Wolves and Moose at Pitchstone Waters

It’s springtime at Pitchstone Waters Ranch, which means that we can access our game cameras in the high forests along our boundary with the national forest, and see last winter’s photos. The game camera that took these photos is located in our northeast corner, 5-miles southwest of Yellowstone Park’s southwest corner, better known as “The Pitchstone Plateau”.

 

The Pitchstone Plateau, named after the lava pitchstone, occupies the southwest corner of the park in the Bechler and Fall River drainages. The rhyolite lava flows that created the 250,000-acre plateau occurred about 70,000 years ago.

 

We use goats and cattle to create a patchy mosaic of relatively open forest along the dense and overgrown national forest. This “animal impact” reduces fire hazard and stimulates tasty new growth, attracting deer, elk, moose, game birds – among many others. These bring in predators: Brown and black bear, cougar, coyotes, and wolves.

 

Here are wolves, a young bull moose, and a moose cow traveling along our northeast fence-line.