The Lone Wolverine: Tracking Michigan's Most Elusive Animal

Early Spring, 2005

Early Spring, 2005 ✦ ✦ ✦ By the time the Woods-N-Water News story broke, Jeff’s old Moultrie 35mm ‹lm camera had caught three more good pictures of the wolverine snif‹ng out and then tearing into the meat the team had laid as bait. In the days and weeks that followed, the story was picked up and elaborated on by newspapers and television stations throughout the state, generating as much attention as the original reports of the coyote hunters’ ‹rst sighting more than a year before. “When that wolverine was ‹rst documented by the hunters and those photos hit the Internet, our website just exploded. We got literally hundreds of e-mails too,” said Judy Long, administrative manager of The Wolverine Foundation. “I guess for Michigan it was pretty exciting , being the Wolverine State and yet told for years and years they don’t have any. Everybody wanted it to be part of an established population that just hadn’t been discovered before now. We got so many emails that I had to put a posting on the home page saying this is really historic and exciting, but we’re not sure what it means; we just know it’s documented.” The 2005 photos and story reporting the wolverine’s continued presence in the Thumb rekindled that same wave of excited interest, said Long. But this time, Jeff Ford was no longer an anonymous Deckerville High School science teacher following the news stories from the sidelines . Now he was at the heart of it, square in the middle of the spotlight . All three buddies had juggled television and newspaper interviews when the general media ‹rst caught wind of the story. But after the ‹rst ›urry of attention, both Jason and Steve began referring reporters to Jeff as the main source of information. 67 “Jeff put an enormous amount of hours and money into the whole thing, far more than us with all the videos, all the running back and forth. He was pretty emotionally involved,” said Rosser. “It was only natural that he pretty much took over the conversation.” Sharing or not sharing the spotlight wasn’t anything the trio had really considered or discussed. But Jeff’s leadership role in the project had become pretty apparent to the press and public alike. That was the status quo by the time one of the biggest newspapers in the state came calling. After several lengthy phone interviews, the Detroit Free Press sent a photographer up to Ubly to get a last-minute photo to publish with a story slated to run the next day. When Jeff heard the photographer was on his way, he immediately called Jason. “Get your ass up here quick if you want to be in the Free Press,” he told him. The two men posed in front of Jeff’s house, with Jeff proudly holding up a plaster cast of the wolverine’s paw print. When the photographer transmitted the image to the photo desk in Detroit, the editor wasn’t pleased. He wanted a solo shot of Jeff instead. Puzzled, Jeff stood his ground, arguing that Jason was his partner and as much a part of the story as he was. With the press deadline approaching , there wasn’t time to dicker, and the editor relented. He had his photo, and that would have to be good enough. The next morning, Jeff was stopped in the school hallway by Dick Walker, the principal of Deckerville’s elementary classes. “How does it feel to be famous?” Walker asked, chuckling. A little later, another teacher, Barb Warren, stuck her head in the doorway of Jeff’s classroom, waving a copy of the Detroit Free Press’s April 22 morning edition. There it was on the front page above the fold: “Tracking a Wolverine through the Thumb with a Guy from Ubly”—a full-length, twopage feature article with three pictures of the wolverine, a graphic, and a map pinpointing Ubly in the Thumb. In the middle of the spread was a huge full-color image of Jason and Jeff holding up the plaster cast. Jeff, of course, was the “Guy from Ubly” in the headline and featured throughout the story. Jason was described in three short words: “another outdoor enthusiast.” Steve was simply referred to as “a friend who’d been helping him.” 68 ✦ The Lone Wolverine It wouldn’t be the last time the media...