Rick McIntyre 
The Redemption of Wolf 302 
From Renegade to Yellowstone Alpha Male

From the renowned wolf researcher and author of The Rise of Wolf 8 and The Reign of Wolf 21 comes a stunning account of an unconventional alpha male.



A lover, not a fighter. That was wolf 302. A renegade with an eye for the ladies, 302 was anything but Yellowstone’s perfect alpha male. For starters, he fled from danger. He begged for food from other wolves, ditched females he’d gotten pregnant, and even napped during a heated battle with a rival pack!



But this is not the story of 302’s failures. This is the story of his dramatic transformation. And legendary wolf writer Rick Mc Intyre witnessed it all from the sidelines.



As Mc Intyre closely observed with his spotting scope, wolf 302 began to mature, and, much to Mc Intyre’s surprise, became the leader of a new pack in his old age.



But in a year when game was scarce, could the aging wolf provide for his family? Had he changed enough to live up to the legacies of the great alpha males before him?



Recounted in Mc Intyre’s captivating storytelling voice and peppered with fascinating insights into wolf behavior,
The Redemption of Wolf 302 is a powerful coming-of-age tale that will strike a chord with anyone who has struggled to make a change, big or small.




“With this third installment of Rick Mc Intyre’s magnum opus, the scope and ambition of the project becomes clear: nothing less than a grand serialization of the first twenty years of wolves in Yellowstone, a kind of lupine Great Expectations.”—Nate Blakeslee, New York Times-bestselling author of American Wolf

Table of Content

Map of Northeast Yellowstone National Park 

Select Yellowstone Wolf Pack Territories 2004–2009 

Principal Wolves 

Prologue 

Previously in Lamar Valley 

Part 1: 2004

1 To Be the Alpha You Have to Beat the Alpha 

2 The New World Order 

3 480’s Trial by Combat 

Part 2: 2005

4 Outnumbered 

5 Hard Times in Lamar Valley 

6 Four Mothers at Slough Creek 

7 The Fate of the Slough Pups 

8 The Sloughs Expand Their Territory 

Part 3: 2006

9 The Mating Season 

10 The Den Siege 

11 Resurgence 

12 Summer 

Part 4: 2007

13 302’s Walkabout 

14 The Battle of Mount Norris 

15 The Druids and the Sloughs 

16 The Oxbow, Agate, and Leopold Packs 

17 Conflict Among the Packs 

Part 5: 2008

18 The Two Interlopers 

19 The Tragedy of Light Gray 

20 Occupational Injuries 

21 A New Pack Forms 

Part 6: 2009

22 The 06 Female 

23 302 and His Pups 

24 No Country for an Old Wolf 

Epilogue 

Author’s Note 

Acknowledgments 

References and Suggested Reading 

Index 

About the author

No one has spent more time observing and documenting wild wolves than retired National Park ranger Rick Mc Intyre, who has watched wolves in America’s national parks for more than 40 years, 25 of those years in Yellowstone, where he has accumulated over 100, 000 sightings. Mc Intyre’s other books include The Rise of Wolf 8 and The Reign of Wolf 21, and he is at work on a fourth book about Wolf 06 and other Yellowstone alpha females. He lives in Silver Gate, Montana.