Yeah, I’ve seen that—wolves are like living kinship diagrams in motion. In the tribes I’ve studied, the hunters are often arranged in a kind of “hunt‑sociogram.” The eldest male, or the matriarch in matrilineal groups, will usually be the “prime mover,” and the next generation follows in a sort of linear chain that looks almost like a tree on a napkin. The nodes are cousins, uncles, aunts, and even in-laws, and the edges are the shared responsibilities: scouting, ambush, flank, and so on. It’s fascinating how the same relational logic that determines marriage taboo also shapes the hunt’s choreography. When I draw it out, it almost looks like a puzzle that tells you who will call which flank at the exact second—just like those ancient kinship charts we study.

It’s exactly the same pattern I see in the tribal hunts I document. The “old one” is like the root node, and each follower is a child node, moving along a branch of the sociogram. If you watch the eye‑contact as a signal, you’re basically reading the edges of that graph. In practice, you could mark the leaders’ positions on a small field diagram and then let the rest of the group copy that path—kind of like a living map that updates in real time. It’s not the same as my field notes, but it should give you a visual template for anticipating the pack’s moves. Just make sure everyone knows their own node before you set off.