In addition to describing pack territories, radio telemetry allows the study of wolves that leave their home territories. On average, 28% of wolves in Denali leave their packs each year. Most leave alone, but some pairs disperse, and in one case 11 wolves left together. Male and female wolves disperse in approximately equal numbers and for similar distances. At least 14 wolves have dispersed long distances away from Denali, and dozens more wolves dispersed shorter distances, within the study area or just outside of it. The longest documented dispersal was by a female wolf that left the Headquarters Pack and was shot by an Inupiat hunter near the Canning River, 40 miles from the Arctic Ocean and (in a
straight line) 435 miles from Denali. Dispersing wolves seldom remain alone for long. In nearly 20 years of wolf research,
only one territorial, solitary-living wolf has been found in the park. All other “lone” wolves that survived for more than a few months either started new packs, joined existing packs, or dispersed far away and were lost from monitoring. A surprising result of wolf studies in Denali has been the frequent observations of existing packs adopting unrelated wolves (Meier et al.1995).