A gripping and vital portrait of wolf repopulation. It is impossible not to root for Diane, or for the wolves.--ERICA BERRY, AUTHOR OF WOLFISH

This is a book about a courageous woman. Often alone in wild country, she endures hardships and faces danger in many forms .... It is a book I highly recommend: informative, fascinating, and beautifully written.--DR. JANE GOODALL

A debut memoir from one of the first women biologists in the United States to study wild wolves in their natural habitat--a story of passion, resilience, and determination.

Called the Jane Goodall of wolves, world-renowned wildlife biologist Diane Boyd has spent four decades studying and advocating for wolves in the wilds of Montana near Glacier National Park. When she started in the 1970s, she was the only female biologist in the United States researching and radio-collaring wild wolves. With her two dogs for company, she faced the rigors of the Montana winter in an isolated cabin without running water or electricity.

Boyd fearlessly forded icy rivers, strapped on skis to navigate thick stands of lodgepole pine, and monitored packs from the air in a tiny bush plane that skimmed the treetops so she could count wolves and see what they were feeding on. She faced down grizzly bears, mountain lions, wolverines--and the occasional trapper--as she stalked her quarry: a handful of wolves that were making their way south from Canada into Montana. Resilient and resourceful, she devised her own trapping methods and negotiated with locals as wolf populations grew from the first natural colonizer to more than 3,000 wolves in the West today.

In this captivating book, Boyd takes the reader on a wild ride from the early days of wolf research to the present-day challenges of wolf management across the globe, highlighting her interactions with an apex predator that captured her heart and her undying admiration. Her writing resonates with her indomitable spirit as she explores the intricate balance of human and wolf coexistence.

Book Five in the Award-Winning Alpha Wolves of Yellowstone series

Rick's writing is so vivid, so powerful, that I feel I have been right there with him among the wolves of Yellowstone.--Jane Goodall

Following eight major wolf personalities, Thinking Like a Wolf draws on decades of field notes to uncover the challenges and triumphs of Yellowstone's wolf packs, from the chief historian of the most famous wolf population in the world (Washington Post).

In his latest book, award-winning author and renowned wolf researcher, Rick McIntyre, explores the intricate world of wolf behavior in Yellowstone National Park and highlights the individual character traits that allow wolf packs to thrive.

Unveiling power struggles, pack politics, the roles of family protection, inter-pack conflicts, and more, Rick skillfully follows the intricacy of packs and the unique attributes each wolf has. In these true stories, he celebrates the many lessons we can learn from wolf packs and the dynamic personalities that enable them to expand across new territories amidst adversity.

Weaving an impressive web of politics and power, family cooperation and commitment, rivalry and resilience, Thinking Like a Wolf provides readers with a unique window into the fascinating inner workings of wolf packs.

The powerful origin story of one of Yellowstone's greatest and most famous wolves. --Washington Post

[The Rise of Wolf 8] is a goldmine for information on all aspects of wolf behavior and clearly shows they are clever, smart, and emotional beings. --Marc Bekoff, Psychology Today

Yellowstone National Park was once home to an abundance of wild wolves--but park rangers killed the last of their kind in the 1920s. Decades later, the rangers brought them back, with the first wolves arriving from Canada in 1995.

This is the incredible true story of one of those wolves.

Wolf 8 struggles at first--he is smaller than the other pups, and often bullied--but soon he bonds with an alpha female whose mate was shot. An unusually young alpha male, barely a teenager in human years, Wolf 8 rises to the occasion, hunting skillfully, and even defending his family from the wolf who killed his father. But soon he faces a new opponent: his adopted son, who mates with a violent alpha female. Can Wolf 8 protect his valley without harming his protégé?

Authored by a renowned wolf researcher and gifted storyteller, The Rise of Wolf 8 marks the beginning of The Alpha Wolves of Yellowstone series, which will transform our view of wolves forever.

For fans of Helen MacDonald's H is for Hawk and Mary Roach, Erica Berry's WOLFISH blends science, history, and cultural criticism in a years-long journey to understand our myths about wolves, and track one legendary wolf, OR-7, from the Wallowa Mountains of Oregon

OREGON BOOK AWARD WINNER * Shortlisted for the 2024 Pacific Northwest Book Award * A Most Anticipated Book of 2023: TIME, Los Angeles Times, Vulture, Salon, Bustle, The Rumpus, Financial Times, Reader's Digest, LitHub, Book Riot, Debutiful, and more!

Exhilarating. --The Washington Post

Wolfish starts with a single wolf and spirals through nuanced investigations of fear, gender, violence, and story. A GORGEOUS achievement. --Blair Braverman, author of Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube

This is one of those stories that begins with a female body. Hers was crumpled, roadside, in the ash-colored slush between asphalt and snowbank.

So begins Erica Berry's kaleidoscopic exploration of wolves, both real and symbolic. At the center of this lyrical inquiry is the legendary OR-7, who roams away from his familial pack in northeastern Oregon. While charting OR-7's record-breaking journey out of the Wallowa Mountains, Erica simultaneously details her own coming-of-age as she moves away from home and wrestles with inherited beliefs about fear, danger, femininity, and the body.

As Erica chronicles her own migration--from crying wolf as a child on her grandfather's sheep farm to accidentally eating mandrake in Sicily--she searches for new expressions for how to be a brave woman, human, and animal in our warming world. What do stories so long told about wolves tell us about our relationship to fear? How can our society peel back the layers of what scares us? By strategically unspooling the strands of our cultural constructions of predator and prey, and what it means to navigate a world in which we can be both, Erica bridges the gap between human fear and grief through the lens of a wrongfully misunderstood species.

Wolfish is for anybody trying to navigate a world that is often scary. A powerful, timeless, and necessary book for our current and future generations.

Book Four in the Award-Winning Alpha Wolves of Yellowstone series

Following five generations of female wolves--including the famous 06--this gripping family saga set in Yellowstone National Park reveals the pivotal role that female wolves play in pack life.

Rick's writing is so vivid, so powerful, that I feel I have been right there with him among the wolves of Yellowstone. And I urge you, the reader, to come with us and discover the magic of wolf society.--DR. JANE GOODALL, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute & UN Messenger of Peace

Yellowstone's 06 female was called 'the most famous wolf in the world.' Her strength, beauty, and intelligence were unmatched, and her ability to hunt, protect her young cubs, and choose the right mates made her pack successful. In his latest book, award-winning author and renowned wolf researcher Rick McIntyre turns his spotting scope on 06 and more remarkable female wolves, telling the dramatic true story of five generations of female leaders in Yellowstone National Park.

As Rick shows us, female wolves, not their male counterparts, play the most pivotal roles in pack life. They choose who may mate with them and where their pack will hunt and raise pups. They negotiate treaties and fiercely defend their families. The only opponent they cannot defeat is a human with a gun.

In The Alpha Female Wolf, McIntyre profiles 06's rise to power. He also celebrates the lives of other female wolves who deserve our recognition. Throughout, McIntyre weaves wolf biology and storytelling into a page-turning narrative that, once again, gives readers a rare window into life in a wolf pack--this time from a female point of view.

A redemption story, an adventure story, and perhaps above all, a love story.--Nate Blakeslee, New York Times-bestselling author of American Wolf

The Druid Peak Pack was the most famous wolf pack in Yellowstone National Park, and maybe even in the world.

This is the dramatic true story of its remarkable leader, Wolf 21--whose compassion and loyalty challenges commonly held beliefs about alpha males.

In this compelling follow-up to the national bestseller The Rise of Wolf 8, Rick McIntyre profiles one of Yellowstone's most revered alpha males, Wolf 21. Leader of the Druid Peak Pack, Wolf 21 was known for his unwavering bravery, his unusual benevolence (unlike other alphas, he never killed defeated rival males), and his fierce commitment to his mate, the formidable Wolf 42.

Wolf 21 and Wolf 42 were attracted to each other the moment they met--but Wolf 42's jealous sister interfered viciously in their relationship. After an explosive insurrection within the pack, the two wolves came together at last as leaders of the Druid Peak Pack, which dominated the park for more than 10 years.

McIntyre recounts the pack's fascinating saga with compassion and a keen eye for detail, drawing on his many years of experience observing Yellowstone wolves in the wild. His outstanding work of science writing offers unparalleled insight into wolf behavior and Yellowstone's famed wolf reintroduction project. It also offers a love story for the ages.

Like Thomas McNamee, David Mech, Barry Lopez, and other literary naturalists with an interest in wolf behavior, McIntyre writes with both elegance and flair, making complex biology and ethology a pleasure to read. Fans of wild wolves will eat this one up.--Kirkus starred review

In a fascinating story of discovery and science, we meet a remote population of wolves unafraid of humans.

For parts of twenty-four summers, wolf biologist L. David Mech lived with a group of wolves on Ellesmere Island, some six hundred miles from the North Pole. Elsewhere, most wolves flee from even the scent of humans, but these animals, evolving relatively free from human persecution, are unafraid. Having already spent twenty-eight years studying other populations of wolves more remotely by aircraft, snow-tracking, live-trapping, and radio-tracking, Mech was primed to join their activities up close and record their interactions with each other. This book tells the remarkable story of what Mech--and the researchers who followed him--have learned while living among the wolves.

The Ellesmere wolves were so unconcerned with Mech's presence that they allowed him to camp near their den and to sit on his all-terrain vehicle as he observed them, watching packs as large as seven adults and six pups go about their normal activities. In these extraordinarily close quarters, a pup untying his bootlace or an adult sniffing his gloved hand was just part of daily life. Mech accompanied the wolves on their travels and watched as they hunted muskoxen and arctic hares. By achieving the same kind of intimacy with his wild hosts' every action that we might experience living with domesticated dogs, Mech gained new insights into common but rarely studied behaviors like pup feeding, food caching, howling, and scent-marking. After Mech's time at Ellesmere ended, his coauthors and fellow wolf researchers Morgan Anderson and H. Dean Cluff spent parts of four summers studying the wolves via radio collars, further illuminating the creatures' movements and ecology. This book synthesizes their findings, offering both a compelling scientific overview of the animals' behavior--from hunting to living in packs to rearing pups--and a tale of adventure and survival in the Arctic.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The enthralling true story of the rise and reign of O-Six, the celebrated Yellowstone wolf, and the people who loved or feared her.

Before men ruled the earth, there were wolves. Once abundant in North America, these majestic creatures were hunted to near extinction in the lower 48 states by the 1920s. But in recent decades, conservationists have brought wolves back to the Rockies, igniting a battle over the very soul of the West.

With novelistic detail, Nate Blakeslee tells the gripping story of one of these wolves, O-Six, a charismatic alpha female named for the year of her birth. Uncommonly powerful, with gray fur and faint black ovals around each eye, O-Six is a kind and merciful leader, a fiercely intelligent fighter, and a doting mother. She is beloved by wolf watchers, particularly renowned naturalist Rick McIntyre, and becomes something of a social media star, with followers around the world.

But as she raises her pups and protects her pack, O-Six is challenged on all fronts: by hunters, who compete with wolves for the elk they both prize; by cattle ranchers who are losing livestock and have the ear of politicians; and by other Yellowstone wolves who are vying for control of the park's stunningly beautiful Lamar Valley.

These forces collide in American Wolf, a riveting multigenerational saga of hardship and triumph that tells a larger story about the ongoing cultural clash in the West--between those fighting for a vanishing way of life and those committed to restoring one of the country's most iconic landscapes.

From award-winning author and photographer Nick Jans, A Wolf Called Romeo is beautifully written...a thoughtful and moving story about one of nature's most evocative animals. (Patricia B. McConnell, author of The Education of Will and The Other End of the Leash)

A Wolf Called Romeo is the true story of the exceptional black wolf who spent seven years interacting with the people and dogs of Juneau, Alaska, living on the edges of their community, engaging in an improbable, awe-inspiring interspecies dance, and bringing the wild into sharp focus.

When Romeo first appeared, author Nick Jans and the other citizens of Juneau were wary, but as Romeo began to tag along with cross-country skiers on their daily jaunts, play fetch alongside local dogs, or simply lie near Nick and nap under the sun on a quiet afternoon, Nick and the rest of Juneau came to accept Romeo, and he them. Part memoir, part moving animal narrative, part foray into the mystique, lore, science, and history of the wolf, A Wolf Called Romeo is a book no animal lover should miss.

Jans is an exceptional storyteller -- no nature writer can top him in terms of sheer emotional force.--The New York Times

Jans is a perfect narrator for this story. He's deeply knowledgeable about the Alaskan wilderness and he evokes its harsh beauties in powerful and poetic prose...A tingling reminder of the basic bond that occasionally spans the space between two species.--Christian Science Monitor

From the renowned wolf researcher and author of The Rise of Wolf 8 and The Reign of Wolf 21 comes a stunning account of an unconventional alpha male.

A lover, not a fighter. That was wolf 302. A renegade with an eye for the ladies, 302 was anything but Yellowstone's perfect alpha male. For starters, he fled from danger. He begged for food from other wolves, ditched females he'd gotten pregnant, and even napped during a heated battle with a rival pack!

But this is not the story of 302's failures. This is the story of his dramatic transformation. And legendary wolf writer Rick McIntyre witnessed it all from the sidelines.

As McIntyre closely observed with his spotting scope, wolf 302 began to mature, and, much to McIntyre's surprise, became the leader of a new pack in his old age.

But in a year when game was scarce, could the aging wolf provide for his family? Had he changed enough to live up to the legacies of the great alpha males before him?

Recounted in McIntyre's captivating storytelling voice and peppered with fascinating insights into wolf behavior, The Redemption of Wolf 302 is a powerful coming-of-age tale that will strike a chord with anyone who has struggled to make a change, big or small.

With this third installment of Rick McIntyre's magnum opus, the scope and ambition of the project becomes clear: nothing less than a grand serialization of the first twenty years of wolves in Yellowstone, a kind of lupine Great Expectations.--Nate Blakeslee, New York Times-bestselling author of American Wolf

An illuminating account of one wolf's journey across the Alps into Italy, and what the resurgence of wolves says about our connection to nature, immigration, and one another--from an award-winning journalist.

In 2011, a wolf named Slavc left his home territory of Slovenia for a wide-ranging journey across the Alps. Tracked by a GPS collar, he traveled over 1,200 miles, where he would mate with a female wolf on a walkabout of her own--the only two wolves for hundreds of square miles--and start the first pack to call the Italian Alps home in more than a century. A decade later and there are more than a hundred wolves in the area, the result of their remarkable meeting. Now, journalist Adam Weymouth follows Slavc's path on foot, and in doing so, interrogates the fears and realities of those living on land that is being repopulated by wolves; a metaphor for economic, political, and climate upheaval in a region that is seeing a centuries-old way of life being upended.

Weymouth journeys to understand how wolves--vilified throughout history in literature, art, and folklore--are slowly creeping back into our forests, woods, and sometimes even our towns, and what that deep-rooted terror at the back of our minds really means. Slavc serves as the ultimate symbol for the outsider, journeying through places that are now wrestling with an influx of immigration, a resurgence of the far-right wing, and the steady decline of the environment due to the rapid advance of climate change; the question of how we see the other and treat the earth becomes paramount in everyday lives. Examining the political dimensions that this individual animal's trek brings to light, Lone Wolf tells a newly resonant story--one less about fear and more about the courage required to seek out a new life, as well as the challenge of accepting the changing world around us.

Sharply observed, searching, and written in poetic and precise prose, Lone Wolf explores the thorny connection between humans and nature, and indeed between borders themselves, and presses us to consider this much-discussed creature anew.

In 2020, it will have been twenty-five years since one of the greatest wildlife conservation and restoration achievements of the twentieth century took place: the reintroduction of wolves to the world's first national park, Yellowstone. Eradicated after the park was established, then absent for seventy years, these iconic carnivores returned to Yellowstone in 1995 when the US government reversed its century-old policy of extermination and--despite some political and cultural opposition--began the reintroduction of forty-one wild wolves from Canada and northwest Montana. In the intervening decades, scientists have studied their myriad behaviors, from predation to mating to wolf pup play, building a one-of-a-kind field study that has both allowed us to witness how the arrival of top predators can change an entire ecosystem and provided a critical window into impacts on prey, pack composition, and much else.

Here, for the first time in a single book, is the incredible story of the wolves' return to Yellowstone National Park as told by the very people responsible for their reintroduction, study, and management. Anchored in what we have learned from Yellowstone, highlighting the unique blend of research techniques that have given us this knowledge, and addressing the major issues that wolves still face today, this book is as wide-ranging and awe-inspiring as the Yellowstone restoration effort itself. We learn about individual wolves, population dynamics, wolf-prey relationships, genetics, disease, management and policy, newly studied behaviors and interactions with other species, and the rippling ecosystem effects wolves have had on Yellowstone's wild and rare landscape. Perhaps most importantly of all, the book also offers solutions to ongoing controversies and debates.

Featuring a foreword by Jane Goodall, beautiful images, a companion online documentary by celebrated filmmaker Bob Landis, and contributions from more than seventy wolf and wildlife conservation luminaries from Yellowstone and around the world, Yellowstone Wolves is a gripping, accessible celebration of the extraordinary Yellowstone Wolf Project--and of the park through which these majestic and important creatures once again roam.

For conservationists and lovers of animals, nature, and especially dogs, this National Geographic book shares the surprising understanding of wild wolves gained over six years the authors spent living intimately with them. Delve into Jim and Jamie Dutcher's amazing wolf photography documenting a pack of wolves at the edge of Idaho's Sawtooth Wilderness, illuminating their complex social hierarchy. Here is the alpha pair, leaders of the pack, often the only couple that mate. Here are the pups, born with eyes shut in the spring, tousled by their mother through the first six weeks of life. Here is the omega wolf, lowest ranking wolf in the pack, whose subservience, often playful, alleviates pack tension. Here are moments of cooperation and moments of snarling dominance, moments of communication and affection. Here, too, are heartwarming moments of connection between the Dutchers and the wolves, caught in pictures that remind us how close the links are between wolves in the wild and the beloved family dog.

Short chapters introduce the wolves as individuals, describe the Dutchers' years of coming to know them, and address the complex conservation issues surrounding the near-extinction and now replenishment of the species in the wild. Sidebars explore myths about wolves, including Native American spirit stories, European fairy tales, and modern ranching hearsay.

A redemption story, an adventure story, and perhaps above all, a love story.--Nate Blakeslee, New York Times-bestselling author of American Wolf

The Druid Peak Pack was the most famous wolf pack in Yellowstone National Park, and maybe even in the world.

This is the dramatic true story of its remarkable leader, Wolf 21--whose compassion and loyalty challenges commonly held beliefs about alpha males.

In this compelling follow-up to the national bestseller The Rise of Wolf 8, Rick McIntyre profiles one of Yellowstone's most revered alpha males, Wolf 21. Leader of the Druid Peak Pack, Wolf 21 was known for his unwavering bravery, his unusual benevolence (unlike other alphas, he never killed defeated rival males), and his fierce commitment to his mate, the formidable Wolf 42.

Wolf 21 and Wolf 42 were attracted to each other the moment they met--but Wolf 42's jealous sister interfered viciously in their relationship. After an explosive insurrection within the pack, the two wolves came together at last as leaders of the Druid Peak Pack, which dominated the park for more than 10 years.

McIntyre recounts the pack's fascinating saga with compassion and a keen eye for detail, drawing on his many years of experience observing Yellowstone wolves in the wild. His outstanding work of science writing offers unparalleled insight into wolf behavior and Yellowstone's famed wolf reintroduction project. It also offers a love story for the ages.

Like Thomas McNamee, David Mech, Barry Lopez, and other literary naturalists with an interest in wolf behavior, McIntyre writes with both elegance and flair, making complex biology and ethology a pleasure to read. Fans of wild wolves will eat this one up.--Kirkus starred review

A unique look at the cultural, environmental, historical, literary, metaphorical, and political role of the wolf.

Echo Loba, Loba Echo is a story about the metaphor of the wolf and how this is echoed in the lives and minds of people. A metaphor that embodies worldviews colliding, and the collision, the fallout, we live with still. It is a story about wolves' own cultures, survival stories, acts of rebellion, and vital roles in maintaining healthy territories. And it is also a story about what we have been told to forget, or never even know, and what wolves show us about ourselves.

Through essay and poetry, the metaphor of the wolf, and loba - for she-wolf - is examined the way one might observe the light off a prism, in multi-dimensional ways. The associations are many and diametrically varied. Wolf as scapegoat, villain, outcast, blamed for human violence. Wolf as warrior, guide, mother to stray or orphaned children as well as her own pups. The Ojibwe word for wolf is ma'iingan: the one sent here by that all-loving spirit to show us the way. Wolf (Latin: lupus), which is another word for whore (lupa), for woman. Wolf, another word for backcountry. Yet the choice is not an easy duality, not simply between the notion of wolf as heroine or wolf as devil.

Red wolves are shy, elusive, and misunderstood predators. Until the 1800s, they were common in the longleaf pine savannas and deciduous forests of the southeastern United States. However, habitat degradation, persecution, and interbreeding with the coyote nearly annihilated them. Today, reintroduced red wolves are found only in peninsular northeastern North Carolina within less than 1 percent of their former range. In The Secret World of Red Wolves, nature writer T. DeLene Beeland shadows the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's pioneering recovery program over the course of a year to craft an intimate portrait of the red wolf, its history, and its restoration. Her engaging exploration of this top-level predator traces the intense effort of conservation personnel to save a species that has slipped to the verge of extinction.
Beeland weaves together the voices of scientists, conservationists, and local landowners while posing larger questions about human coexistence with red wolves, our understanding of what defines this animal as a distinct species, and how climate change may swamp its current habitat.

2024 Nautilus Book Silver Award Winner in Animals and Nature

Walker's writing is an invitation to travel along virtually with the peripatetic lone wolf through the heart of Alaska's wilderness, an adventure not to be missed..--Margaret Bauman, author of The Cordova Times

• Follow one wolf's incredible journey 2,600 miles across Alaska and Canada
• Offers remarkable insights into one of the most beloved, feared, and mysterious creatures

The Wanderer is the first book ever to chart a wolf's movements for an extended period of time, almost to the day. Award-winning author Tom Walker draws on unparalleled access to a research study of wolves in Alaska to share the story of Wolf 258, nicknamed the Wanderer. Relying on a GPS collar that recorded the animal's coordinates each day, biologists tracked Wolf 258 as he moved through the wilderness---and, astonishingly, traveled more than 2600 miles in less than six months.

Through the lens of one wolf's epic journey, Walker highlights connections to terrain, history, looming threats, and other animals. He recounts the animal's compelling final months, while examining the broader complexity of the species' struggle for survival. The Wanderer explores not only the natural history of wolves but the relationship of people--Indigenous, pioneers and settlers, biologists, politicians--with this predator, shedding light on the long-established northern traditions of trapping and hunting, the tangled politics of wolf management, and how artificial borders fail to contain this iconic species.

In a fascinating story of discovery and science, we meet a remote population of wolves unafraid of humans.

For parts of twenty-four summers, wolf biologist L. David Mech lived with a group of wolves on Ellesmere Island, some six hundred miles from the North Pole. Elsewhere, most wolves flee from even the scent of humans, but these animals, evolving relatively free from human persecution, are unafraid. Having already spent twenty-eight years studying other populations of wolves more remotely by aircraft, snow-tracking, live-trapping, and radio-tracking, Mech was primed to join their activities up close and record their interactions with each other. This book tells the remarkable story of what Mech--and the researchers who followed him--have learned while living among the wolves.

The Ellesmere wolves were so unconcerned with Mech's presence that they allowed him to camp near their den and to sit on his all-terrain vehicle as he observed them, watching packs as large as seven adults and six pups go about their normal activities. In these extraordinarily close quarters, a pup untying his bootlace or an adult sniffing his gloved hand was just part of daily life. Mech accompanied the wolves on their travels and watched as they hunted muskoxen and arctic hares. By achieving the same kind of intimacy with his wild hosts' every action that we might experience living with domesticated dogs, Mech gained new insights into common but rarely studied behaviors like pup feeding, food caching, howling, and scent-marking. After Mech's time at Ellesmere ended, his coauthors and fellow wolf researchers Morgan Anderson and H. Dean Cluff spent parts of four summers studying the wolves via radio collars, further illuminating the creatures' movements and ecology. This book synthesizes their findings, offering both a compelling scientific overview of the animals' behavior--from hunting to living in packs to rearing pups--and a tale of adventure and survival in the Arctic.

HIS PLAN WAS TO STAY IN IOWA, maybe get a job counting ducks, or do a little farming. But events conspired to fling Carter Niemeyer westward and straight into the jaws of wolves. From his early years wrangling ornery federal trappers, eagles and grizzlies, to winning a skinning contest that paved the way for wolf reintroduction in the Northern Rockies, Carter Niemeyer reveals the wild and bumpy ride that turned a trapper - a killer - into a champion of wolves.