YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — The search for wolves in Yellowstone National Park starts by spotting a different kind of pack — the human kind.
Wolf spotters line the road whenever they spot an animal. And then more people join. And a few more. Until what seems like half the park’s visitors are zoomed in on their scopes to a tiny wolf-shaped speck way in the distance.
Rick McIntyre is usually the first to spot that speck.
“I do have a wolf,” McIntyre told a tourist scanning the landscape, trying to find a wolf in Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley. “Do you want to look through my scope?”
McIntyre is not greedy with his scope. He wants to help each visitor he meets find the animal he has spent nearly 30 years watching in the park.
“When people have a good experience seeing wolves in Yellowstone, that really changes people,” McIntyre said.
Wolves have changed McIntyre’s life as well. He came to the area in 1994 after jobs in Montana and Alaska. His arrival in Yellowstone came a year before wolves were reintroduced to the area. McIntyre’s job was to be an interpretive ranger – he would be the one helping visitors understand the animal and reintroduction.
“The more people see wolves, the more they’ll be on the side of wolves and the more they’ll advocate for them,” McIntyre said.
He said neither he nor the park was ready for how visible the relocated wolves would be. He had realistic hopes for their first year in the park.
“My goal was to see one wolf,” McIntyre said with a laugh. “If I could see one wolf in Yellowstone, I’d be a happy guy.”
The first day the wolves were released, he saw all six members of one pack.
“The park service was not prepared for that -- what they we going to do if this becomes a huge draw for visitors,” McIntyre said. “My job made people happy."
“Showing people wild wolves—that was their dream—that’s a cool thing to do," he said.
More than 25 years later, wolves in the Lamar Valley are such a big draw that they bring in more than $80 million in tourism to the area.
McIntyre is retired now, but he is still out there, educating people about wolves. A lot of folks refer to him as the star of Yellowstone. He sees it differently.
“I’m just the conduit. I put people and wolves together,” he said.
Some of his efforts are widespread. In the last few years, McIntyre has written four books about wolves that he has studied and followed over the years. They have been translated into multiple languages.
“I can’t pronounce this, but this is the Ukranian language version of 'The Rise of Wolf 8,'” McIntyre said as he pulled the book from a bookshelf at his home in Silver Gate, Montana.
The stories are full of action, and he said there are even some love stories.
“You know that word ‘suave’ in talking about guys who know how to treat the ladies—he had that,” McIntyire said while pointing to a photo on his cabin wall of one of the more famous Yellowstone wolves.
And in another plot twist, his books are going to be turned into movies, or a series.
“We’ve been contacted by a bunch of movie people that are interested in the wolf stories,” McIntyre said. “A few months ago we did sign a contract with a production company.”
He said he does not know when his wolves will hit Hollywood, but it will be a while.
“All of the wolves will pretty much be CGI,” McIntyre told a park visitor as they were both scanning the valley for wolves. “They can take wolves living in captivity and make them do some things, but not really too much. This, you’d need them to do a lot.”
After years of watching wolves, McIntyre has a few more goals when it comes to days in the field seeing the animal.
“This is somewhere around day 9,400. I’m shooting for 10,000,” McIntyre said.
When he misses a day, there is always a good reason.
“I had 15 years in a row,” McIntyre said. “Then I had to have an open heart surgery thing, so that stopped me.”
McIntyre is happy to know each wolf by number—and is always ready to share what he knows with the packs of people who line Yellowstone’s roads, with hopes of seeing a wolf. He is not ready to give up this life anytime soon.
“Why would I be done? What would I do, join the circus?” he said.