With the "beeps" growing stronger, the signal finally led him to a large snow drift.
Eventually, as he approached the GPS coordinates, he also listened for the VHF signal. Photo by Ken MillsĪs the trees started getting sparse, Mills tied up his horse and continued on foot. The view down Little Granite Creek from the south side of Pinnacle Peak, as Game and Fish Wolf Biologist Ken Mills hiked in search of a wolf collar this past October. On October 18, Mills set out on horseback up Little Horse Creek toward the GPS coordinates provided by the collar. And he also knew he'd better move quickly before more snow made finding the collar impossible. Mills knew then, recovering this collar was going to be an all-day affair, if it was found at all. In fact, just 400 feet below its 10,813 foot summit. Interestingly, when Mills mapped out the GPS coordinates of the collar’s location, it showed it being high up on Pinnacle Peak in the Gros Ventre Range. Wolf populations tend to turn over relatively quickly. This past spring, the mated pair added seven more pups to the pack. The trio frequented the drainages of Game, Horse and Granite creeks south of Jackson. This animal, along with her parents, made up the Game Creek pack. Looking into it further, Mills realized the collar belonged to a yearling female that had been collared on January 28, 2019, as an approximately 10-month old wolf. In October, Mills received a message that the collar had been motionless for an extended period. Wyoming Game & Fish Wolf Biologist Ken Mills steadies a young female wolf as Becca Lyon, a Research Assistant with the University California-Berkely, draws a blood sample, prior to collaring the animal near Hoback Junction in January of 2019. Regardless, Mills knew he had to rearrange his schedule to go try to find it, not only to figure out what had happened, but moreso to recover the important movement data it held. It usually means one of two things: 1) the animal had died, or 2) the collar had fallen off somehow. Jackson - When Wyoming Game and Fish Wolf Biologist Ken Mills received an e-mail message that a collar on a wolf had been motionless for more than a five-hour period, his mind naturally thought of the possibilities. Biologists can spend a considerable amount of time recovering GPS collars.
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