Part 2: A Hunter Saw 7 Bikers in the Forest Every Full Moon and Called the Rangers. What We Were Doing Out There Wasn’t Anything He Could Have Guessed.

I want to tell you about Wendell, because the story does not work without him.

Wendell was a quiet man. He had a gray beard that he kept trimmed and a pair of reading glasses he kept on a string around his neck. He did not curse much. He did not drink much. He had a way of looking at you that made you feel like he was waiting for you to say what you actually meant.

He had been a wildlife officer in Pisgah from 1980 to 2012. Thirty-two years. He had worked through the federal red wolf recovery program. He had worked through the period when there were almost no wolves left in the southern Appalachians and the official agency line was that it was too late. He had worked through the slow, contested, complicated decades of trying to bring them back.

He had, in his career, been involved with a small handful of wild gray wolves that had returned to the region — most of them transients from larger reintroduction efforts further north and west, a few of them mixed with coyote populations. The genetics were always a little messy. The official records were always a little incomplete.

In 2010, Wendell had radio-collared a young female gray wolf in a remote section of the forest north of Mount Mitchell. He named her, in his field notes, Scout.

Scout was estimated, at the time, to be about two years old.

She was, as far as Wendell ever knew, the last documented wild wolf living independently in that section of the Pisgah.

He retired in 2012 partly because of his knees and partly because the program had largely been shut down. The federal effort had moved its remaining resources elsewhere. Officially, there were no longer any wild wolves to protect in the section of forest Wendell had spent thirty years walking.

Officially.

But Scout’s collar had stopped transmitting in 2016 — the battery had died, six years was about right for that model — and Scout had been, as far as anyone could prove, a single wolf in a vast forest with no documented mate.

The official record after that was: no confirmed wolves in the area.

Wendell did not believe the official record.

He believed Scout was still out there.

He believed it because, every full moon since the year his collar had died on her — 2016 — he had been driving up to a particular clearing in a particular section of forest and listening.

And almost every full moon, he had heard a wolf howl.

A single wolf.

Always alone.

Always from the same general bearing — north-northeast of the clearing, about half a mile out, give or take.

He had a theory. He had not published it. He was not interested in publishing it. He had filed reports informally with old colleagues for the first few years and then stopped, because he did not trust what would happen if it became official knowledge.

His theory was that Scout had survived. That she had paired, possibly with a coyote, possibly with a transient gray wolf from another population. That she had had pups. That at least one of those pups, or a grandpup, was still alive in 2025, and was the one howling.

He knew it was a long shot. He knew the genetics were probably mixed by now. He knew there was no way to prove it without trapping and testing, and he was never going to do that, because he had decided, when he retired, that he was done bothering wolves with the apparatus of human science.

He had decided, instead, to listen.

And he had decided to bring Renny.

Renny had never met another wolf in his life.

Wendell had raised him in isolation from his own kind, the way you have to raise a wolfdog if you are going to raise one ethically. Renny had a goat for a companion in his run — a little Nigerian Dwarf named Hank, who had passed in 2022 and been replaced by a second goat named Charlie. He had Wendell. He had Patty. He had the eight acres of fenced run.

He had never howled with another canid in his life.

Wendell brought Renny on the first full moon ride in 2014, when Renny was about six months old, mostly because he didn’t want to leave a wolfdog puppy alone overnight.

That night, in the clearing, when Scout — or her descendant, or her ghost, depending on what you believe — howled from the ridge to the north-northeast, Renny lifted his head.

Renny had never made a wolf sound in his life.

He howled back.

Wendell told me, years later, that he had wept openly in the clearing when he heard it. He said he had thought, for a moment, that he had failed at the most basic responsibility of an ethical wolfdog owner. He had thought he had let Renny know about something Renny was never going to be able to have.

But the howl from the ridge had answered.

Two howls. One from a young wolfdog who had never met his own kind. One from a wild canid who had been, as far as we knew, alone for years.

Wendell had decided, that first night, that this was going to be the only thing in Renny’s life that gave him this — and he was going to do it every full moon for as long as it was possible.

He started inviting club members the next year.

He did not require us. He just told us when he was going. He said we were welcome.

The first time I went was in 2017. I had been in the club for two years. Wendell had not pressured me. He had said, on a Wednesday, “Cole. Full moon Saturday. I’m taking Renny up. You’re welcome to come, but don’t come unless you’re going to be quiet.”

I went.

I have gone almost every full moon since.

The ride is about forty minutes from our clubhouse to the trailhead, then twenty minutes of slow forest road on bikes to the clearing. Wendell’s buddy Tom drives Renny in the trailer behind his pickup. We park in a circle. We kill our engines. We kill our headlights.

Then we sit.

We do not drink. We do not smoke. We do not talk. We do not even shift on our bikes, if we can help it.

We sit, and we wait.

And almost every full moon, around 11:30 p.m., a single wolf howls from the ridge to the north-northeast.

And Renny, in his trailer, lifts his head.

And Renny howls back.

The two of them go back and forth for somewhere between four minutes and forty minutes. Sometimes Scout — that’s what we all call her, we know it’s probably not the same animal anymore, we don’t care — answers right away. Sometimes she takes a long time. Sometimes she doesn’t answer at all, and Renny howls into the dark and gets nothing back, and we ride home in silence.

But most full moons, she answers.

Most full moons, Renny gets to talk to his own kind.

For four to forty minutes a month.

Eleven years.

That is what the deer hunter saw.

The hunter who called the rangers in October of last year was a guy named Mark, from somewhere outside Hendersonville. We met him later — Wendell shook his hand at the trailhead the next morning. Wendell was not angry. Wendell understood. Seven men on motorcycles riding into a national forest at 10 p.m., killing their lights, sitting in pitch dark — if I had been a hunter on that ridge, I would have called too.

The lead ranger that night was a woman named Lieutenant Espinoza. She was in her forties. She had been a ranger in Pisgah for twelve years. She had not known Wendell — Wendell had been retired before her time — but she had heard of him.

She rolled up with three trucks and lights flashing. She was kind about it. She asked us, calm, to identify ourselves and explain what we were doing.

Wendell got off his bike.

He walked over to her. He stuck out his hand. He introduced himself. He said, “Ma’am. My name is Wendell Tate. I retired from your service in 2012. I worked the wolf program in this section of the Pisgah for thirty years.”

He said, “These men are with me. We’re a motorcycle club out of Buncombe.”

He said, “We come up here every full moon. We sit in this clearing. We don’t camp. We don’t drink. We don’t fire weapons. We don’t leave anything behind. We listen for a wild canid that lives north-northeast of this position.”

He said, “I have a wolfdog in that trailer. He’s permitted. I have his paperwork in my saddlebag if you want to see it.”

He said, “When the wild one howls, my dog answers. It’s the only time he gets to. I’ll be sixty-six this winter. I do not know how many more full moons either of us has. I am asking you to let us finish this one out.”

He paused.

Lieutenant Espinoza looked at him for a long second.

Then she took her hat off.

She held it over her chest.

She said, “Sir. Take all the time you need.”

She walked back to her truck. She killed her headlights. She killed her engine. She told her two officers to do the same. They stood at the edge of the clearing, in the dark, with their hats off.

It was 11:53 p.m.

We sat for another fifty minutes.

At 12:21 a.m., Scout howled.

It was a long howl. A clean note. From the ridge.

Renny answered from the trailer.

Espinoza, standing forty yards from us in the dark, started crying. She did not try to hide it. One of her officers — a younger guy — wiped his face with the back of his sleeve.

Renny and Scout went back and forth for eight minutes that night.

Then it was quiet.

We started our engines. We rode out.

Espinoza shook Wendell’s hand at the trailhead. She did not write a report. She told him, quiet, “Mr. Tate. I’m going to mark this clearing in the system as a long-term wildlife observation site. No patrols up here on full moon nights from here forward. Not while I’m in charge.”

She kept that promise.

We rode every full moon for the next year without seeing another ranger.

I want to tell you what Wendell told me on a ride home from the clearing about three years ago.

It was a quiet night. Scout had answered. Renny had been calm in the trailer all the way down. The ride back to the clubhouse was the kind of ride where everybody is feeling something they do not have words for.

Wendell pulled into the gas station off Exit 64 to top off. I pulled in next to him. The other guys went on ahead.

We were standing under the fluorescent lights of the pump island. Wendell was looking at the moon over the trees on the far side of the parking lot.

I said, “Wen. Why do you do this.”

He didn’t answer right away.

Then he said, “You think it’s for Renny.”

I said, “I think it’s for Renny.”

He said, “It’s not.”

I said, “Then what.”

He looked at me. He had a way of looking at people. I have never met another man with that look.

He said, “Cole. Do you remember the first time you heard her howl?”

I said yes.

He said, “What did you feel.”

I said, “I felt — I felt like I was hearing something that wasn’t supposed to exist anymore.”

He said, “That’s it. That’s exactly it.”

He paused.

He said, “I worked that forest for thirty years. I held two dead wolves in my arms. I knew what we were losing. I knew it down to the bone. When I retired, the official line was that we had lost. We had lost. I had spent my career failing.”

He said, “Then I started hearing her again. Every full moon. And I thought — that is not a failure. That is a creature, alone, who has refused to die. That is a thing I helped protect when I was younger, and that thing is still here.”

He looked at me.

He said, “Cole. I do not bring Renny up there for Renny.”

He said, “I bring him up there because as long as she howls back, I know I did not fail. And as long as I can hear her, I know she is still out there. The day she stops howling — the day I bring Renny up and the ridge goes silent — that is the day I will know I lost her too.”

He said, “Until then, every full moon I hear her, I know one thing.”

He said, “I held the line.”

He looked back at the moon.

He said, “Some of us only get to find out at the end of our lives whether we held the line. I get to find out every twenty-eight days. I’d rather be afraid for an hour every full moon, knowing for sure, than spend the rest of my life telling myself I succeeded without proof.”

He went quiet.

Then he said, “The men who ride with me know what I’m listening for, even if they don’t know they know. They sit in the dark with me because they understand, without ever needing me to explain, that some prayers have to be said out loud to be answered, and some prayers have to be said in silence.”

He said, “Renny is the howl I get to send. Scout is the howl I get to receive. The two of you sitting still in that clearing — that’s the church.”

I did not know what to say.

I just nodded.

We rode home.

I have thought about what he said for three years.

Wendell died last Tuesday.

Heart attack. Sudden. His wife Patty found him in the kitchen at 6 a.m. He had just made coffee. He had not been sick.

He was sixty-five.

There were nine of us at the visitation on Friday. Patty was there. Their daughter Ann flew in from Knoxville. Renny was at home with the goats.

The next full moon is in eleven days.

Patty pulled me aside on Saturday morning. She had a piece of paper in her hand. It was an envelope with my name on it in Wendell’s handwriting.

She said, “Cole. He left this for you. He left it on his desk last month. He said if anything ever happened to him, I was supposed to give this to you the morning after.”

I opened it.

It was one page. Wendell’s handwriting was careful and slow. It said:

Cole.

If you’re reading this, the moon’s coming up without me. I want to ask you to do something. Don’t say no until you’ve thought about it for a week.

Take Renny up to the clearing every full moon. As long as he’s still alive. As long as she’s still answering. Tom can drive the trailer. The boys will come if you ride lead.

I am not asking you to do this for me. I am asking you to do it for her. She has been answering for eleven years. She does not know I’m gone. She will keep howling until she stops. I want her to be answered for as long as she keeps calling.

If the day comes that you ride up and the ridge stays silent for three full moons in a row — three, not one, not two — you can stop. By then she’ll be gone too, and you can let her rest.

Until then, please. Hold the line.

Renny’s permits and Tom’s contact info are in the gray folder in my desk. Patty knows.

I’m sorry I made you the road captain just so I could ask you this.

W.

I sat down on Patty’s kitchen floor.

I read it three more times.

Then I called Tom.

The next full moon is on the 14th.

I have spoken to all eight of the other guys. Every single one of them said yes before I finished asking. The retired postal worker, who is seventy-one and stopped riding most weekends because of his hip, told me he would be on his bike that night if it was the last time he ever rode.

Renny is fine. Tom and I went out to feed him on Wednesday. He is grieving — wolfdogs grieve, anyone who tells you they don’t has not lived with one — but he is eating, and he is letting Tom in the run, and he came over to me on Saturday and put his huge head against my chest for almost a full minute.

He has been doing the moon-watch from his run at the property. He sits at the high point of his fence and looks up. Every full moon. For eleven years. Wendell told me Renny always sat there from sundown to whenever they loaded up.

He will sit there on the 14th. I will be there to load him up.

We will take him to the clearing.

We will sit.

We will wait.

And I will not be praying for myself, or for Wendell, or for Renny.

I will be praying for the howl from the north-northeast.

Wendell told me, the last time he and I were alone together, two weeks before he died, that he hoped he would go on a full moon.

He did not.

He went on a Tuesday.

The moon was a waxing crescent.

I think about that.

The moon is going to be full on the 14th.

I will be there.

So will the other seven.

So will Renny.

I hope she answers.

I think she will.

If you’re out there, Scout, please.

Hold on.

Tag a brother who has ever sat silent in the dark, holding a line for somebody who couldn’t hold it themselves.