Wolves shift their tastes to cattle

Keating area rancher Tik Moore and his grandson, Colton Slatter, 6, look at wolf tracks and talk about how wolves killed one of their calves Friday. Here Colton tells his grandfather what he’d do to the wolf if he caught it. Moore said he’s concerned about the safety of his grandchildren because the wolf attack occurred within 300 yards of his house. (Baker City Herald/Ed Merriman)

Russ Morgan, ODFW wolf coordinator, said he, volunteer wolf tracker Carter Niemeyer from Idaho, and a wolf specialist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service responded to the Moore ranch shortly after the attack and confirmed tracks at the scene were made by wolves, possibly the same two wolves that attacked sheep twice at the Jacobs ranch between April 9 and April 13, leaving 23 lambs and one ewe dead.

“Our goal is to capture the wolves and get them collared as quickly as possible, and one of the quickest ways of doing that is with an aerial darting,” Morgan said.

Tik Moore, brother of Bill Moore, president of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, said he woke up to the sound of bawling cattle he heard coming through the bedroom window.

“It woke me up out of a dead sleep,” Moore said.

“It was just like the attack at Curt and Annie Jacobs’ place. The wolves were right here in our backyard, attacking a calf about 300 yards from the house,” Moore said.

Moore pulled on his clothes, jumped in his pickup and headed out to the area near the hay stack where he heard the calf bawling.

By the time he got there the wolf or wolves were gone.

“”The ground was all tore up like there’d been major battle,” Moore said. “It looks like the mother cow put up a pretty good fight to protect her calf. I suspect the wolves got a little more than they bargained for.”

Moore and Morgan both said the calf suffered several bite marks made by the wolf or wolves. The calf later died.

The trio of wolf experts skinned the calf and confirmed the death was due to wolf bites.

Despite the best efforts of wolf trackers on the ground and in the air, Morgan said they failed to locate the wolves following the April 17 attack at the Moore ranch, which is located just over the hills less than two miles from the Jacobs ranch, in the Keating Valley northeast of Baker City.

“We’re trying to see where these wolves are coming down,” Morgan said, adding that based on previous wolf tracks discovered during winter snow survey work indicated the wolves are most likely coming out of the Eagle Cap Wilderness, which is roughly  12 to 15 miles northeast of the Moore and Jacobs ranches.

“They may be working a circuit,” Morgan said. “There’s a pair of them.”

He said Robin Lohner reported sighting a wolf near Medical Springs last week between the attacks at the Jacobs ranch and the Moore ranch.

While Medical Springs is more than 20 miles north of the Moore and Jacobs ranches, Morgan said it’s not unusual for wolves to travel that far in a day or even in a matter of hours.

“These things are roaming far and wide,” Morgan said. “We’re looking for the most expedient way to solve that problem.

“We are looking at putting on an aerial darting, but it’s hard to put any kind of darting operation into effect in a day,” Morgan said.

The airplane was sent up to search for the wolves after they attacked a calf at the Moore ranch because it happened close to daylight, and Morgan and other wolf specialists involved in the trapping effort thought the timing might provide an opportunity for the pilot to catch sight of the wolves heading across some open ground to the den somewhere in the wilderness.

While that didn’t occur, every wolf sighting and every wolf track and wolf dropping are being mapped out to help trackers hone in in the wolves’ movements.

“Wolves are creatures of habit,” Morgan said.

Moore said the attacks at his place and at the Jacobs ranch earlier should serve as a wake-up call to ranchers throughout Northeastern Oregon.

“Our heads are getting yanked out of the sand by our hip pockets,” Moore said.

While Jacobs estimated his loss per lamb at around $100 a head, and ewe losses as high as $1,000 over five years, Moore said ranchers stand to lose on average about $400 to $600 per calf killed by wolves, depending on the age and weight of the calves.

“I talked to Mike Slater with APHIS (USDA Animal Plant Health Inspection Service) in La Grande and told him we need to deal with this now.

“The wolves are here. They are not going away. We need to figure out what the plan is to deal with them,” Moore said.

He said the wolf attacks occurring so close to the ranch houses shows they have no fear of humans.

“It’s bad to lose a calf, but when it’s down in here close to the house, we worry about these grand kids,” Moore said, nodding to his grandsons Colton Slater, 6; and Weston Slater, 5.

Moore said he and his wife Marilyn moved to the Keating Valley from Malheur County about four years ago in search of a larger ranch big enough for their children and their families to share the ranching lifestyle.

“In Malheur County we had occasional problems with cougars and coyotes, but that wasn’t so bad, because you could deal with it,” Moore said. “You can’t do that with wolves.”

Because wolves are protected as endangered species under a federal listing until at least May 4, and will likely continue to remain on the state endangered species for some time after than, Moore said he’s planning to do what Jacobs did and load up his cattle and move them a safer place until ODFW and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service figure out a plan to stop them from attacking and killing cattle and sheep.

“My priority now is getting the cows out of here,” Moore said.