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Biologists spend nights hazing wolves to deter livestock kills Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife district biologist Tom Collom uses antenna and radio to try and get a signal from wolf OR-54, part of the Rogue Pack, while camped northwest of Fort Klamath. [Photo by Lee Juillerat] Tuesday Oct 17, 2017 at 5:51 PM Oct 17, 2017 at 5:58 PM By Lee Juillerat for the Mail Tribune FORT KLAMATH — Blaring sounds from a car horn rattle the nighttime calm. Beacons of light sporadically sweep across otherwise invisible fields. A bonfire, large enough to roast 1,000 marshmallows, throws flames into the blackness. Every 20 or 30 minutes, Tom Collom pulls what looks like an old-fashioned television antenna and radio from his pickup, then slowly revolves it toward the forests flanking the eastern edge of the Sky Lakes Wilderness. He's listening for a beeping sound from the VHF collar placed Oct. 7 on a 2-year-old female wolf dubbed OR-54. It's Friday the 13th, but this is no horror flick. Collom, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife district biologist, spent Friday and Saturday nights camped in a large field northwest of Fort Klamath, emerging periodically from his woodstove-heated tent into subfreezing temperatures to listen for the telltale beep. Occasionally he would honk the pickup's horn, scan the strobe light and feed the fire. A lantern was kept on all night to illuminate the tent, another way of broadcasting a human presence. It's all part of an effort to disrupt the patterns of wolves seen and heard recently in the Wood River Valley, where upward of 35,000 cattle graze each summer. "We'll see if we can alter their behavior a bit," Collom says. The idea is to keep the wolves from feeling comfortable because of human presence in the valley — and, the hope is, prevent them from killing and eating cattle. "We're here to intercept them and, hopefully, put a little pressure on them," he says. Late in the night, Collom heard a wolf howling, "so I fired three rounds of cracker shells and the howling stopped." Cracker shells are fired into the air and travel about 100 yards before noisily exploding. "It's pretty loud," he said. "The folks in Fort Klamath probably heard them." Efforts to put pressure on the animals started after Mike Moore, a Klamath Falls-based ODFW assistant biologist, last week saw eight wolves in nearby cattle pastures, possibly lured by the unburied carcasses of two cows that had died of natural causes. During Moore's Thursday night vigil, when he awakened from a pre-dawn nap, the monitor that tracks and downloads the pack's movements showed OR-54 and the pack had passed within 200 yards of the tent. A year ago this month, four cattle grazing on the Nicholson Ranch not far from the campsite shared by Moore, Collom and John Stephenson, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wildlife biologist, were attacked and eaten by wolves that biologists believe were part of the Rogue Pack, a growing band of nine wolves that includes OR-54's father, the legendary OR-7. Earlier this month, crews from ODFW and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service trapped a 2-year-old, 80-pound female. After sedating the wolf, biologists took DNA and blood samples and named her OR-54. After being fitted with a VHF collar that will allow biologists to monitor the Rogue pack's movements, she was released. But Collom and Stephenson have experienced problems picking up signals from her collar. "We've got issues with that collar," Collom said Monday, noting it works only when OR-54 is within a quarter-mile. "We definitely have a problem." Stephenson, who spent Monday and Tuesday nights camped at Nicholson Ranch with Jeanne Spaur, another federal biologist, got a surprise Monday morning. About the time he received a signal, "I looked over on the fenceline, and there (OR-54) was with another wolf." He fired cracker shells, which travel about 100 yards before exploding, to scare the two wolves but then noticed four or five more fleeing wolves. "That got them running." He's unsure whether the wolves were seeking two cattle carcasses on a neighboring property, which tracking data shows they had found last week. The cattle were not killed by wolves and were later buried. Stephenson said he, Spaur and Collom will meet to determine whether the overnight vigils will continue. "We'll continue until tonight, and then we'll reassess," Collom said Monday. "We'll see what tonight brings, but we'll probably keep at it. We've definitely altered their behavior." — Reach freelance writer Lee Juillerat at [email protected] or 541-880-4139.