I looked down at my hands, shielded in red mittens, and flexed my fingers. They were badly blistered from frostnip, and I winced. It was early March and, despite the azure sky above, it was a bone-chilling -50°C.
Beside me stood wildlife guide Adam Reimer. Born and bred in the Canadian bush, this willow-slip of a 20-something had a seemingly genetic indifference to the temperatures and an intrinsic understanding of tracking.
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On this particular day, we had already been riding our snowmobiles for seven hours, with the last 12km spent following the rambling tracks of some of the world’s most elusive and charismatic predators: grey wolves.
More specifically, we were on the trail of the extraordinary Opoyastin pack, a 13-strong family unit that roams the Kaska Coast on the southern side of Hudson Bay.
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The Opoyastin pack
Though numbers are hard to estimate, it is believed that Canada currently holds as many as 50,000 grey (or timber) wolves, second only to Russia in terms of the size of population. No other animal is more emblematic of a wilderness than the wolf, yet the species remains persecuted across its entire range.
Indeed, apart from the limited protection afforded to the species within a few national parks, these predators are hunted, trapped and poisoned seemingly at will.
Unsurprisingly, wolves remain aloof and distant, wary of humans. That is, with the exception of the Opoyastin pack, whose members ignore the traditional script and view humans with interest.
I first became obsessed with this pack in 2016. At the time, I was searching for polar bears, and I encountered these fabulous canids almost by accident as they drifted in and out of my explorations.
Perhaps they were curious as to what these strange, heavily-laden humans were doing in their territory – a vast, unspoiled wilderness that stretches more than 100km along the coastline, from Cape Tatnam in the east to the Nelson River in the west, and up to 30km inland.
They kept their distance, yet I had a feeling that they had possibly never seen a human before and consequently had no preconceptions. The promise of close encounters with these normally shy creatures had me hooked to the point that I returned seven times over the next seven years, with just one Covid-enforced break.
It would be easy for the wolves to disappear into the 50,000km² of boreal forest they called home but, sure enough, I saw them more frequently on every visit. Through years of patient tracking of these animals on foot and snowmobile, successive generations of the Opoyastin pack have become increasingly comfortable in my presence, allowing me closer into their fold.
There is nowhere else on Earth that a wild wolf pack can be met in this way.
Tracking the wolf pack
It was day 28 of my current quest, the last full day in the elements. For the last four weeks, Adam and I had been out in the wilds all day, every day, and had been lucky enough to see the pack six times and capture imagery beyond anything I had achieved before.
The fact that we could even locate these ‘cloud wolves’, as they are called locally, was something of a miracle. In winter, Hudson Bay freezes over, creating more land available to roam.
Despite what I had in the bag, I was after one final epic encounter. Through frozen goggles, I saw Adam look at his watch. He knew that we were going to run out of daylight if we pushed too much further, and clearly didn’t fancy navigating back to our lodge through more than 35km of forested slopes, thick snowdrifts, unforgiving sand ridges and frozen rivers in the dark.
Sensing the day could be about to slump towards disappointment, I pushed for a reprieve. Adam could barely hear me above the slicing wind, but I urged him to go on just a little longer.
With our targets’ tracks so fresh and unfettered on the snow, he agreed to another couple of kilometres. We continued up the Hayes River, one of myriad major waterways that drain Northern Manitoba into Hudson Bay.
As is usual at this time of year, it was covered in deep ice and crowned with a thick snowpack. The highway this created was also favoured by the wolves, it seemed. The tracks indicated that they had cruised the coastline before reaching the river mouth and then turned inland, following the river upstream.
Searching for prey
I admired the wolves’ ingenuity – they were using this seasonal route to access the interior of the boreal forest more easily, where moose and their calves would be hiding away for the winter. Moose were always on the menu, chased and worn down by the pack over kilometres through the snowpack until they could run no further, or steered on to frozen rivers where their hooves struggle for traction.
Though I had never witnessed a kill outright, I had seen members of previous generations of the pack trot past me without a care in the world, carrying the partial remains of their quarry in their mouths. On a couple of occasions, I had followed tracks to a kill-site where little remained other than a skull, a few hooves and a thick carpet of moose hair.
It’s not just the long-legged that are on the menu. The Opoyastin pack will, if conditions permit, occasionally take a newborn polar bear cub, and their constant cruising of the coastline can provide chance encounters with female bears emerging from their dens with new offspring in tow.
Perhaps this was why I first encountered the wolves during my polar bear expedition in 2016 – a fortuitous coincidence while we were seeking the same target. Adam and I were almost at the western edge of the pack’s territory and, wolves being wolves, they had clearly been patrolling their borders.
On average, we estimated that they completed a full circuit of their range about every 8-10 days, marking significant trees and rocks as they went and keeping a watchful eye for interlopers.
While fights between packs are rare (in fact, lone wolves often join with a resident pack), the scents laid down were a sufficient deterrent, warning other packs that this zone was taken.
Finding the pack
As we pushed on through the snowpack, carving new trails on this pristine winterscape, I tried not to dwell on the fact that this pack could move up to 70km a day with ease. The tracks might ultimately lead up a riverbank and into the forest, where weaving between tightly packed fir trees would be impossible for us. Surely, I wouldn’t be that unlucky.
We rounded yet another bend in this huge river and immediately cut our engines. Lying among a clump of willows was what could only be described as a pile of dogs. They were curled up and sleeping, semi-covered with snow, noses pressed against tails.
The breeding male, slightly removed from the others, lifted his head, blinked and glanced in our direction, before resuming the important business of sleeping. Roaming packs of wolves are often thought of as units of assassins, brought together from far and wide, and achieving their hierarchical positioning based on internal conflict and a constant quest for power.
Indeed, it was this theory that gave rise to the idea of an ‘alpha’ pair: the male and female at the top of the pecking order and the only ones with the right to mate.
However, these notions have been challenged and mostly overturned. A wolf pack is, in fact, a broad-based family unit with a mother, a father and their offspring. Hence, current terminology has replaced the ‘alpha’ prefix with ‘breeding’.
Packs ebb and flow in size, sometimes consisting of just the breeding pair, sometimes being multi-generational. Young wolves come and go, and occasionally a lone animal may join in.
Pack size will also be affected by the natural dispersal of the animals themselves, as younger animals mature and new pups arrive. Yearlings are likely to stay with the pack but, as they reach two to three years of age, they start to head off on their own, perhaps with siblings, to populate new territories.
Like most predators, wolves are prolific breeders and produce a new litter every year. Not all will survive. None of the pups born to the Opoyastin pack in 2023, for example, made it through the summer, without any obvious reason, but more will follow.
Older wolves may of course die off too, particularly if conflict occurs with a rival pack on the fringes of their territory. Indeed, territorial violence is the single biggest cause of death of wolves not targeted by humans.
We set up the cameras and waited. The animals were less than 30m away, completely unperturbed by our waist-deep clambering through the snowdrifts. Two hours passed with nothing other than a ruffle of fur as the wind continued to howl up the river.
The wolves gradually disappeared from view, obscured by the blowing snow. Then, in the blink of a frozen eye, the scene changed. The breeding female hauled herself to her feet, shook off her snow coat and began a range of balletic stretches.
Immediately, the pups were on their feet. Excited and curious, they also shed their snowy coverings and imitated their mother’s gymnastics, warming muscles and readying to leave. The next five minutes provided the mayhem I’d been waiting for.
This was the ‘rally’ – where the pack limbers up, ready to strike out on a hunt or other mission. It is an action-packed few minutes and involves much jumping around, running and chasing, wrestling and play-biting, accompanied by excited yips that build towards haunting howls.
Then it happened. The breeding female crossed the river to head into the forest on the other side, and walked directly past us. It was more heart-stopping than any other encounter I’d had with this pack.
A steady procession followed, just a couple of metres away. I was lying as close to the ground as I could, so cold that I could not even feel the buttons on the camera as I pressed away. The viewfinder fogged and froze continually, meaning I was almost blind for seconds at a time until I managed to scrape away the ice with a numb finger.
There was nothing menacing about the wolves’ approach, just mild curiosity from the youngsters. I chuckled as I realised that the comfort break we had taken by the snowmobiles was now the focus of great attention, with the wolves all pausing to investigate.
A safe future?
For now, the future of this pack feels safe. The wilderness in which they roam is far from any notable human habitation, with the small Manitoban town of Gillam and its population of just over 1,000 people around 200km away.
Local trappers and hunters have also expressed no interest in the Opoyastin pack. Further up the western coast of the Hudson Bay, however, where Manitoba gives way to Nunavut, attitudes are very different.
There is little to no tolerance of wolves, and no limits on how many can be hunted or trapped. Wolf pelts still seem to be of value here, and even though the territory supports a healthy population, the animals move as ghosts.
Remaining distant and mobile is the key to survival in a land where rifles are common and every wolf is a target.
For now, the Inuit communities of Nunavut have given assurances that they have no interest in seeking out this remarkable pack, even though it would be the easiest hunt of all.
We have to hope that they keep their word, and that the Opoyastins continue to roam these snowy wilds, safely into the future.
