Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Who would have thought. (Wolves)

No, it isn’t enough, but it is enough to put you in the time and place and to draw scrutiny. And when they dig that 6.5 bullet out of a tree and match it to the brand and lot of ammo you purchased before deer season at Academy, you will be schit out of luck. Or whatever else they figure out by looking at you a little closer and leaning on some of those around you.

You must assume with wolves these days that considerable resources will be brought to bear to find a killer. It will be more akin to a human murder investigation than something involving an animal. They’re the feds. They have unlimited money and unlimited resources.

Shooting them isn't going to work, at least not conventional shooting.

Just wait until (they) begin to tell you the best way to manage the Wolf pops is to keep the game pops low.

i hunt and also live and hear wolves sometimes at night. in the old days we the people of Minnesota shot ,trapped ,and poisoned wolves all year long and for many years we kept the wolves at bay , but now we have way to many wolves probably closer to 4,000 wolves and a much smaller deer herd in Minnesota ,less elk , moose ,bear ,beaver and deer in the N.W. Minnesota too. that`s all B.S. about those charts and studies those are liberal DNR employees protecting wolves including Governor Walz in Minnesota with those charts , i live here in this Liberal controlled state with the Twin Cities population where there is no wolves. the liberal anti movement is winning over us the hunters , trappers and protectors of who once controlled the wolf population in northern Minnesota ,Montana , Wisconsin and the rest of the American hunting land.

I have to agree.

In North central Nebraska near our hunting spot, two neighbors took out 112 coyotes last winter. Claimed it didn't seem to make a dent.

Okay, since I'm apparently ill equipped to understand all the angles to this topic let me ask you a question.

Do you believe what the state tells us every year concerning the wolf numbers? I don't know what the exact number is, but I don't believe the 2800 number for a second, and have not fof years.

If you do, you help the state get away with it every year, and are the Minnesotan I fear the most. A thin veneer of conservative with a pile of DFL just under the surface.

If you don't, then why did you feel it necessary to tell me things I already know? I'll wager it's because I made fun of your uff da and hotdish. You betcha.

Dwayne
Good luck in the quest. I have hunted and taken wolves in the lower 48. The good trappers are the ones who need to be enlisted for control. Snares are a great option. Those guys will get it done.
For hunting methods the best I’ve seen by far are the guys who can “talk” wolf. I certainly am not one of them but those talented few can bring them in. Done by mouth and horn no machine. There is a guy here I know who uses many different horns to not be too repetitive of any one sound. We can’t shoot but he is hired quite often by different photographers.
Second to that is over bait but that takes a lot of time and does not usually give the opportunity of multiples good howlers can produce.
No science in the above just my personal thoughts and experience. If you look at the record when Minnesota attempted a very limited draw only season on wolves for a couple years back around 2012-13 the hunters were allowed first out of the gate, trappers would follow if the quota was unmet if I recall. Either way the vast majority were taken and the quotas quickly filled by trapping.
160user here has posted his wolf pics from that period, he was one of the lucky to draw a tag.

However it can be managed you will see the results in short order.

Osky

I won't say they cannot make a case, but it is highly unlikely if you can just keep your trap shut. Good luck on finding a bullet when you don't know exactly where the animal or the shooter were standing. I did pin a shooting on a man one time when he shot a fellow hunter and denied it, but that shooter was in a tree stand and the exact shootee location was known. We got the matching empty case from under the tree and I put up a flag exactly where the bullet entered the victim. We mowed the area behind the victim location. I got into the stand with a scoped rifle and put the crosshairs on the flag. With a metal detector the matching bullet was located exactly where my crosshairs met the soft dirt.

Out in the wilds of Montana or Minnesota finding a bullet would be terribly unlikely.

Once again, do NOT make a statement.

Interesting how global warming is a major problem; until they need severe winters to help explain away a different problem.

No way that the wolf numbers are remaining the same.

Also interesting that Minnesota had quite a few severe winters before the reintroduction of wolves and the deer populations didn't nosedive and stay there.

Anyone who thinks university wolf study programs aren't wolf advocacy groups is fooling themselves.

I have never believed the state numbers. Have you noticed we do not hear of the supposedly very rare wandering wolves anymore? Leaving the northern Zone? It’s become all too common they are moving into Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and beyond. I do not believe a stable population would be expanding like that.

I have family up in Princeton among other places in the state that have had wolves on cameras continuously now for years. For all that have moved or expanded there are still far too many in the far north. It just does not add up.

I did not take any offense to anything you said? I don’t get that way over words in forums, contexts often not truly understood. I do not mean to offend, not my way. I just relate experiences and thoughts as I see them. I keep a sense of humor.
The only time I judge is a handshake and the glint in that man’s eye in front of me.

Osky

Edited, I apologize Nol… I mistook your first word for Osky. Sorry.

Osky;
Good morning sir, I hope you're getting seasonally tolerable weather and all who matter to you are well.

Thanks for the reply and info sir, I definitely need all the help I can get - and then some!

Regarding trappers, I saw a photo that was sent to a young friend by one of the chaps trapping just northeast of us. He had 3 or maybe it was 4 wolves and 5 coyotes on his first trip to check the sets. If I ever run into him, coffee is on me for sure.

On the calling question, in the past I've corresponded with T Inman who was most helpful and generous with his time and info regarding howling wolves.

We've been doing our level best to put holes in at least one since they showed up, but so far with no results.

The other week was the first time one actually answered back, much less came in, so I was pumped to say the least. The young fellow I was with was showing around the top of the canyon for whitetails was very generous when I threw his whitetail buck hunt into the rhubarb by calling.

Strangely enough and I honestly didn't expect that to happen, but we had what we figured was 4 different coyotes start howling and yipping too. I'd thought/read/figured that the wolves eat the coyotes so they'd just shut up when wolves howled, but not that morning.

Another buddy I talked to yesterday was moose hunting a couple dozen miles north of us and had wolves howling for a couple hours he said, which was a first for him.

Way back in the '90's we started experimenting calling coyotes with a distress call, then started barking and howling to get the "hanger uppers" to come in sometimes. I love calling anything so it doesn't take much prompting to get me out trying some new methods.

We've got a 3 wolf per year limit down here by the way and up in the Cariboo Chillcotin there's no limit and open season and it still hasn't put much of a dent in them. As 673 says, I don't believe we can shoot our way out of this, but hey, every wolf gone is a few deer, moose, elk or sheep that might make the winter I figure.

All the best and thanks again.

Dwayne

We had some terrible winters in the 70’s in particular. There were a lot of guys helping in feeding programs across the north. Season was closed here and there at times. The deer always bounce back from the winters, they aren’t bouncing back from the wolves.

Osky

Just a guess, the political up here differs slightly than the political to the south of us. Not sure what the legal solution is, but I was in attendance, and addressed the "crowd" for the local "wolf information seminar" and literally thought I was going to have to fight my way out of there, and was quite willing and prepared to do so, maybe next time.

Some people are on the right track, others are not, I believe it is an attack on the hunting community and that is all.

Dwayne
Again good luck.
I’ve been with a few of those terrific wolf howlers between Minnesota and Idaho. The subtleties in what they do is really something. The coyotes around my camp in northern MN gradually got quieter as the years of the wolf increase came on. Now it’s very rare to hear them or even see a track.

Short of poison I feel only good trappers stringing cable are the only hope for knocking wolf numbers back. Some of the Alaskan/Yukon trappers would have a hay day down here if turned loose. A whole lot more candidates in a lot less territory.

Osky

673;
Thanks for the reply and additional info.

Well thanks for the morning chuckle my friend, I got a mental picture of you chucking some of the "greener" section of the crowd around and it did my heart good...

Oh and I do know that's likely extremely un-Christian of me to laugh about that too 673, but again you know I'm fairly distant from perfect anything.

For sure and certain there's a concerted effort to end all hunting for anyone who isn't FN, that's been clear for awhile.

We've hashed that out too and I believe the FN communities are being used as pawns in the process, but hopefully enough of them will see the truth.

Again this fall we're seeing some "Active Trapline" signs up where we hunt, so I hope there's enough money in wolf fur for whomever it is to take a few out.

All the best.

Dwayne

Osky;
Thanks again for the reply, it's always good to learn stuff.

Up here one of the little political footballs being chucked with fair velocity is that the wolves are the main cause for killing off most of a rare mountain Caribou herd.

There's lots of angles to this one, for instance the feds are building a very expensive Caribou breeding center now just out of Jasper National Park or maybe within the park - not sure - to try to bring them back from the brink. The figures we've been given is perhaps as few as a dozen of them left.

Now one of the little wrinkles seems to be that there is First Nations support for taking out a bunch of the wolves, so of course the provinces and to some degree the feds too are torn between trying to virtue signal to the greenies who are at odds with the FN folks this time.

Through contacts in various parts of BC, I know some of the info on the breeding center being built and by extension some of the remedies being used to lessen the wolf numbers.

We'll see how it'll all shake out, but as mentioned it's interesting to watch.

For sure though as you and 673 have said, I don't believe we can put a meaningful hurt on even coyotes by shooting them alone. That said, I'll relate a quick one from 30 years back, again that I've got some first hand knowledge of.

There was a California Bighorn herd a few hours north of us that was being absolutely hammered by coyote predation on lambs. Something in the order of less than 12% survival sort of thing.

The bio involved was a no-nonsense old school fellow and brought in a couple trappers who had the green light to rid the area of coyotes, which they pretty much did.

Of course other coyotes from surrounding areas came in to fill the vacancy left, but what the bio found was that the new coyotes weren't specialists in eating lamb. By the time the new coyotes figured out successful sheep hunting, the herd had bounced back.

We're currently going through that to some degree here in spring with our mule deer fawns in that it appears there's some black bears who specialize in eating them. The prevailing theory is that if a few of these bears were removed, it'd help a fair bit.

We're trying to do just that Osky, but life and almost $2 / liter diesel fuel make chasing spring bears a costly activity.

Thanks again.

Dwayne

No. You're not. Wolves can and should be legally hunted in MN. States can set laws to override the Feds, even in MN. Look at the weed laws.

The problem is in MN, the state doesn't want them hunted. I'm truly starting to believe they don't want anything hunted. This is the first year in my life that I've not hunted in MN. I'm not giving them my money anymore unless something changes. And I don't think it will. I will be first in line for a wolf tag though if it ever goes back to that.

For now, there are plenty of other states worthy of my time and moeny.

^--This

People in MN love to claim its the TC that control MN. However, Duluth and the iron range also do. The Iron Range is coming around now that all the old DFL kooks are dying off. But it seems the Arrowhead region is taking their place. But Duluth is a liberal shi't hole and doubt it will be changed, like the metro area.

Dwayne......so the Caribou recovery program along the Rocky Mtns from the North to South was a complete sham.
When they began in the North the problem with the Caribou was......the hunting, logging, mining, snowmobiling, and basically any human activity, except the Native hunting, that was not an issue.

Then someone at the first meeting got up and said........the Caribou pops in the National parks are dwindling, but there isn't any logging, hunting, mining etc as per Federal regulation, explain that?

Of course they knew the jig was up at that point. Then as they proceeded down the Rocky Mtn trench with their meetings and "info sessions" they were met with opposition, by the time they reached my area it was already a disaster. So they cancelled the entire plan as far as I know.

The Wolves are a major issue with the Caribou, but there are other issue's, but the best lies have some truth, and that is all they have, abit of truth with a massive lie attached.

JoeBob gets it. It’s a religion !