Mitigating conflicts between wolves and livestock, including sheep, is a big part of the work of managing gray wolves around the greater Yellowstone area.

So a viral video from Norway has been making the rounds lately among ranchers in Wyoming and Montana. It shows a wolf making a move against a mother sheep and her lambs, only to get chased off by the mother sheep.

Some commenters suspect it’s because the wolf is hunting alone, without support from the pack. Others figure there must be a different reason why the big bad wolf can’t manage to take on a single sheep with a couple of lambs.

Based on a highly imperfect Google translation of a Norwegian news story on the video, it appears that the mother sheep’s owner speculates that her previous encounters with predators has made her tough and impatient with wolves. Whatever the reason, it’s an amusing bit of footage.

And it may just have a few Yellowstone area ranchers wondering if there’s a chance they can import some of those Norwegian sheep.

5 replies on “A sheepish wolf”

  1. What I had seen in this video was this, a smart wolf was trying to get the mother sheep and her cubs to follow him in the woods out of the danger of the man with the video that he seen because the wolf came back two times to lead her out of danger! you see wolves have a heart

  2. I think the wolf is paying more attention to the guy shooting the video than he is to the sheep. We also don’t know if there are other humans in the vicinity which would definitely cause the wolf to act cautiously.

  3. I have footage of my sheep chasing the dogs, and she chases them for about a half an hour-they are collies, no less, and very good at their job, usually, but they were just trying to relax !!! Sheep , rabbits and prey animals are very good fighters.

  5. As a Shepherd I can see very clearly that the ewe has a bell on her neck that is the reason she is able to scare away the meat eater. I also have had great luck with bells that ring when a ewe moves. As soon as she made her move the bell did the trick. Some predators get smart and eat bell rings also

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