JACKSON (WNE) — Canyon Phillips had the rare experience of seeing his first wild wolf up close last weekend, though unfortunately the canine had just expired.

The 3-year-old son of wildlife-watching guide Taylor Phillips probably didn’t grasp what exactly was going on when he crawled up to investigate the still-warm carcass of the grayish-white lobo late on Saturday. Moments before, the female adult wolf had been fatally hit by a vehicle cruising down Grand Teton National Park’s main interior road near Colter Bay Village.

The Phillips family rolled by just as Teton Interagency firefighters, who were also driving by, were dragging the animal’s carcass off the road.

The wolf was a 7-year-old female from the Huckleberry Pack, which had been tracked and given a unique identification number by the National Park Service in the past.

Grand Teton biologist John Stephenson said that the aging lobo’s cause of death — a vehicle strike — is common for wolves within the park’s boundaries. Fourteen wolves have been hit and killed on park roads since 2005, he said.

“We have an average of one a year,” Stephenson said. “In the park, it is the No. 1 cause of mortality for wolves.”

The driver of the motor vehicle that struck the Huckleberry Pack wolf did not report it, although that is a legal requirement. Another motorist who witnessed the incident did phone authorities, but the reporting party did not provide enough detail for law enforcement to pursue the driver. No investigation into the animal’s death is underway, park wildlife chief Dave Gustine said.