Jackson Hole News & Guide, Mike Koshmrl– Brian Hayden was relaxing and resting with a hat shading his eyes at his favorite outdoor nap spot under a ridgeline tree about 2.5 miles from the Cache Creek trailhead.
It was midafternoon Friday, and the Teton Valley, Idaho, resident needed to get to work, so he awoke from a half-state of sleep and readied for the walk back to his car.
About 25 feet away, he estimates, the stationary figure of a canine cutting the skyline drew his gaze.
“I sat up, put my ball cap on and the first thing I thought was, ‘Why is there a big dog right there?’” Hayden said. “I didn’t hear any people.
“And then my eyes opened a little bit more and I’m like, ‘Holy s—, that’s a wolf.’
“I’m sure that’s what it was,” he said. “I’ve never seen a dog that big in my life.”
The animal, which Hayden said looked old and wore a tracking collar, was all by itself, staring intently, and for a while didn’t seem inclined to leave.
“It just stayed there,” Hayden said. “I’ve been close to coyotes, and they just boogie like nobody’s business. But this guy, he didn’t move.”
A 20- to 30-second staring match ensued, and as Hayden’s grogginess wore off he came to realize he was not entirely comfortable with the situation. He clapped his hands, grabbed his water bottle and gave the wolf some instructions.
“‘Get out of here,” he remembered shouting.
“If you’ve ever seen a dog when he doesn’t want to do something — he gives you that look like ‘Oh, man, really?’ — that’s what he did,” Hayden said. “He was like, ‘I got to leave?’”
The wolf trotted off, dragging a clearly injured leg. Photos Hayden later snapped of its tracks of the snow surface show distinct drag marks between paw prints as wide as his hand.
Although Hayden never felt in danger, he notified the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department of the encounter. Reports of wolf sightings happen on occasion up Cache Creek, most recently in December when a Jackson resident’s dog chased after a lobo near the Hagen trail “staircase.”
While there are no known dens up the drainage, packs do use and pass through the Cache drainage. The Horse Creek and Pinnacle Peak packs have home ranges in the general area, Wyoming monitoring reports show.
“We know there’s a wolf pack on the north part of the refuge and they cruise around,” Bridger-Teton National Forest wilderness and recreation program manager Linda Merigliano said. “Even though you’re right next to town, this area is full of wild animals.
“There’s this perception that the critters are way back in the forest,” Merigliano said. “In Jackson, because of the wild country right next to town, they’re right in our backyard. It’s an incredible thing that most parts of the country don’t have.”
The tracking collar the wolf wore was likely of the “very high frequency” variety, which don’t record or transmit past location data. Even though the wolf was marked it would be difficult to ID it, said Mike Jimenez, Fish and Wildlife’s Northern Rockies wolf coordinator.
In the days since Hayden’s encounter he has returned to the nap spot. He has no plans to abandon the sleeping tree. A fresh coat of snow had almost entirely wiped out the wolf tracks, he said.
“I’m going to snooze there,” Hayden said. “He didn’t eat me the first time.”
Wild wolves, going by the numbers, virtually never attack people.
“Was I scared? No, I was just very concerned,” Hayden said. “Those things are big.”