The Rogue Pack of wolves has made its first confirmed attack of the year, according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

A wolf from the pack attacked a calf about six months old in the Wood River Valley near Chiloquin in late May, according to Tom Collom, an ODFW district wildlife biologist in Klamath Falls.

The attack was discovered May 30 on private property, where a dump truck driver spotted a black wolf, he said. A ranch manager euthanized the injured calf, which weighed about 600 pounds, “to put it out of its misery.”

“We got up there a few hours later,” Collom said Thursday in a telephone interview.

An ODFW investigation confirmed that the attack had been done by a wolf, based on scrapes and tissue damage, he said. The pack has two black wolves and is known to roam the area.

The Wood River Valley is located south of Crater Lake and east of Mount McLoughlin. It’s western edge is about 10 miles from the Jackson-Klamath county line.

“This is well within the Rogue Pack’s territory,” Collom said.

Last year, the pack was blamed for killing 18 livestock, tops for any pack in Oregon. Many of those attacks took place in the Wood River Valley.

Collum predicted that the number of kills committed by the pack this year will be “probably a repeat.”

As of late last year, the pack numbered six wolves. Two of them are black. One of the blacks, Collom said, typically stays with the pack, but the other is a bit of a loner.

“The other tends to be more shadowing the pack,” he said.

It’s believed that the pack winters on the west side of the Cascade Mountains. They range from near Butte Falls and Prospect on the west to Fort Klamath on the east.

Attacks in the Wood River Valley increase as cattle graze in the summer and fall, according to Collom.

“It’s all about the livestock presence in the Wood River Valley,” he said.

Collom believes that only one wolf was involved in the attack, because the calf was left alive. If multiple wolves were involved, they probably would have killed the animal, he said.

Wildlife Services personnel with the U.S. Department Agriculture went out with Collom to the scene of the latest attack. Last year, they were active in the Wood River Valley, in an effort to help prevent wolf attacks by using nonlethal means, including the use of drones.

The drones can be used at night, when their thermal imaging capabilities can spot wolves closing in for the kill. Noise from the drone’s audio system then can scare the wolves off. Or, ground personnel can move in to scare them off.

Wolves are considered endangered in Western Oregon under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, meaning that they can be hazed, but not killed, except in self-defense, or in certain circumstances when a wolf is attacking livestock.

Wolf attacks on humans are “extremely rare,” according to Collom, who said he was aware of only two people who were killed by wolves in the last 50 years, and those by wolves habituated toward people. The deaths occurred in Alaska and Canada.

Paul Wolf of Wildlife Services said his personnel will often go to the scene of a wolf attack and stick around for at least one night watch.

The use of drones, he said, was a new, effective tool.

“It gave us a hell of an advantage,” he said.

The Jackson County Wolf Advisory Committee recently agreed to buy a second drone for use by Wildlife Services.

Randy Wolf, who is a rancher in the Eagle Point area and a member of the advisory committee, sai Wednesday that he was surprised the pack was behind the latest kill.

“The last I heard they were over here,” he said.

Butte Falls is about 25 or 30 miles from Wood River Valley.

“For those wolves, it’s a half-day trot,” he said.

Wolf, the rancher, is not a fan of wolves. He says they are “not cuddly,” and he believes they should be delisted as endangered.

“This is just what we deal with,” he said, referring to the latest kill. “It sucks.”