The gray wolf population in Montana is expected to come off the Endangered Species List early next month, for the second time in a year.
Living with wolves nearby for many people is a daily reality, but for some in the Bitterroot Valley that reality hit too close to home after wolves attacked and killed their dogs.
Blitz is a little older, wiser and lucky to be alive. The animal returned from a lion hunt, but more experienced Walker hounds , Jody and Suzy, didn't survive an unexpected encounter with wolves.
"Personally, it's a bad thing. I lost some of my family members. Professionally, I'm out of business" said hunting guide Paul Converse.
Converse and friend Luke Bush took their hounds up the East Fork of the Bitterroot, looking for big cats, but wary of wolves.
"The first thing you look for once you find a fresh lion track is a wolf track. Once you work through the wolf tracks and make sure they're not there, you don't want to them out if there's sign" explained lion hunter Luke Bush.
They saw no wolf sign and found a fresh lion track, so they released the dogs that tracked and treed a lion like in this previous outing. But when they went to find their dogs, and got within hearing range, they heard the worst possible sound --no barking-- just silence.
"We had wolf tracks because that's all I could find with the dog tracks intermixed...no sound. I called Paul and said we had trouble" said Bush.
Meanwhile not far away, just outside Darby, cattle rancher Kristen Snavely and her husband Jeff are mourning the loss of their Husky mix Dusty, taken by wolves less than a quarter mile behind their home.
"The dog came out of the barn, torn up with blood and wounds on him" stated Kristen Snavely.
They took him to the vet where he died three days later, "We always had lion and bear, and felt the dogs in our yard kept those things out of, and away from livestock at home, and with wolves, that's not the case" Snavely said.
Snavely, Bush and Converse all hope something positive comes from losing their dogs: the management of the wolf population in Western Montana.
Bush and Converse admit there's an inherent risk to hunt lions, but say the recent influx of wolves in the Bitterroot changed that for the worse. Their trained hounds cost up to a combined $6,500. Meanwhile, Snavely says she knows 11 other people who lost dogs.
The delisting takes effect on April 5th, but conservation groups say they'll again file suit.
