Brad I hunt a place on the Rocky Mountain Front with Griz. I guess I have gotten lucky they have never messed with my camp. But I also don't eat there or leave food there. I have been thinking about getting one of those electric fences. I think the fence would be good for wolves too, piece of mind while sleeping. My buddy and I were packing out his elk last season and there were a pack very close to use, though we never did see them. Lucky for me I do most of my hunting here in the Bitterroot so haven't had to deal with Griz yet. Though I know it won't be long before they are here too. Thanks for the response.
We don't have griz here but we do have blackies and cougars and we're certainly not short on wolves. The local paper reported the other day that 2 dogs have been killed by cats in the area we hunt in just the last 2 weeks. I've had to leave meat out overnight a number of times and so far I've been lucky that nothing has found it. It's always a crap shoot that way. The books all say to hang meat at least 10' up and suspended between trees. I'm assuming the authors have never actually tried it with an elk.
Electric fences do work for bears but they're heavy and expensive. The net type work better than the ribbon type but they're almost double the weight and bulk plus costing considerably more. None that I've seen are high enough to keep a wolf or cat from jumping over it. I don't know if a wolf would try to jump one but it easily could if it tried. You'd probably need a 6' fence to be safe from them.
Interesting story about leaving meat overnight: a couple years ago, my partner shot a deer 3 miles back. We're not young bucks anymore (we were 67 & 70 at the time) and we can't backpack meat like you young'uns. This was llama work. We got it into deep shade, skinned it, and laid the deer on the hide. We laid the heart and liver next to it and spread a couple meat bags over it, then covered it with pine boughs. The next morning we came up with the llamas. The pine boughs were still on it but the meat bags were pulled out from under them and dragged 5 yds to the side. The heart and liver were gone but nothing else was touched. We couldn't find a single tooth mark on the carcass. A bear or wolf would have likely eaten from it. The missing giblets was the puzzle. It was too grassy to find any tracks. We figured it was a pine martin or maybe a fox.
