Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada Has Clearcutting and Logging affected your Hunting areas?

Yes and always for the worse!!
To Many Roads!!!!

They clear cut around one of mine this summer

I quit hunting Ontario this year because of the logging. Not the cutting, I agree that old clear cuts are excellent for deer and moose, but the easy access provided by the roads. It got so bad that I remarked we should set a Tim Hortons or beer cart up on the main log roads to capitalize on the steady, heavy traffic. It's getting hard to find a piece of Crown Land that has more than a few square kilometers not crossed by roads and trails unless you travel far west or north.

Fly in is the answer.

Jim

Roads do help wolves. Wolves are far more mobile because of them. Wolves have adapted their hunting style to trotting down roads until they wind an ungulate then they go kill it. They are able to cover far more ground this way than going through deep snow and thick bush, swamps, mountains, etc until they wind prey. Their hunting is more successful, the more successful their hunting the more successful their breeding. We have more wolves than ever and they are more successful when hunting because of increased mobility and travel speed. Telemetry studies have shown they move far more distance on roads preferring to use them instead of traditional routes they used before roads. Saves cutting through bush, swamps, mountains. It is simply an age old adaptation of wolves in winter travelling on lakes and rivers making good time until they scent a victim, they now have adapted to using the same hunting technique but using roads to do it year round. Roads are everywhere and lead to cut blocks that draw ungulates. Lakes and rivers are not everywhere and travel on them is pretty much limited to winter for wolves. It allows a higher number of wolves far more mobility to hunt an expanded territory through all the seasons they previously may have not used as much or at all.

Road density is a relevant index to human disturbance at regional and landscape levels (Mladenoff et al. 1995, Boitani et al 1997). Studies in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ontario, and Minnesota have shown a strong relationshipo between road density and the absence of wolves. Wolves were generally not present where the density of roads exceeded 0.58 km/km2 (Thiel 1985, Jensen et al. 1986, Mech et al. 1988, Fuller 1989). Road density
was much lower in pack territories (0.23 km/km2 in 80% use area) than in random nonpack areas (0.74) or in the region overall (0.71) in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan, where road density was the strongest predictor of wolf habitat favorability out of five habitat characteristics and six indices of landscape complexity (Mladenoff et al. 1995). Few areas of use exceeded a road density of >0.45 km/km2 , in Minnesota road densities of the primary range, peripheral range, and disjunct range of wolves were all below 0.58 km/km2 (Mladenoff et al. 1995). High road densities may constitute a barrier to wolf dispersal (Jensen et al. 1986). Research in Wisconsin and Minnesota has demonstrated a negative relationship between high road densities and wolf populations (Thiel 1985; Mech et al. 1988). However, wolves may demonstrate less road avoidance during dispersal, where the natural prey base has been depleted, or where human densities are low (Frederick 1991).

Im not one to cite studies, because I've been involved in some and I know how the data can and is, often twisted....but since you brought up the telemetry study. Heres what I know. For many years I trapped up in the Logan mountains. There is an old mining road that runs for over 200 KM up through that country. It actually ran right through the middle of my trapline. In my first years up there, the road was closed during the winter, and only lightly used in the summer. In the winter months the wolves traveled that road all the time, but of course it wasn't any easier than it was anywhere else since the road wasn't plowed.

Then the mine reopened. The road was then plowed all winter. Lots of activity on and around the road. I still saw tracks on the road occasionally, but nothing like before. I was up in that country for years and I never once saw where wolves had killed anything near the road.....now that doesn't mean they didn't. Maybe I just didn't see it. But I do know the wolves didn't take advantage of that plowed road on a regular basis.They actually avoided it more than they did before. What they did do, like they always have, is use the high windblown ridges like highways. You have more wolves in Alberta because fewer are being taken out of the gene pool. Roads have little to do with it. My youngest daughter and her husband live in Alberta. Last winter they took 21 wolves. Most trappers won't do that anymore because they are a lot of work, and not worth much.

I don't know, but we have a lot of wolves, and your right they haven't been trapped and shot like they used to be, though they are pretty much shot on sight by most hunters nowadays. I think they have adapted in that they now don't fear people, vehicles, oil patch development, logging and such like they used to. Wolf populations are much higher in those areas than they ever were before the industrial development of these areas. They use roads mostly at night, they definitely have learned to use them as a primary method of hunting here. In the area I'm familiar with there are thousands of square miles of area where there are roads, cutlines, pipelines, gas plants, frac plants, pumpjacks, cutblocks, flarestacks, storage facilities, processing plants, etc, which are scattered everywhere, there is nowhere where your can get farther than a kilometer from any of this, it is far from a wilderness, more like a giant industrial park spread over hundreds of miles among the forest and swamps. Wolf populations are still growing, they are over capacity in this industrial habitat and it's dwindling ungulate food supply. They are spreading out of the foothills, colonizing and now not uncommon in the parkland farming areas.

If given a window wolves are very adaptable and becoming quite comfortable living around our backyards.

Yukon254, I'll risk showing my ignorance by questioning some of that study re wolves and road density. First, there is a huge difference in human population using those roads in the Wisconsin etc. study area, winter and summer, than there is in BC back country, as you indicated yourself unless there is a specific mine etc. up that particular road. Their last sentence indicates that itself.

Second, even when not plowed, when snow conditions allow or are equal, it is a lot easier for animals to follow a road than to walk through brush, timber, muskeg etc. and my personal experience is that animals from moose to big predators use roads a considerable amount, far more than random travel would indicate. An exception would be when snow is shallow under forest and deep in the open, on roads.

These comments merely to say that a simplistic "wolves avoid roads" is ignoring significant other factors and has the scent of a skewed study set up to prove a desired result. In the US and within 150 miles of the US border in Canada, roads usually equal people, and of course wolves avoid humans. I don't know a lot about wolves but they sure travel roads a lot where I have hunted them, far more than any humans used those roads.

Re has clearcutting affected my hunting: of course it has. A prime rut area where big mule deer bucks gathered, fought and bred does in old growth timber has all been clear cut. At this point it is growing back, so thick now that nobody hunts it. I will die before it gets prime again, and it will because terrain does not change. A mule deer bedding area on a ridge I discovered 30 years ago when backpack hunting is now at the top edge of a clearcut, within rifle range of a road. Three years ago I stopped to glass it, knowing the best bedding spots, and killed a 3 point buck. It is now grown up too tall in brush to see anything of the ridge. A prime blacktail bed I discovered while picking berries last summer was off limits to me this Fall due to active logging of the old timber within 300 meters. So it goes...

Okanagan The old mining road I referenced is in the Yukon. The roads bushrat is talking about are in Alberta. I would guess that the backroads in Alberta have far more traffic than WI.

In my experience I would disagree that an unplowed road is easier to travel on than in the timber. Roads are open....they get a lot of sun. Any crust that forms during the night softens up as soon as the sun starts to hit it. In the timber the crust might last all day. I used to have a heck of a time traveling that old mining road with my little Tundra snow machine once the crust softened enough that it started to break through. I soon learned to get into the ditch next to the trees where it was shaded. It was 180 km up that road to my cabin so I got a lot of practice.

Im not saying wolves dont use roads. My point is they dont need them. Ungulate populations are not just declining in areas with lots of roads. It is happening over much of western Canada. I spend a lot of time in the bush. Most of it completely roadless. Myself and others are seeing the same decline out there as we are in more populated areas. One member on this forum just did a hunt in a remote part of northern BC. He traveled a lot of miles by horse and on foot. He saw 1 cow moose, and 1 black bear during the hunt.

There are exceptions. In areas where trappers are active, ungulate populations will almost always be higher. In the last couple of years I've taken 16 wolves off of my trapline. I have already noticed a difference in moose numbers. The problem I have with "the roads are the problem" argument is that it makes it easier for the real problem to get lost in the shuffle. Biologists tend to like having lots of things to "study."

I once worked on a small mammal study with a regional biologist. What a load of nonsense that was. The guy was completely clueless. At least half of traps didn't work, and he didn't have any idea of where to find the mammals he was after anyway. It was nothing more than a bush vacation for him and his girlfriend; that Canadian taxpayers paid for. The final bill was over 80K and that didn't include his wages. I could give a lot more examples but I will refrain. A couple of things to think about though.....how do they count bears and wolves? Like seriously how do they come up with their numbers?? Are those numbers accurate?? Are they even close?? If you think they are....just go to Yukons renewable resource website and look at their breakdown on wolves/moose populations in the Territory. Then use their own estimates on how many moose an average wolf pack will kill each year. Their conclusion will shock you..


The problem plain and simple is to many predators....bears and wolves. Nobody wants to talk about why we have a predator problem, but the answers are there if you look. The grizzly season in BC has been very restrictive for many years now....think tight quotas. Fewer trappers are out there much anymore, and of those that are, very few mess with wolves. It takes a lot of dedication and hard work to catch them and they are not worth much anymore. Now with the grizzly season closed it will only get worse. Then today I found out they want to list both the grizzly and the wolverine under "special concern".....that is one step from endangered.....

I think we agree on that, as well as too many predators for the reasons you list.

The real problem is global Warming.




Logging helps.

Im a retired logger here in Northwestern Ontario.

As regards roads and road density hereabouts.
There are 3 types of roads here in the bush, primary, secondary and tertiary. Tertiary roads are built to the lowest standards--there are there to get the wood out--nothing else. Culverts might be put in and a little gravel but once the wood is on the trucks no other maintenance. In this country these roads don't last very long--couple of years at most and if washed out not even that long. With the proper all-terrain vehicles and 4-wheelers you can use them for a few more years but none of them for very long.

In my area we had for the last 50 years a primary road that connected Hwy 11 to Hwy 17 and allowed me to drive a roughly 80 mile loop from my house. Off of that primary road we had 4 secondary roads that bisected that loop and literally hundreds of miles of tertiary roads. When they were logging intensively as soon as you lost one road you gained another thru logging operations. In the year 1995 I could not possibly drive down all those roads in a 3 month season.

Logging stopped when the mills closed--no more maintenance, no more access. Even the primary road not plowed which meant this year no more access due to snow from the 1st of Nov onward.

I haven't noticed wolves gaining any advantage over moose because of roads--might just be me but I never felt it mattered much. One thing I did notice was the wolf population on my trap line is directly tied to the number of beaver. Lots of beaver equals lots of wolves and at $20 a pelt beaver aint worth the effort to trap. I have noticed that moose tend to congregate around trapped out beaver workings but wolves tend to move on.

I have never felt that healthy moose had much to fear from wolves. Moose seem the get as much as they give. Now moose weakened by p.tineus or liver flukes or ticks might be another matter.

kkahmann, you bring up a real good point. Wolves do prey on beaver a lot. In some areas beaver makes up most of their summer diet. You are however dead wrong on healthy moose being safe from wolves. A pack of wolves can and do kill healthy moose very easily. They do it every single month of the year. Twice now I have seen where ONE wolf killed an adult moose.