Yellowstone

[DesmoLu]

Nice booty shot, Mitt.

[VisceralReaction]

Too bad you dont' want to come to Idaho. Ive been seeing wolves almost everytime I go camping.
yeah they are pretty cool, BUT they are getting to a population density that is starting to cause problems.
Think about going out to the woods and minding your own business only to have wolves kill
both your dogs. Yeah trust me, it sucks. Hence keeping the numbers in check, it's gotta be done.
Yellow stone is very cool but depending on the year can be packed or empty or still full of snow.
The year my wife and I went there was still a ton of snow in mid may and alot of roads closed.
Still had a great time. Just remember wild animals are still wild, even though they don't run away.

[triangleforge]

Yellowstone is one of the treasures of this country, and you will have a splendid time whenever you go!  I worked for nearly a decade for one of the non-profit groups that spearheaded the re-introduction of wolves in the lower 48,* and one of the best perks of that job was the year I managed to talk my boss into three different work trips out to Yellowstone.

Your best bet for wolf viewing is going to be in the winter, because that's when most of the Northern Rockies' non-hibernating wildlife will be concentrated down in the river valleys, most notably the Lamar Valley, the Grand Central Station of wolf-watching. The elk herds bunch up along the Lamar, the wolves follow, and the wolf watchers follow them. One of my most memorable life experiences was to snowshoe up out of the Lamar Valley floor on the tenth anniversary of reintroduction with the USFWS project leader, chief wolf biologist & project veterinarian to one of the re-introduction sites, listening to them tell stories the whole way up. The park itself is staggeringly beautiful in winter, and the road into the Lamar is kept open in winter, at least as well as a road in winter there can be kept open.

But yeah, it's going to be cold -- it was 10 below that day (and it gets much colder than that), and two days later I was stuck in a diner in Three Forks, MT, waiting out a blizzard that closed down the Interstate 90 for about twelve hours, and looked like this for a couple of days afterward:



My second-favorite season in Yellowstone is the Spring, and that's also your second-best bet for wolf viewing. In this case, the cow elk & their calves will prefer the open country in the river bottoms where the moms can keep an eye on wolves & grizzly bears that are targeting the calves. The wolves are denning then as well, and at least some of the dens are likely to be in good viewing spots so you might get a look at adults & pups. Because the griz are freshly out of hibernation and voraciously hungry, they're in more predictable places for spotting as well -- though I spent a spring day criss-crossing the park with one of the country's best bear biologists and we saw everything BUT grizzly bears.

July & August are going to be a whole lot more hit-or-miss for wolf viewing. The elk have moved up into the high country, and the wolves have followed (see a pattern here?). The grizzlies (as evidenced by Mitt's VERY cool photo) are distributed more widely and you've got a pretty good chance of spotting those. And, of course, spotting multitudes of people.

I have less experience with the place in Fall; I can only imagine how stunning it gets, but I'd bet the wolf viewing is going to be pretty weather dependent. Unless something's moving their prey into more visible places, wolves are going to be harder to spot.

The info on this site seems to fit pretty well with my experience:

http://www.ylwstone.com/wolfwatching.html

*Personally, I am not opposed to a well-managed hunting season on wolves, though the organization I worked for wouldn't ever sign off on such a thing, and I don't think I'd participate as a hunter. But whether or not the state governments involved (the legislatures at least - I have HUGE respect for the ID, MT & WY Fish & Game folks I've known) have even the slightest interest in a well-managed hunting season is a very different question.

[metallimonster]

Wow^^^ that was exactly what I was looking for.  Thanks for the details. 

[angler]

Good luck seeing one (without strong optics) unless you are: a) in heat, b)wear bacon underpants, c) are standing over freshly gutted game, or d) have small pets with you in the wilderness.

[metallimonster]

It's not like I expect to be 10 feet away from them and want to pet them.  I just want to be able to see them roaming thier natural habitat.