Military Team Sent to Hunt Montana Werewolf Pack — Only 2 of 7 Soldiers Made It Out

THE BOB MARSHALL RECORD

I’m Sergeant Marcus Ryland, United States Army. If you’re hearing this, then either I finally got careless, or someone decided the truth was cheaper than the silence.

I’m not asking you to believe in ghosts or legends or whatever people like to dress the unknown up as when it frightens them. I’m not selling a story. I’m putting a statement on record—one last clean line of words that can’t be edited into training accident or hazardous terrain or animal activity consistent with regional predators.

Seven of us went into the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex in Montana on October 23rd, 2019. Command called it a “wildlife threat.” Only two of us walked out.

I was one.

The other was my lieutenant—Lieutenant Jen Chen—until she wasn’t.

That’s the first correction you’ll hear me make, because the official report doesn’t just lie. It rearranges your dead.

If you’ve never been to Bob Marshall, picture a cathedral of trees so old they make you feel young in a bad way. Picture mountains that don’t rise politely—they heave up from the earth like knuckles, like something under the skin trying to get out. The place sprawls across about a million and a half acres of raw country. No roads inside most of it, no cell service, no easy lines. A wilderness so thick and indifferent it makes you understand why people used to believe gods lived in forests.

I served twelve years, most of that special operations. Three tours in Afghanistan. Two rotations in Africa. I’ve hunted insurgents through villages that turned hostile the moment the sun went down. I’ve moved through terrain that wanted you dead—heat, altitude, disease, enemy fighters who knew every footpath better than you did.

I know what fear feels like, and I know what it does to your senses. I know the difference between a threat and your mind inventing one.

What happened in Montana was not my imagination.

It was real combat—against something that didn’t care about tactics the way humans do, something that treated our training like a joke told too slowly.

1. THE BRIEFING

It started at Fort Harrison outside Helena. Late October. The briefing room was cold in that institutional way, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead like lazy insects. There were only eight chairs, and seven of them were filled by men and women who’d been to enough briefings to know when a mission was being sold too hard.

The officer running it was a colonel I’d never seen before. No name tape. No unit patch. Crisp uniform. Eyes like they’d skipped sleep for a week.

He didn’t waste time with motivational speech.

He clicked through photographs.

Dead cattle—torn open. Not like wolves. Not like bears. Not like anything I’d seen in North America. The cuts were too clean in places and too brutal in others, as if whoever did it knew where to strike to drop an animal fast and then knew how to take it apart without wasting effort.

Forty-seven head of cattle in six weeks.

Twenty-three horses.

The colonel kept talking like he was reading weather reports.

Then he put up photos of hikers.

Or what remained of them.

Park Service had found the remains scattered across a small radius—bones pulled apart, tissue missing, damage that didn’t match any known predator. Not chaotic feeding. Not scavenging. Something efficient. Something calculated.

No one said the word we were all thinking.

Werewolf.

People laugh at that word because it’s childish. But in a room full of soldiers who’d seen men dissolve under IED blasts, nobody laughed. The absurdity wasn’t funny. It was a warning sign.

The colonel issued us specialized ammunition.

He didn’t say what was in it.

He didn’t say what it was designed for, beyond “large, dangerous targets.”

That should have been enough to make us push back, demand more intel, ask why the room was so small, why the paperwork was so clean.

Before we left, the colonel leaned on the table and looked at each of us like he was memorizing our faces.

“Don’t engage after dark if you can avoid it,” he said.

His voice dropped as if the walls had ears.

“Whatever’s up there,” he added, “it owns the night.”

Nobody asked what that meant.

We nodded, gathered gear, and walked out like professionals.

In hindsight, that might have been the last normal decision we made.

2. THE TEAM

We were seven.

Lieutenant Jen Chen—second in command on paper, but functionally our anchor. Calm. Competent. The kind of officer who didn’t need to shout to be obeyed.

Rodriguez—heavy weapons. Built like he’d been carved out of old stone. Tough, mean, reliable. The kind of man you wanted beside you when the world got loud.

Jackson—combat medic. Hands that stayed steady when yours didn’t. Quiet in a way that made you trust him.

Williams—communications. Always a joke ready, always something to say to make the air less heavy.

Hayes—tracker. Grew up in the Rockies. Wilderness sense you couldn’t teach in a classroom. He listened to silence like it was language.

Bennett—carried the SAW, and loved it the way people love things that make them feel safe.

And me.

Sergeant Marcus Ryland. Team lead for ground movement. Twelve years in. Thirty-four years old. Enough experience to believe there was no such thing as invincible.

Enough arrogance to act like I was anyway.

3. INSERTION

Helos dropped us in at 1400 hours on October 23rd. Snow and dead leaves whipped up under the rotors. We fast-roped down into a clearing near a frozen creek.

The first thing I felt wasn’t cold.

It was wrongness.

There’s a kind of chill that comes from weather, and there’s another kind that feels like you’ve stepped into someone else’s house without being invited. A deeper cold, like the land itself is telling you to leave.

The trees were massive—old pines and firs, trunks thick enough to swallow a man behind. Underbrush dense enough to limit visibility to about thirty yards. The sky was mostly blocked.

We built base camp standard: perimeter, tents in a defensive circle, tripwires and motion alarms, fire in the center controlled but strong. We laid out comms, checked frequencies, tested repeaters.

The first night was quiet.

Too quiet.

Hayes said it on watch, voice low. “No animals,” he murmured. “Not a single one.”

No owls. No coyotes. No squirrels. No skittering in branches. Just wind in dead trees and ice cracking in the creek like the land shifting in its sleep.

I told him he was being paranoid.

I didn’t sleep.

4. THE TRACKS

Day two, Hayes found tracks.

We were moving northeast through timber, following the scattered sighting reports ranchers had offered—half-mad stories told by people who didn’t want to sound crazy.

Hayes stopped so hard Rodriguez almost walked into him.

He crouched by a patch of softer ground near a game trail, staring like he’d found a grave.

The print was massive—eighteen inches long, maybe eight wide at the ball. Five distinct toes. Deep claw marks punched into frozen dirt like spikes.

But it wasn’t the size that got me.

It was the stride.

Next print was six feet away.

Whatever made those tracks was walking upright. Heavy enough to sink three inches into ground that was nearly frozen solid.

Rodriguez muttered something about Bigfoot.

Nobody laughed.

We followed the trail four miles, weapons up, spacing tight, senses tuned hard.

The trail led to a kill site.

An elk, maybe six hundred pounds alive, torn apart in a way that made my stomach twist.

Not the chaotic feeding you see with bears or wolves. This was methodical. Hide peeled back in sections. Meat stripped clean as if by tools. Every major bone cracked open—marrow sucked clean.

And almost no blood on the ground, like something had drained it before the butchering began.

Jackson knelt, examining tissue separation the way he’d examine a wound.

“This isn’t a frenzy,” he said quietly. “This is… intelligent.”

Hayes pointed to surrounding trees.

Deep claw marks ran vertically down trunks starting nine feet up and dragging down to chest height—territory marks.

Something wanted us to know where we were.

5. FIRST CONTACT

Sun was dropping when we started back toward camp.

Williams was on point.

He froze, fist up—enemy contact.

We dropped to knees, rifles up, scanning.

Eighty yards out, on a rocky outcrop like it owned the mountain, stood something that shouldn’t exist.

Through my scope I saw it clearly.

Seven, maybe eight feet tall. Dark gray fur that absorbed light. Upright. Shoulders hunched. Arms hanging almost to its knees.

The head was wrong—wolf-like, but too large, too heavy.

Then it turned fully toward us.

And I saw its eyes.

Not animal eyes.

There was intelligence there. Awareness. A calculating focus that felt like being examined.

Chen’s voice came on radio. Steady, but tight. “Federal agents. Identify yourself.”

The challenge hung in cold air, absurd and brave all at once.

The creature didn’t run.

Didn’t flinch.

It stood there watching, and the impression hit me hard and certain: it was deciding whether we were worth its time.

Rodriguez whispered, “Permission to fire, sir?”

Chen hesitated.

Three seconds that felt like drowning.

“Hold,” she said.

The creature dropped to all fours in one fluid motion and vanished into timber with impossible speed.

We converged on the outcrop. No prints—stone was too hard. Williams’s hands shook when he lowered his rifle.

“What the hell was that?” he asked.

Nobody answered.

I tried radio—base, guidance, extraction, anything.

Static.

Either the repeater failed, or something was jamming us.

We were on our own.

Chen made the call: continue mission, document, defensive protocols.

Night came fast.

6. THE PACK

We set camp tighter. Bigger fire. Sensors out.

Night vision distributed. Special ammo loaded.

Hayes and I took first watch. 2200 to midnight.

Stars were sharp, bright—didn’t help. Forest floor stayed dark and every shadow looked like it was breathing.

2247 hours: northeast perimeter alarm triggered.

We were up instantly.

Night vision showed nothing but trees.

Ten minutes later: southwest alarm.

Then east.

Then north.

Hayes whispered what we were all thinking: “They’re testing us. Pack behavior. There’s more than one.”

Once he said it, I saw it—movement just beyond firelight. Shapes circling low, coordinated. Staying out of clear view.

Bennett wanted to open fire.

Chen ordered hold. Conserve ammo.

Then the eyes appeared.

Reflecting our light from beyond camp.

Multiple sets, at different heights—some low, some seven or eight feet up like they were standing upright.

Not like normal animal eyeshine. Bigger, brighter, and they didn’t look away when our lights hit them.

They stared back—unblinking, patient.

I stopped counting at five.

The radio hissed static.

We were cut off. No backup. No extraction.

Seven soldiers and whatever circled us in the dark.

Then the howling started.

North first—a deep sound that vibrated my chest. Too low for wolves. Too powerful for anything that belonged here.

South answered. East. West.

Surrounding us completely.

The calls had rhythm. Structure. Like language.

They were communicating.

Coordinating.

And we were the center of it.

Jackson pressed hands to ears. “Make it stop,” he whispered.

But there was nothing to do except listen while the forest filled with voices that didn’t belong on Earth.

7. WILLIAMS

At 0142 hours, Williams stepped away from the fire to relieve himself fifteen feet from perimeter.

Jackson went with him.

Buddy system.

Then Williams screamed.

Not surprise.

Terror.

A raw sound that cut the night open.

I spun in time to see a massive shape erupt from darkness and slam into Williams with the force of a car crash.

He went down hard.

The thing was on him instantly, dragging him backward into shadows.

Jackson opened fire full-auto, muzzle flash strobing the trees.

In those split seconds, I saw it:

Eight feet tall, maybe more. Dark fur glistening wet. Head massive, wolf-like but heavier.

Jaws clamped around Williams’s throat.

Jackson’s rounds hit center mass. I saw impacts, saw fur ripple.

It didn’t stop.

Didn’t slow.

Williams’s screaming cut off in a wet gurgle.

Then just the sound of dragging through leaves, moving away.

We converged, firing into darkness. Tracers cut red lines through timber. Bennett unleashed the M249. Hayes threw flares.

Harsh white light ignited the forest.

Four of them stood in a clearing beyond camp—sixty yards out—watching.

Standing upright like men, but wrong in every way.

The lead creature had blood on its muzzle.

Williams’s blood.

Another dragged something casually like it weighed nothing.

Williams’s body—limp.

Rodriguez loaded a 40mm and fired.

Explosion tore through timber, shattered trees, threw earth into air.

When smoke cleared, they were gone.

Just gone.

Forest went silent again except our ragged breathing and crackle of burning branches.

Chen ordered hold position until dawn.

Hayes stared at drag marks. “Williams is gone,” he said, flat.

No hope. No rescue.

I screamed into radio: mayday, extraction, casualties.

Static answered.

Jackson dropped to knees, shaking. “We’re all going to die,” he repeated like a prayer.

We fed the fire constantly, terrified of what darkness would do without it.

Dawn broke at 0647.

We were alive.

Williams wasn’t coming back.

And deep down, we knew he was only the first.

8. THE BOOT

We broke camp in silence.

Chen ordered we check Williams’s last position.

Blood pooled dark and frozen. Drag marks led north.

Hayes studied prints. “Five sets,” he said. “Maybe six.”

Thirty minutes in, we found Williams’s boot placed on a flat rock in middle of trail.

Laces still tied.

Placed there deliberately.

Hayes turned it in his hands, looked at Chen. “They’re sending messages.”

He was right.

The boot meant: You’re next.

9. THE RAVINE

At 0823, Chen made the mistake that killed Bennett.

We entered a narrow ravine: steep walls, limited visibility, no room to maneuver.

Hayes protested. “Kill zone. We go around.”

Chen looked at map, overruled. “Fastest route to high ground.”

We walked right into their trap.

Halfway through, Bennett screamed.

Something massive dropped from above—fifteen feet—slammed into Bennett like a freight train.

I heard ribs crack.

Body armor crumpled.

Jaws closed around his throat before we could react.

Rodriguez fired bursts, good shots, center mass—hits that drop anything living.

It staggered, blood matting fur.

It grabbed Bennett and leaped fifteen feet straight up to a ledge, carrying a two-hundred-pound man like nothing.

We fired upward—sparks off rock, ricochets whining.

Then others appeared—one ahead, one behind, one above.

Perfectly coordinated.

Jackson emptied magazine, screaming for cover.

We scrambled behind boulders.

They pulled back into shadows, taking Bennett with them.

We could hear him up there—wet gasps, dying but not dead.

Hayes grabbed my arm. “They’re not killing us all at once,” he said. “They’re separating us.”

Count: Marcus, Chen, Rodriguez, Jackson, Hayes.

Five left.

In less than twelve hours, two gone.

Our ammo numbers weren’t good.

We’d burned through too much firing at shadows.

We exited ravine into an open meadow—four hundred yards exposed between us and tree line.

Decision: sprint or die slowly.

We sprinted.

Nothing attacked.

We dove into tree line, spun rifles back toward meadow.

Empty. Silent.

Hayes understood first. “They let us cross,” he said. “They’re driving us somewhere.”

10. THE CAVE

At 1520, we found the cave system.

And I knew immediately we hadn’t found it by accident.

They had led us.

Entrance yawned like a mouth—twelve feet tall, twenty wide.

Bones littered ground: cattle skulls, horse ribs, and smaller bones I didn’t want to look at too closely.

Shredded backpacks hung from branches.

Boots without bodies.

Torn clothing caught on rocks.

A dumping ground for years, maybe decades.

Hayes picked up old gear—an external frame pack, sun-faded straps. “This is from the ’80s,” he said. “Look at the design.”

The implication landed like a stone.

Whatever lived here had been hunting people a long time.

Then we saw it—Williams’s rifle propped against a boulder, placed like an exhibit.

A message.

Jackson started forward.

Hayes grabbed him. “Bait.”

And then from inside the cave came low growls.

And a voice.

Bennett’s voice.

“Help,” it said, weak and broken. “Please… help me.”

Jackson jerked free. “We can’t leave him!”

Chen’s face tightened—leadership math, the terrible calculus.

I said what I didn’t want to say: “They kept him alive to draw us in.”

Bennett pleaded again, wet and gurgling, barely human.

Chen made her decision. “We go in. Ryland and Rodriguez. Tactical entry. Others cover entrance. Anything comes out that isn’t us—you kill it.”

Rodriguez and I activated night vision and moved into the cave.

Temperature dropped.

Then the smell hit—death, rot, and something animal and wrong.

Walls were covered in claw marks gouged deep into stone.

Forty feet in, the cave opened into a chamber.

Bennett was there, propped against wall.

Still breathing.

Body armor torn away.

Stomach open. Intestines exposed.

A wound that should have killed him instantly.

But his eyes tracked us. His mouth worked.

They had kept him alive deliberately.

Cruelty as tactic.

Movement above.

I looked up.

Shapes clung to the ceiling.

Multiple.

Waiting.

“Contact rear!” I shouted as one dropped behind us, blocking exit. Another emerged from a side tunnel ahead—massive, silent.

We opened fire. The sound in that enclosed space was deafening—muzzle flash revealing tunnel mouths we hadn’t seen, passages branching like veins.

More appeared.

Dropping from above.

Emerging from every direction.

Surrounding us.

I grabbed Bennett under arms, dragging him backward toward entrance.

He made sounds that weren’t words anymore.

Rodriguez covered us, firing full auto.

Then one came from the side, impossibly fast.

Claws caught Rodriguez across chest.

His armor shredded like tissue. Ceramic plates shattered.

He went down hard.

I screamed his name.

Rodriguez kept firing from ground, muzzle angled up at the creature over him.

“Go,” he snarled. “Get out.”

He emptied magazine point-blank.

It staggered.

Didn’t fall.

I made the entrance.

Chen and Hayes laid down covering fire, lighting cave mouth with continuous flashes.

Rodriguez’s screaming echoed from deep inside, then cut off abruptly—replaced by wet feeding sounds.

I dragged Bennett out into daylight.

Twenty feet from cave, he stopped making noise.

His eyes fixed.

He died in my arms.

Jackson tried to treat him. There was nothing to treat.

Bennett gone.

Rodriguez gone.

Now we were three: Marcus, Chen, Hayes… and Jackson, still there but broken inside.

The creatures emerged from cave slowly.

No rush.

Six visible. Maybe more behind.

They stood in a semicircle fifty yards out, watching.

Largest one center—scarred face, missing chunk of ear.

The alpha.

It made a sound almost like speech—guttural, commanding.

Others responded.

They were coordinating.

Planning.

And we stood there listening to our own deaths being organized.

11. THE SPLIT

Chen pulled us into a tight circle.

“New plan,” she whispered. “We split up.”

“That’s suicide,” I said.

“We’re dead anyway,” she replied. “But if we separate, maybe one reaches the ridge. Gets word out.”

Hayes nodded slowly. “I’ll draw them west.”

Jackson stood, voice shaking but determined. “I’ll go with Hayes.”

I protested.

Hayes cut me off. “Decided.”

We redistributed ammo. Water. Medical supplies.

We looked at each other in fading light like men at a funeral who didn’t have time to grieve.

Chen’s voice softened. “Whatever happens—someone tells the truth.”

“I will,” I promised. “People will know.”

Five minutes later, we separated.

Hayes and Jackson went west, making noise deliberately—crashing brush, shouting, baiting.

Chen and I pushed north—fast, quiet.

At 2034, gunfire erupted from west.

Hayes’s SAW roared in sustained bursts.

Jackson’s M4 joined—short, controlled.

They were buying time with their lives.

Howling shifted direction—pack converging on them.

Plan worked.

And I hated it.

Gunfire became sporadic.

Single shots.

Then at 2143, someone screamed.

I couldn’t tell who.

Just raw terror and agony.

I stopped, body screaming to go back.

Chen grabbed my shoulder hard. “That’s what they died for,” she hissed. “Move.”

At 2245, gunfire stopped.

Forest went silent.

Hayes and Jackson were gone.

Guilt hit like a fist, but there was no time.

Howling resumed—closer now.

They were coming, and they knew exactly where we were.

We ran uphill, abandoning stealth for speed.

The ridge was visible through breaks in canopy—maybe eight hundred yards of climb.

Chen’s breathing turned ragged. She was older, not built for this punishment.

Four hundred yards from summit, she stumbled on loose rock and went down.

I hauled her up.

She collapsed again.

Her left ankle twisted bad, swelling.

She couldn’t run.

Chen pulled her sidearm and shoved me away.

“Leave me,” she said. “That’s an order, Sergeant.”

Below us, I saw them now—four massive shapes loping uphill, unhurried, confident.

Chen raised pistol and pointed it at my chest like she had to force my body to obey.

“Go tell them what happened,” she said. “Tell everyone. They need to know.”

Her voice broke.

I ran.

I left my lieutenant.

Behind me, her pistol cracked, echoing off rock.

Then the roaring started.

Then Chen’s final scream chased me up the mountain.

I didn’t look back.

I couldn’t.

12. THE RIDGE

My legs burned. Lungs on fire.

I heard something close behind me—claws on stone, heavy breathing.

Twenty yards.

Ten.

I crested the ridge at 23108 hours and fumbled for radio with shaking hands.

“Mayday, mayday… this is Ryland. Emergency extraction. Five KIA. I’m—” My voice broke. “I’m the only one left.”

Static.

Then a voice, faint but clear: “Copy, Ryland. Authenticate with your designated call sign.”

Before I could answer, something erupted over the ridge behind me.

The alpha.

Scarred ear. Blood-matted fur.

It stood twenty feet away, chest heaving, muscles rolling like living machinery.

I raised rifle.

Empty magazine.

I dropped it and drew pistol.

The Glock felt like a child’s toy.

The alpha didn’t charge.

It stared at me with those intelligent eyes.

The radio crackled: “Extraction inbound. Fifteen minutes. Mark position with flares.”

Fifteen minutes might as well have been a lifetime.

The alpha tilted its head, studying me the way you study a tool you’re deciding whether to break.

And then I understood something in that moment that still sits in my bones.

It could kill me easily.

It chose not to.

It lifted its head and released a long rolling howl that echoed across the wilderness. The other voices answered from below, joining in a chorus that made my bones vibrate.

Then the alpha turned.

Walked back down the ridge.

Others followed.

They let me go.

The helicopter found me twenty minutes later—shaking, covered in blood that wasn’t mine.

They pulled me up, wrapped me in blankets, and flew me out while I stared at the endless forest below, trying to make my mind accept what it had seen.

13. THE DEBRIEF

The debriefing at Fort Harrison lasted three days.

They asked the same questions in a hundred ways, looking for inconsistency, for cracks, for the moment I’d admit I’d panicked or hallucinated.

The official report listed it as a training accident.

Five soldiers killed in action.

Bodies not recovered due to hazardous terrain.

Every detail about the creatures was redacted or buried.

They made me sign papers—prison time if I ever spoke publicly.

Three months later they gave me an honorable discharge and a handshake and sent me away like a problem that had been solved.

I walked away from twelve years because I couldn’t stay silent about what killed my brothers.

I’m civilian now. Colorado. Far from Montana while still close enough to mountains that my nightmares have the right shape.

I still hear Hayes’s SAW in my sleep.

I still see Jackson’s hands covered in blood.

I still hear Chen’s scream, and the fact that I ran.

The cattle killings stopped after that night.

Like they’d made their point.

Hikers still go missing sometimes, and the reports blame exposure, animal attacks—never mentioning what’s really hunting up there.

I’ve spent years trying to understand why they let me live.

Hayes said it before he died: they were sending messages.

Stay out.

Leave them alone.

They’re older than us, smarter than us, and they want nothing to do with human civilization except to be left in peace.

The alpha could have killed me on that ridge.

It didn’t.

It let me become a witness.

A warning.

So here’s my warning, and it’s the only one I know how to give you:

If you ever find yourself in the Montana wilderness and the forest goes quiet—if every animal sound stops at once, if you feel eyes in the shadows, if the night feels like it belongs to something else—turn around.

Leave.

Because they’re still up there.

Still watching.

And next time, they might not let anyone walk away.