The largest of the three wolves had a head like an anvil and was larger than the other two by a third. All black, he could have been mistaken for a black bear. He was that big.

We caught them in the open as we drove up over a rise while hunting elk this fall north of Clark. They were within sight of a bunch of Two Dot cows, but the cattle didn’t appear to be agitated.

And neither were the wolves particularly worried at the sight of us. They seemed to know they were safe. They stopped and watched us drive slowly by.

Within an hour, I discovered the remains of a calf elk that I’m pretty sure they had killed and were returning to in the middle of a hayfield. There wasn’t much left of it.

It doesn’t seem as if there’s much left of the once-mighty Yellowstone herd either. From estimates I read in a regional newspaper article celebrating the 20th anniversary of wolves being reintroduced to the park, the elk herd stood at 19,000 animals in 1995. It’s 4,000 now.

That’s a precipitous decline in anybody’s book. In the same period of time, wolf numbers in and around the park have grown from a couple of animals to hundreds of them.

I worked at the Powell Tribune back in the 1990s and had a front-row seat to the acrimonious debate about whether Canadian wolves should be released in Yellowstone. I remember well the anger it generated amongst many at the innumerable meetings and protests.

There was a palpable sense that wolves were being shoved down the throats of locals, whether people liked it or not. A rather familiar scenario from the perspective of many.

But not everybody. I remember being torn about it. We humans played God in exterminating them from the area in the early part of the last century.

Maybe the return of a few wolves would right that wrong and bring some kind of balance to the circus that is Yellowstone. I was also worried about the consequences of wolves expanding into the places my father and I have hunted elk for all my life.

For many of us who live here, elk hunting is much more than an autumn pastime. It’s part of who we are. It’s what we dream of in our idle moments or while we’re suffering through another miserable day at work. It’s not a religion, but it is a rite.

And it’s a chance to reconnect with the wild world that we are fortunate to still experience here in the last best place. A part of the world that’s almost gone.

Many of us elk hunters, myself included, were also uneasy about the real intentions behind reintroduction of wolves to our part of the world. There was a kind of gnawing fear that it really was a kind of covert effort on the part of anti-hunters to push us out of the woods.

You know of what I speak: It’s so much more wholesome and natural for wolves to pull down a cow elk than it is for me or Dad to shoot one.

Twenty years later, those fears seem to have been borne out. The proverbial fox in the henhouse has done away with general season elk hunting in much of Wyoming. You see elk on Heart Mountain and even along Avenue E, all over Two Dot and on the lower Greybull River, yarding in farmer’s cornfields like whitetail deer.

You know and I know why they’re there. Don’t need a degree to figure it out. It’s safer on Graebbert’s than it is in the mountains. It’s not entirely safe because wolves come down here too, but they don’t have free rein down here like they do in the woods.

You can get shot for eating cows.

A few years ago I was hunting elk on Lodgepole Creek, by myself. I had a horse and a pack mule and as we set out in the predawn darkness, I had to dismount and open a gate on a drift fence near the confluence of the North and South Forks of Crandall Creek.

My not-so-loyal equine partners really raised hell as I attempted to open the gate and get them through it. I became angry because I could see a few black Angus yearlings in the light of my headlamp and was pretty sure that was the cause of such deep concern.

I managed to get back in the saddle and aimed up the trail, but both horse and mule were nervous and kept looking down toward the creek in the darkness, snorting and blowing snot.

We proceeded up Lodgepole, my nervous entourage and I.

An hour or so later my horse slipped and fell at a greasy clay creek crossing. I got clear of her without injury, but she and the mule bolted back down the trail in the direction of the horse trailer, leaving me afoot and without my rifle.

It began to snow. Fortunately for me, the mule’s lead rope caught up on a root or rock maybe a half mile down the trail and I caught up to them. My loyal crew.

The snow was beginning to stick now, accumulating on the ground. I had determined that I’d made a wrong turn and decided to backtrack to where the trail split. It was light now and as we headed down the trail I was astonished to see numerous wolf tracks following my trail. They were nowhere to be seen.

When I reached the fork in the trail, I turned my mount up the trail I should have taken and we headed upcountry. Up past the Snowtel site the snow turned to a miserable downpour of rain which grew heavier by the minute.

At that point I determined I had enjoyed as much rain as I could stand and turned my horse around. She was eager to go, as they always are when you’re headed home, and we made good time, slipping and sliding down the trail.

Below the Snowtel site the timber opens into a park and it is there that we encountered the Hurricane Mesa pack. They were trailing us again, and this time I think the rain muffled our sound enough that they weren’t alarmed at our return.

In fact, they weren’t scared at all. Seven or eight in number, they loped easily across the park as we stood and watched. One of the smaller ones had a noticeable limp and hobbled after the others.

And yes, I did think about it. I think I could have killed several of them. The weather was so miserable nobody in their right mind was out. The rain would have muffled the sound of my .270 and the tracks would soon be obliterated by the downpour.

But that would have been a crime. I’m not a criminal, I’m an elk hunter.

What’s increasingly frustrating for me and my camo-wearing, gun-toting brethren is the fact that while we abide grudgingly by the rules imposed by the legal system, opponents of wolf and grizzly hunting keep changing those rules to suit their agenda.

That ain’t right.