Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Ever spent much time watching "large" packs of Wolves ?

Was fun to watch large (and small) packs of wolves operate, especially their skills. I don't think there are large packs any longer in Alaska. I understand in Russia there are still large packs, even over a hundred.

I have had the priveledge of watching two different small packs hunt moose, and seen signs in the snow of another, and been an object of interest in another. And yes, I like wolves, within limits.

With the latter snow sign, and one of the other, the doggies spread out a few hundred yards apart and combed the woods.

But even wolves can make mistakes. In one of the former, the cow and calf came busting out in the meadow below my ridge top stand, went out to the point of brush, turned back to where they had come out, and continued their line to a lake about 1/3 mile south of me. A wolf crossed the meadow 300 yards up, to parallel their line, and shortly thereafter another one came out following the moose trail. I have no doubt there were others on both flanks.

The one that came out in front of me, following the moose trail scent got to the point and lost the trail, turned back in the general direction of trail (done that before!) and proceeded.

Have you any idea how hard it is to hit a running wolf when one is standing on left foot tip-toe, right foot off the ground, leaning to the left around the small spruce tree In front of you, tracking to your left. It was not a field position I had practiced, and I missed

On the other hand, when Tripper Lab and I were surrounded and shadowed ( on all sides) by a pack of 5 or 6, 3 miles up Resurrection Trail from Hope, that 9 month old female pup that came out on the trail 30 yards ahead “ inviting Trip to come play” was a real easy shot!

I was on moose stand a couple hundred yards off a lake at dawn. 13 degrees iirc. Freezing my butt off, when suddenly there was a helluva a racket of ducks sounding off, followed by hysterical wolf pup barking.

I laughed out loud at what was obviously going on. Warmed me right up

Didn’t help the moose hunting one bit tho.

Another time I was sitting on a small island on a channel interconnecting two small lakes. I could cover both with less than 300 yard shots.

Two swans came in and landed - shortly thereafter an adult and two maybe 5 mo pup wolves came out on the far shore- about 200 yards off. First the pups mauled the adult until it got tired of the bother and moved 100 yards away, babysitting. Then the pups mock attacked “mice” in the shore-side tussocks.

Until the swans decided to tease them by swimming back and forth along the shoreline in front of the pups, just out of reach.

I thought those pups were going to turn inside out.

Didn’t do much for the moose hunting tho.

Yeah, I could have killed at least two, but what fun is that? Not as much as watching the floor show, for sure.

17 is the most I seen..... looked like a furry wagon train....

We used to do immersion visits to the headwaters of the Noatak River just above where the Ambler River flows in. We told ourselves we went to hunt, and we did, and were successful each trip. But mostly it was to explore an area that fifty years ago had truly abundant wildlife.

The caribou numbered in the hundreds of thousands, which resulted in abundant and large wolf packs. One pack one year numbered around 75 plus wolves. Was likely two packs actually. The wolves were everywhere. We would watch them pull down five or six sheep at a time, and do it in seconds. The sheep were not killed instantly, they would not waste time, finishing till all the sheep in that bunch were disabled. One then were all flopping around the wolves would go around and finish them.

One day I was fleshing out a grizzly hide about a mile from camp, had shot the bear late the in the day before and so overnighted right there. The next day as I was working on the bear there was thirty wolves watching from less then fifty yards, some were much closer. There were not the least aggressive or threatening. They just lay there digesting full bellies of caribou. They looked like they were pregnant they had such large stomachs. It was a hot and very sunny day.

Those trips would cost us (my hunting partner and myself) just a little over $300.00 each. not including the food we would take. And we would watch thousands of caribou, sometimes have to chase them away to get through a large bunch. So I giggle at what nonresidents are willing to pay today just for the "transporter".

Shiett ain't what it used to be, for sure.

The sad part is, it isn't ever going to be again.

I am so grateful that I have seen what I have seen and done, tho it is a pittance of times past..

And I am 72 now. Aging sucks!!!

But I have ATV's now. I just don' t go as fast as those young bucks who don't know any better.....

For many year I ran a small herd of Toulouse Geese, generally around 30 or so head. I always had wolves around here. Generally a single wolf or a bitch and her following single other wolf. The most ever was three wolves here at this location. I also had about six to eight of those monster turkeys, but they were kept in a kennel, and the kennel was about fifteen feet from the cabin door.

One day all hell is going on out there and I open the door and there is a totally black wolf with very short legs, he was running back and forth along the chainlink fence that incarcerated those monster turkeys. He looked at me and went back to tormenting the turkeys.

I grabbed the .22 rifle and went out to chase him off, pulled up on him to shoot him at about thirty feet, but he was so beautiful, and he just stood there looking at me and then at the turkeys, just back and forth looking at me and the turkeys, I just fired up in the air and ran straight at him, and off he went.

I never seen him again here on the property, but others did see him in the area. He was beautiful, with very short legs. Others who knew wolves also commented about the short legs.

All wolves are beautiful, but I got limits. . Like the one that tried to cozy up to my Lab, and once thwarted, came back to crap on my lawn...

City folk won't ever experience/do this stuff. They will extrapolate off the internet/ PETA, etc.

Ain't no size fits all, comes to wildlife in the real world.

One goes with the flow.

why would anyone wanna watch wolves without a rifle handy ? i grew up around wolves on a farm we never had any use for wolves alive .

We kill that which we fear, we kill that which we understand.....not. It is why humans are constantly killing other humans, we fear their culture, we fear their beliefs, we don't understand them, so we kill them.

Same with wolves. Same with Viruses.

I am not a worshiper of wolves, but if you position yourself immersed for a reasonable time period into their "reality", you notice the awesome skill and precision with which they kill to survive. They are "master" predators.

Most animals are constantly looking around for danger to them, even the biggest bears are constantly on alert for danger. Raising their head at the slightest sound or movement. I have noticed that wolves rarely ever do that. They because of their speed, agility, vision, hearing, awesome killing ability, are so in a totally other level of awareness to to their environment, they move through a valley unlike any other animal.

I've watched some pretty good size packs in Yellowstone. Was fortunate to see a large grizzly approach a pack that was bedded down with pups in the area. One wolf, likely the alpha female went straight at the bear which did a quick u turn and took off at a run, the wolf was gaining ground and the bear then wheeled around to meet the wolf which darted around the bear. The bear then took that chance to head into the timber. The wolf stopped at the edge of the timber and shook itself and entered the timber at a slow trot. Wish I could have filmed it but was happy to see it through my spotting scope.

My inlaws having Sunday dinner.

We kill that which we fear, we kill that which we understand.....not. It is why humans are constantly killing other humans, we fear their culture, we fear their beliefs, we don't understand them, so we kill them.

Same with wolves. Same with Viruses.

I am not a worshiper of wolves, but if you position yourself immersed for a reasonable time period into their "reality", you notice the awesome skill and precision with which they kill to survive. They are "master" predators.

Most animals are constantly looking around for danger to them, even the biggest bears are constantly on alert for danger. Raising their head at the slightest sound or movement. I have noticed that wolves rarely ever do that. They because of their speed, agility, vision, hearing, awesome killing ability, are so in a totally other level of awareness to to their environment, they move through a valley unlike any other animal.


> when you grow up with cattle and that`s part of your lively hood wolves are not want you wanna see or just watch these wolves , wolves will cost me money , myself i have no fear of wolves , bears or humans but i am smart enough to take care of the problem , keep my family safe, always carry consealed and i always vote Republican !

Never watched a large pack but I’ve watched a few small and I agree they are amazing hunter/killers. I sat in my deer stand one opening morning of season and listened to a pack of about a dozen sound off and basically heard the deer herd into a large cedar swamp. After that they proceeded to kill everything and basically screw up my season. Such is life and it made me change my hunting habits for the better. That was back in the 90”s and ever since then I have never used bait for deer and went to still hunting /tracking and if I do sit on a run there isn’t a single bit of food except for what I’m eating. Funny thing is how I can despise wolves and coyotes so much but love dogs…..

A few years back I drew a Ft Rich archery moose tag and was hunting the south side on a trail I had used several times prior which I knew held a fair number of moose. There was about 2-3" of fresh snow and as I was walking along I could hear something causing a ruckus about 200 yards off trail so I proceeded to investigate the situation. As I was circling around I stopped and could hear that there were wolves close by, probably feeding on a bow hunter killed moose from the day before and as I was standing there listening to it al I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, it was a fair sized wolf working his way around me I believe to catch my wind. Luckily on Ft Rich you can carry a handgun and I had my Ruger SBH 44 mag so I felt somewhat safe but I still got the hell out of there just to be safe.

I had the something similar happen a few years later when I drew that tag again but I was on a stand with a friend and we didn't know that someone had already killed a bull in that spot and wolves were feeding on the leftovers, my buddy could see them through the brush but they never paid us any mind and continued to fight over the scraps. While walking out from that spot, in the snow there were a set of very large bear tracks that were on top of our tracks as we walked into the stand and it must have heard us coming back out and he veered off to the right into the brush, we never saw him.