Federal wolf managers have issued rubber bullets to a landowner northeast of Jackson after wolves chased horses on private property.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service personnel made the announcement on the agency’s wolf Web site. On Dec. 31, Fish and Wildlife wolf managers investigated the incident, which involved four wolves, likely from the Antelope Pack, chasing young horses on a private pasture.

Mike Jimenez, Fish and Wildlife Service Wyoming wolf recovery project leader, said the incident is nothing unusual. He also issued the landowner cracker shells, which are fireworks that can be fired out of a shotgun at the wolves. The rubber bullets are the same type that riot police use to control crowds of people.

Jimenez said these nonlethal deterrents worked well with wolves from the same pack last year.

“We had problems with them doing the same thing with dogs all last summer,” he said.

“It was a couple houses where they were harassing dogs in the front,” Jimenez said, explaining the landowner hit one of the wolves with a rubber bullet and incidents stopped. “He actually hit one.”

Jimenez said the rubber bullets have a limited range; they can only be aimed effectively at targets up to about 50 yards.

But, he said, they also give the property owner a sense of empowerment in Wyoming, where wolves are still protected under the Endangered Species Act. Otherwise, a property owner would have to catch a wolf in the act of damaging livestock or pets to kill the predator.

Wildlife managers say the 200 or so wolves that live in Wyoming outside Yellowstone National Park killed 20 cattle, 195 sheep and seven dogs in 2009. Thirty wolves were killed for preying on livestock during that time.