WY Fish and Game Determine if 8 Sheep Killed by Wolves

Sheep deaths reviewed

By Mike Koshmrl, Jackson Hole, Wyoming

August 30, 2013

Wolves are suspected of killing eight sheep on a public land grazing allotment south of Hoback Junction during the past 10 days.

The sheep are owned by the Siddoway Sheep Company, based in Terreton, Idaho — the same company that reported losing 176 sheep near Teton Valley two weeks ago after wolves caused the herd to stampede and crush each other.

“We had four more sheep killed by wolves on [Tuesday] near Dog Creek,” Billie Siddoway said in an email. “The sheep were in the herd from which we lost four sheep last week.”

Graphic photographs provided to the Jackson Hole Daily show that the sheep had their innards ripped out of their abdomens. One of the four sheep killed this week was partially consumed.

In her email, Siddoway said the Wyoming Game and Fish Department soon would confirm wolves as the culprit in the sheep depredations.

J.C. Siddoway, Billie’s brother, claimed that wolves and bears have killed 35 sheep this year in the Bridger-Teton National Forest grazing allotment he rents near Dog Creek. About 1,200 ewes and their lambs graze the swath of public land, Siddoway said.

“We’ve been having wolf problems there for probably five years now,” he said. “Some years, it’s extremely bad and others, not too bad. ... I think one year we had 126 killed in there.”

Game and Fish managers acknowledged that there had been reports of attacks near Dog Creek, but were not able to provide many details.

“I think [Game and Fish employee Mike Boyce] might have [gone] in there, or he was going to,” said Dan Thompson, Game and Fish’s large carnivore section supervisor. “I know there’s been some depredation.”

Through the end of July in Wyoming, wildlife managers had reported 33 “livestock and dogs” confirmed killed by wolves. In response, 14 wolves have been killed.

On Aug. 17, wolves from the Pine Creek Pack that roams around Teton Pass ventured into the Siddoways’ 2,400-head sheep herd that was bedding down in the Caribou-Targhee National Forest. Running downhill in a panic, the sheep trampled and smothered each other. The wolves killed about a dozen of the sheep. In the end, 176 sheep were dead.

The pack that was implicated in the deaths on the other side of the state border now is mostly gone. Some 13 wolves from the pack, including nine puppies, have been removed by federal hunters this year.

It’s not yet confirmed what wolf pack is to blame for the latest depredations near Dog Creek, but there is an eponymous pack that roams the area.

The Dog Creek Pack numbered at least 3 adult animals at the end of 2012, according to a Game and Fish annual report. One animal from the pack was reported harvested in last year’s hunt and another is believed to have moved on.

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