Wolf pups checking things out and eating snow

Next door to the Nashata Pack, whose pups did not do well in 2021, is the Cranberry Bay Pack whose pups did very well! You can see all four of the Cranberry pups below, one of which seemed REALLY into eating some snow... And no, we did not put anything in the snow there. That aspen tree actually fell down shortly after we checked our camera in late October (luckily it missed the camera). In some extent, it worked out great because the wolves always seemed to stop and check out the downed tree when passing by. And of course, it is hard to not to wonder what explains the differences in pup survival between neighboring packs. There are numerous potential factors that could be at play and it is not an easy task to sort that all out. Nonetheless, our long-term hope is to be able to understand what drives these patterns. The biggest limitation, as always, is that we have imperfect knowledge as we cannot track or observe the pups each and every day to understand what is going on. But we are optimistic that with