Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Wolverines

Only saw one in the wild, from a helicopter in the tundra, maybe 100 miles SE of Bethel. We all commented on how rare it was to see one in that place, on that terrain. We also lamented F&G laws on hunting them from the air, since I probably could've gotten it with my personally carried SKS in my ruck (didn't carry the door M-60's unless training or 9/11 while in AK).

There is a small population of fisher here and they are occasionally trapped. They are not native.

This past spring Riley dragged a black bear away from his bait site and downloaded the pictures on the card before leaving. When they got home they had pictures of a wolverine on their bait while they were less than 200 yards away dealing with the bear.

Love those SKSs...especially older ones.

Mine is a paratrooper carbine with a foldable stock, imported in the early 80's. As a 19 year old GI, it was all I could afford at the time ( I paid $100 for it). AR's and other semis were unafordable for me at the time (mid-nineties).

While hunting Dall Sheep between Delta Junction and Tok AK myself and hunting partner crested a rise and came upon three wolverines in a chute loaded with snow. The chute was 200 yards away at the most, it appeared that the larger one of the three was the mother and her two just slightly smaller cubs. They were acting just like bear cubs, running up the snow chute, flipping over on their backside and sliding/sledding down the chute. We watched them for approximately an hour, while the two smaller ones did the majority of the sliding, the larger one also partook of the festivities. Saying that, she appeared to be the "target" for the two smaller ones, they slid into her several times and then they all went flying pell mell. The only break to this activity was when a coyote came by at the bottom of the chute, the wolverines stopped and watched him, coyote wisely moved on. Wolverines are in the weasel family, simply look at how ferocious they can be when needed. They are also a relative to "Honey Badgers", look them up on you-tube , honey badger don't care/give a shart!

Here in Yukon hunters can take one on their hunting license, no tag required. Even nonresidents. In some areas they are seen quite often. I have called them in with a predator call before. A few years back I called a couple of two year olds into bow range.

watched 2 black and white wolverines take apart a caribou carcass in nunavik, they cracked open the bones and ate the marrow, when they where full
they ran around hiding all the bones they had not crushed and eaten. i would not want to get between them and there meal !!!

No personal experience, but my bet is that they are a lot like covid.
All just exaggerated made up hype.....until one bites you personally in the ass.

In 4 decades of hunting each fall in Alaska I've seen three. Got this one with my recurve a few years ago:

I did not know that. Tell us more.

In early 70's while looking for a dropped sling load on bench land between Hope airport and Wolf Creek along Resurection Trail, we found dozens of porcupine pelts, belly up. Just the pelts, everything else had been eaten. I know Fishers do this, but there were not supposed to be any on the Kenai, or in Alaska, so we figured lynx.

Never did find the gear.

I agree with you, anything is possible.

My people settled outside Winifred Mt after World War II, first hired out on ranches in the Judith River area, then purchased their own spreads near the Missouri Breaks. Never heard them speak of Wolverine sightings, until the 1970s. Big rain storm hit the area in 1973, lightning hit the Methodist Church and it burned down. A neighbor, last name was Peterson, went to check cattle after the storm and he came across a Wolverine scavenging one of the dead cows that drowned in one of the washes. Fish and Wildlife out of Lewiston was called to verify what he saw was a Wolverine. Tracks in the mud confirmed. Since then I can recall some news relayed a few years ago to me that a Wolverine was killed by a car on Hwy 87 between Great Falls and Fort Benton.

I will bore you with one more story. While celebrating success of a hunter on a nice Mule deer in a bar in Winifred the conversation with some locals lead to talking about the Big Horn Sheep now found in the breaks. One guy said there are other critters he had not seen before. He and another guy were fishing on the Missouri and they saw a critter swimming and motored over to it. It looked like a small bear. They kept their distance and followed it to shore and when it got out of the water they realized it was no bear. Surmised it was a Wolverine after looking at pictures on the internet.

Ok I googled fishers in Alaska. Apparently a few down in SE near Juneau. Probably not introduced, according to that piece - Taku drainage, etc.

Wolverine could also have been our porky killer, and to my mind, more likely than lynx in the pelt numbers we saw.

Someone found a good deal and had taken advantage of it, for sure. Expertly!

The wolverine I saw in headwaters of Caribou Creek, and the site of the porky killings a few years before were in the same drainage - Resurection Creek - just a few miles apart.

I saw a fisher on a moose carcass a few years ago. It was in the Wrangells

Wolverines are my favorite critter to catch in a trap.

Interesting. I am pretty familiar with that country, since my paternal grandparents homesteaded near Roy right after WWI, and after selling the homestead my grandmother lived in Lewistown until she passed away in 1960. I also lived in Hobson for four years in the late 1980s, partly due to exploring my "roots." Have hunted quite a bit through that part of the Breaks, including canoe hunts on down to Fred Robinson Bridge. Last time I was up there was last year, and saw one of the biggest mule deer bucks have seen in many years--of course on private ground that couldn't be hunted, not too far south of Winifred.

Wolverine populations (not just individual sightings) have been documented in Montana in the north end of the Little Belts in Judith Basin County, with confirmations in the past five years, and older confirmations a little farther north. There have also been scattered individuals confirmed along the Hiline north of the Missouri River, some pretty recent, but those are generally assumed to have drifted down from Canada.

The only place I've seen wolverine tracks fresh and clear enough to confirm them was in the Scapegoat Wilderness north of Ovando in the mid-80s, during a drop-camp elk hunt, but the population is supposed to be about as high there as any place in the state. Also ran across fresh grizzly tracks on the same path...

The only fisher population ADF&G knows about is on the Kenai...

That is not to say they do not wander...

They catch some by Juneau too.

That is very close to the known headquarters, ...a type of wrench...