In The Wild: 
All About Real Life Wolves
Even without the myths and stories, the real wolf is a fascinating creature. Wolves tend to live in all sorts of habitats, from the snowy north to hot deserts. Plains, forests, tundras, valleys and mountains are all called home to the wolf.
Wolves are predators, and they tend to target large ungulates, as they are also social creatures, and large prey keeps their packs better fed. They are persistence predators, meaning that they follow after and chase their prey to exhaustion over the course of many hours before making the kill. However, depending on the area, wolves have also been seen eating fish, beavers and other various odd prey that doesn’t fit this mold, with differing hunting strategies to match. For example, evidence suggests wolves prefer to ambush beavers, laying in wait for one to pass by on its trail to and from the water.
One of the greatest strengths that the wolf has is a pack, and lone wolves are actually quite vulnerable. Large prey like elk can kill a single wolf with a well-placed hoof, but with the aid of packmates, it becomes easier to exhaust and overpower the large animals. When a wolf reaches adulthood, it typically disperses in search of a mate, though females are more likely to stay with their natal pack longer and court wandering male dispersals that pass through the territory, sometimes even having them join that natal pack. When a pair become mates, they are considered the breeding pair of a pack, also known as the pack leaders. A typical pack structure is a breeding pair and several years’ litters of offspring, though some circumstances can lead to larger or oddly structured packs, like captivity, or in the period after a reintroduction (see: Yellowstone’s “mega-packs” such as the Druid Pack, which tended to be larger and more complex than a typical wolf pack before they evened out).
Wolf pups are always born in spring, and after several weeks, begin to leave the den and stay around its entrance, learning valuable socialization and fighting skills through play. They're very vulnerable at this age, and competitor animals may target the pups in order to reduce competition; in most cases, not all wolf pups survive to adulthood. Around the summertime, the pups are moved from the den, as they are no longer small enough for it to offer much protection, to a place called a “rendezvous site”, a sort of home site for the pack’s youngest members to stay. At this point, they wean themselves from milk and regurgitated meat to more solid food, and as summer continues, they grow into their adult fur and grow rapidly.
By the fall, they're old enough to start accompanying the pack on hunts and watch them make kills. Eventually, through observation, the pups will become confident enough to begin participating and learn to hunt for themselves. Once the pups become yearlings and sub-adults and the next litter is born, they aid the breeding pair in watching the new litter and in hunting and marking territory, until they are eventually ready to disperse, find a mate, and establish their own packs.
There are two main species of wolf recognized, the grey wolf and the red wolf, with most subspecies being considered grey wolves. Some interesting species include the Arctic Wolf (Canis lupus arctos), which lives in the snowy north; the Mexican Wolf (Canis lupus baileyi), one of the most threatened wolf species due to overhunting; the British Columbia Wolf (Canis lupus columbianus), which lives by the coast and prefers fish; the small and slender Arabian Wolf (Canis lupus arabs) found in areas such as Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Palestine; and of course the Red Wolf (Canis rufus), which was once plentiful throughout the southeastern United States before hunting and habitat loss destroyed most of the population. And of course, many more...
As you can surmise, wolves face a variety of ecological challenges due to conflicts with humans. Methods of deterring wolves from killing livestock have become a frequent political issue, with ranchers pushing hard for fewer restrictions on wolf killing and population control. While I agree that an animal that has become accustomed enough to humans to repeatedly encroach to make kills is likely a dangerous one (for the same reason that you're not supposed to feed bears or interact closely with wildlife) preventative measures can be used to avoid this entirely, like playing loud music and sounds, putting out large inflatable objects, and putting out electric fences, and other things that will scare wolves off, can prevent them from seeing the livestock as worth going after. Unfortunately, ranchers find it much easier to rally against the legal protections that wild wolves had, and advocate for extreme measures against the animals, despite the fact that wolves actually account for very few cattle deaths each year. The threat wolves pose to livestock ranchers and their livelihood has been vastly overexaggerated, to disastrous effect.
Hunting is a major problem for wolf populations. They're often scapegoated for when prey animal populations are down for unrelated reasons, and are thus “managed” through cullings and aerial hunts to fix the “problem”. In actuality, wolves aid prey populations by reducing their numbers and preventing overgrazing, and killing off individuals that are sick or otherwise weakened. Predator and prey evolved to balance each other, after all. The benefits wolves provide to prey animals and vegetation have an incredible ripple effect throughout the whole ecosystem. Human overreach only disrupts that delicate balance. Hunters also tend to use traps and poisons, which can kill any animal, not just wolves.
Rather infamously, the beloved Yellowstone wolf 832F (nicknamed O-Six or 06, after her birth year), was shot in 2012 after accidentally crossing the park borders, into states without adequate wolf protections. She was famous for being an incredibly skilled hunter, taking down prey on her own, and a good mother, founding the Lamar River Canyon pack as its breeding female, with some calling her the “rock star” of the park’s wolves. When she was fatally shot, she was not threatening or hurting anyone, nor had she been acting dangerously unafraid of humans. The beloved O-Six was murdered simply because she had crossed a boundary she had no idea existed.
Wolves have existed all over the world since time immemorial, and have always been a crucial part of the ecosystems they have inhabited. Despite this, those who argue for wolf management speak of them as if their predatory role is some kind of unnatural intrusion onto these ecosystems, one which must be micromanaged or even eliminated by man. It is this rhetoric that has led to the natural range of the wolf being greatly reduced, hunted to near extinction in many places. You won't encounter a wolf in much of Europe or in places like Japan. This was intentional. They were killed off on purpose due to this exact sort of fearmongering.
And so humanity marches on, paving over the homes wolves once inhabited. Climate change worsens and worsens, eliminating habitats and disrupting this delicate chain. Who is the real killer, the unnatural predator that kills indiscriminately, the encroaching invader? It is certainly not the wolf. I say this not to be misanthropic, but to plead you to act, to fight for the earth and for wolves, still targeted with fairy-tale nonsense and killed for sport and out of fear. A call to be mindful of the ways in which we take and give, and to establish a better relationship with the earth.
It is crucial to remember the reality of the wolf, not merely the fantasy. A crucial and ecologically important animal; a social creature, that teaches its pups and leads its packmates in a playful chase, that fills the night with song and the forests with life... that is worth protecting.
