Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Wolverines

I have been forchanet enough to see a few Wolverine in the wild over the years. I spent many days hunting and trapping the buggers in SW Alaska as well as Montanas Bob Marshall Wildernesss prior to the 2012 trapping ban, that helped a lot.

A couple of the more memorable sightings kinda went like this.

I'd joined up with a packing buddy of mine for a early season ride crisscrossing Montanas Great Bear and Bob Marshall wilderness areas. It's alway nice to be first for the year in that country if you don't mind cutting endless amounts of blow down and pushing your stock over snowed in mountain passes.

We'd picked three destinations, starting from the middle fork of the Flathead river off highway 2 by Glacier Park with the next stop being Holland Lake lodge down in the Swan Valley to re-supply. We'd taken one pack animal each, one being dedicated to our stock loaded with grain and pellets, the other was a meager amount of camp gear and food. After Holland, our plan was to hit the North Fork of the Sun River on the east side of the Continental Divide then back to our stock truck off hwy 2 from there. We had no true route in mind, we just picked our way day by day.

One night, due to lack of planning, we found ourselves running out of daylight with nowhere to camp along the banks of Pendant Creek above Holland Lake, we settled on the middle of the saddle horse trail for the night since it was high country and everything else was still covered in deep snow. Pendant Creek is narrow, shallow and runs fast in early spring, it was loud.



We broke outta there at first light, we didn't want to suffer the embarrassment of being caught camping in the middle of the trail if anyone was to come trudging along and run into us there. Steaks and whiskey would be waiting for us at the lodge, we were motivated, we'd been riding for about a week at this point, our supplies had dwindled and we'd easily make the lodge by dark.

As we rode along Pendant creek we spotted a dead mule deer washed up on the opposite bank, something was moving there and it wasn't the dead deer. We couldn't quite tell exactly what we were seeing so we rode closer, the creek was only about 20ft wide and we were able to get directly across from the deer carcass with the noise our stock made being covered by the noisy fast running creek.
What we were seeing was the back half of a Wolverine that had bored a hole in the deer's gut and was busily feasting away.

We sat silently watching for a good two to three minutes before that sucker sensed something was wrong and pulled his blood soaked head out of the deer and looked our way. Talk about embarrassed, the look on his face was priceless, he hauled azz in a flash. Not often a Wolverine screws up like that....

Another time, I'll try and keep this short so I don't bore you to death with trivial details, even though it's a little late for that...:)

I had some Pine Marten traps set out in SW Alaskas Tikchik mountains, as I was running my trapline one morning I came across the craziest sight.

I'd set a little 1 1/2 victor trap on a leaning tree for Marten, I'd nailed a chunk of Chum to the tree above the trap. As I neared my trap set on my snow machine I could plainly see this Wolverine standing on the leaning tree. I hit the kill switch about 60 yards out and grabbed my beater 22 and took cover behind my machine. Using my seat for a rest I focused in for a long shot through the open sights.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing, he was holding one paw up and shaking it vigorously. Apparently he'd become interested in the salmon I'd used for bait and got his foot snapped in my tiny little trap.

I shot, he fell....

When I approached I found he had a single toe in my trap, I don't think he'd been there more that a minute or two before I arrived or he'd have torn loose.
His is the only hide and skull I ever kept, It was just a once in a lifetime kinda thing.




Then there was the Wolverine that tried to kill me but most of you guys already read about that.

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