction.
The same fame that makes one person donate money to protect 1090F can make somebody else want to kill 1090F because doing so would anger the other side. We’re now watching some version of that play out in real time, and it’s so unfortunate.
Big Piney–area hunter Mitch Gilliam told Cowboy State Daily that he plans to hunt Sept. 15 and would harvest 1090F if he sees her. He also said something that should make everyone who helped turn this into an enormous spectacle uncomfortable:
“I didn’t know anything about it until Jonas Black made a big deal out of it.”
Well, shit.
That’s exactly the danger of this kind of hype. It’s exactly why I’m conflicted about writing these words now.
Listen, this doesn’t mean Black created every hunter interested in Mollie’s Pack. I’m certainly not saying that. There were already people talking about targeting these wolves way before the $10,000 offer, and pretending otherwise would be short-sighted.
But the last several weeks have turned one wolf pack into an online symbol. Advocates want to save that symbol. Some “hunters” now want to kill the symbol.
The wolves are, unknowingly, stuck in the middle.
The Animal Shouldn’t Become Ammunition
Hunters should be particularly uncomfortable with where this has gone.
There’s plenty of room for disagreement over wolf management. Wyoming manages wolves differently than Montana. Montana manages them differently than Idaho. People who spend their careers in wildlife biology, hunting, ranching, outfitting, and conservation disagree about wolves all the time.
Fine.
Fight about quotas. Fight about seasons. Fight about management plans. Fight about where wolves should be managed and how many should be there. Those are wildlife management arguments.
An individual wild animal shouldn’t become ammunition in them.
I don’t want hunters killing a wolf because they think doing so will own the anti-hunters. I don’t want someone shooting a grizzly someday because a conservation group made that bear famous. I don’t want a mountain lion, elk, or deer turned into a political trophy because somebody realized its death would generate a shitstorm online.
Wildlife deserves better than that, and the tradition and practice of hunting does too.
Hunters spend a tremendous amount of time telling the rest of the world that hunting is about food, wildlife management, connection to wild places, conservation funding, tradition, challenge, and respect for the animals we pursue.
We can’t turn around and cheer, nor just sit quietly, when somebody’s motivation appears to be, “People really love this one. Let’s go kill it.”
Those two things don’t square.
Actual Conservation Is Painfully Slow
After I wrote about Black’s $10,000 reward, and the impending blowback and death threats slowed down, I started making phone calls.
I spoke with Jeff Davis at Wyoming Game and Fish. I also talked with leadership from conservation organizations in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana about what meaningful steps forward might actually look like.
None of the answers were particularly satisfying if what you want is an immediate solution before Sept. 15, and I knew that would be the case.
Wildlife policy comes with processes. There are regulations, commission meetings, management plans, jurisdictional issues, public comment, organizational priorities, and enough red tape to tie a bow around the whole damn Rocky Mountain West.
Real changes take time. I’ve spent far too many hours of my life sitting through commission meetings, driving across the state, sleeping in my truck, and being ignored by commissioners to ignore that fact.
It can be maddening.
But it’s that work and those conversations reinforced something this entire fight has made painfully obvious: conservation is usually slower than outrage.
A $10,000 offer can go viral in hours. A post promising to kill a famous wolf can reach thousands of people before dinner. Meaningful changes to wildlife management can take months or years. It might have to wait through elections and administration changes.
It can take an afternoon to make a wild animal famous. Undoing the consequences can take a hell of a lot longer.
There is nothing satisfying about that. I wish I had the silver bullet to fix this, but at best, I have a stick bow, good intentions, and an undying tenacity for meaningful change. I’ve been heavily involved in wildlife management and policy in Montana, and it seems I’m adding our neighbor to the south to my growing (very unpaid) workload.
Sept. 15 Is Coming
On Tuesday morning, Wyoming’s wolf season will open in Hunt Area 1.
People will go wolf hunting. Some will hunt hard and never see one. Some might encounter wolves that have nothing to do with Mollie’s Pack. Someone may legally harvest one of the Mollie’s Pack wolves.
That said, I can’t get behind deliberately hunting 1090F just because she is 1090F.
I can’t defend targeting her because people care about her. I can’t celebrate killing her as some victory over wolf advocates. And I sure as hell don’t think getting your name passed around the internet afterward makes the hunt more impressive.
1090F doesn’t know she’s famous. She doesn’t know what Instagram is, that there was a $10,000 bounty surrounding her pack, or that hunters are posting about her. She doesn’t know she’s become a symbol in one of America’s ugliest wildlife fights.
She’s a wild wolf.
We put all the rest of this on her.
If a hunter pulls the trigger next week because a legal opportunity presents itself, that’s a decision every hunter carrying a tag has to make for themselves.
If the reason for pulling that trigger is the outrage that will follow, that’s something else entirely.
When the reaction to the kill becomes the trophy, we’ve wandered a long damn way from ethical hunting.
