Filmmakers have never been able to capture much of the life of wolves on camera for one very simple reason - wild wolves are extremely shy of humans.
So Jim Dutcher came up with a novel solution: He created his own wolf pack, acclimated them to humans and released them in a 25-acre enclosure in the Sawtooth Mountains near Ketchum, Idaho. Dutcherand his wife, Jamie, moved in with the wolves for months at a time over a six-year period and filmed their behavior.The result is the fascinating documentary "Wolves at Our Door," which premieres tonight at 9 on the Discovery Channel.
"What really surprised me about this project is the social structure of wolves," Jim Dutcher said. "When I see in the news today (that) a female wolf was shot on a farm in Idaho, well, that's not just a female animal, like an animal that ran with a herd. This is an individual. This is somebody's mother or somebody's daughter or aunt or a niece. It has characteristics and personality. We didn't have any idea when we started this what that really would mean."
That is indeed the revelation of "Wolves at Our Door" - the complex social structure of the wolf pack. Each of the animals became a distinct individual, whether it was Kamots, the alpha male who led the pack; Chemukh, who, somewhat surprisingly, became the alpha female and Kamots' mate; all the way down to Lakota, the omega male who was last in the pack's pecking order.
"The viewer gets to know each member of the pack," said Jamie Dutcher. "And because of the intimate photography, you get to know the behavior and what makes that wolf an omega (and) what makes that wolf alpha. It's something that really hasn't been done before because you can't get close enough to really see this bonding social structure of these different personalities and how they work and how important they are to keep the pack functioning as a unit and as a family."
There is, however, a question of whether these wolves - who had been acclimated to humans and who were kept in an enclosure - exhibited typical wolf behavior.
"I agree that it isn't the perfect situation, but we'll never be able to see that perfect situation because the animals are so afraid," Jim Dutcher said. "All we did is present ourselves to them to not be afraid of us. We then let them go in this large place. They come to us on our own terms. They're not pets. . . . They are wild in a wild existence. This is the best one can do, and this is an honest approach to presenting the behavior of this animal."
And "Wolves at Our Door" succeeds very well in giving viewers a view of wolves unlike what they've seen before.