The Governor, the Wolf and the Warden: A Fresh Look at a Gianforte Hunt

The game warden in Helena, Mont., received a phone call one morning in March 2021 with a request that he knew might not end well for him. His boss and friend at the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department asked him to record officially the killing of a wolf, a fairly routine request save for one detail.

The hunter was the state’s governor, Greg Gianforte.

“I said I wanted no part of it,” the warden, Justin Hawkaluk, recalled with a barely audible chuckle.

Mr. Hawkaluk now says his sense of dread was warranted. By the time the wolf affair was settled, his superiors had pressured him to lie about the governor’s role, and his boss would be forced out of the department, he told The New York Times in his first interview about the episode. He, too, would leave a job he said he loved.

The story of the governor, the wolf and the warden made few waves when it first broke. Wolf hunting is legal and fairly common in Montana. Mr. Gianforte was recorded as the killer of the animal, an adult black wolf, and given a warning for not having taken a required trapping course. A spokeswoman for the governor said Mr. Gianforte had “immediately rectified the mistake” by taking the course. A spokesman for the department said at the time that the matter had been handled as it would have been for anyone.

But Mr. Gianforte, a Republican, is running for re-election this year, and some find the killing of a once-protected species distasteful. The treatment of wolves is back in the news, after a snowmobiler in Wyoming struck one, taped its mouth shut and showed it off at a bar before killing it.

Law enforcement officers involved with recording Mr. Gianforte’s wolf, collared as No. 1155 by trackers in nearby Yellowstone National Park, now say the procedures were anything put typical. They say that officials leaned on them to record the governor’s hunting buddy, rather than governor himself, as the shooter, in an attempt to avoid giving the governor a citation, and that the officials bristled when the warden and his boss refused.