Expanding wolf packs creep onto cattle grazing territory

ELLENSBURG, Wash. -- Over the two decades Ellensburg cattle rancher Sam Kayser has been running cows and calves in the rolling hills of the Teanaway, the animals’ grazing patterns have become so predictable his range riders know where to find the cattle at any given time. That’s no longer the case, now that wolves are hunting prey within those same forested ridges and draws. In June, a bunch of Kayser’s cattle did something they hadn’t done in those 20 years: They stampeded through a holding pen in a 100-acre meadow and scattered, some of them finally being rounded up five miles away. A month later, Kayser got a call that some of his cattle were at the crest of Blewett Pass, more than 10 miles from where they should have been. The reason behind the cattle’s newly erratic behavior is no mystery. On Wednesday, Kayser’s son, Kass, was riding an area near the North Fork of the Teanaway, where he should have found a lot of Kayser cattle. There were none. What the younger Kayser found instead was a lot of wolf tracks — some of the prints as large as horses’ hooves...more