Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada Huge Wolf Shot

I see where a 195 pound wolf has been killed at a bear bait in Alberta and have read that a 175 pound wolf was killed in Alaska.

But I once read many years ago that a 200 pound wolf was shot in the Yukon but have lost the refrence.

Does anyone know about the Yukon wolf?

There are three photos of the big Alberta wolf at www.huntandtell.com slugged Huge wolf.

Its a real monster and apparently the story has already been written up in one outdoor magazine. Most blogs say it weigh 195 pounds.

We need to have wolves included in all trophy record books to find out where the largest ones come from.

I suspect they live in northern Alberta, Saskatchewn and the southern North West Territories - specifically within the range of the wood buffalo.

They kill adult wood buffalo which are much larger than cape buffalo.

These wolves have always had a reputation for great size and in olden days Canadian publications like "Rod and Gun in Canada" their huge size was noted and they were sometimes called "Siberian wolves" to try to explain their exotic nature and huge size.

The wolves that used to live on the western plains were much smaller and early accounts pretty well all say they only hunted buffalo calves.

The wolves in Alaska have either not yet learned how to kill adult wood bison or else they are too small.

Using skull measurements, I believe many of the largest run the McKenzie River. Within the wood bison range.

I think the exaggerated size of this wolf is due to camera angle.
Obviously taken from ground looking up.


A friend of mine has trapped hundreds of Alaskan wolves.
He also communicates with several Canadian fur trappers.
He swears that his wolves are bigger as per Bergman's law that states that the further north you go, the larger the body size.



I think they about top out at 150lbs.
A wolf can reportedly hold 40 lbs of meat in it's stomach.
Maybe closer to 20 IMHO.
But anyhow I do know that if you shoot one with a full belly you will be much closer to those weights mentioned above.

The further north you go the smaller the prey. White arctic wolves are much smaller than timber wolves. Skull size would be the most legitimate way of comparing. Weight is silly when you watch a bunch clean up a moose over night.
BTW
You can go further north in Canada than Alaska.

Bergman's law does not always apply. For example it is true with that whitetailed deer get larger as you go north. Tropical whitetails in Guatemala are very small and Saskatchewan whitetails are very large.

But with other species it does not work. For example, jaguars from southern Brazil and the Apure Illanos savannahs in Venezuela are twice as large as jaguars from northern Mexico.

A few years ago, in March, I was tracking a very large wolf on snowshoes. He kept out of sight, but his tracks indicated I stopped him at one point with a call. I finally had to quit tracking as he went into a very thick tangle that didn't permit me to go there on snowshoes.

There was a fresh fall of snow about 2-3" deep over a hard crust. Under the crust was another 2 to 3 ft of snow. Mostly he walked on top of the crust, but would break through occasionally. I took off my snowshoes and found I too could walk on the crust, and break through once in a while.

I measured his walking stride from right front to left rear, and it was well over six feet! He was a lone wolf, that I never caught up with. But I estimated his weight at 150 lbs.

Last March I came across two wolves, a large one and a smaller, darker one, in that same general area, but they were just a bit TOO friendly. Both were collared and wearing transmitters. They had been penned and released. I tracked them for a bit but decided to leave them alone. I had a license and a rifle with me. I enjoy wolf hunting in the Haliburton Highlands during the winter months. In that area, however, you must have a license. Otherwise, I could hunt them year round on a small game ticket.

Bob

www.bigbores.ca

I've tracked some "whitetail" that was wearing high heels, but wolves in snowshoes is new to me.....

For YOUR reading comprehension, I'll rearrange the wording: ON SNOWSHOES, a few years ago, in March I was tracking a VERY large WOLF that was pulling a toboggan with a big buck white-tail in it!

Bob

www.bigbores.ca

You cant imagine JPro how the thing are wrong up in the north since the global warming occurs or not lol ...!!!

TFF

Dear CZ 550,

Isn't the area you hunt the place where those so called "red wolf" (feral dogs) hybrids live?

I thought the weighed about 70 pounds tops?

Alaska wolves will never learn to kill Woods Bison unless they get introduced... we do not have them here...

Actually, we have three species: 1)Timber wolf (to which I was referring); 2)Coyote and 3)"Coy dog", "brush wolf" (so-called down east)or whatever. Some biologists insist they are just overgrown coyote, others say they are the result of coyote breeding with dogs, and still others are confused like the rest of us. But, one thing's for sure: wolf, coyote and "brush wolf" are all found in the same ecological system. In other words, they compete, but both coyote and brush wolf (60 to 80 lbs) will vacate the immediate area when a (real) timber wolf moves in! Timber wolves have been sighted south of where I live. I've seen two, one in mid-afternoon crossing a major highway, a few yards directly in front of me, and another crossing a major highway, that I almost nailed, at 2:30 am. I wasn't dreaming, as that same wolf (or it's sibling)was sighted by a friend in the same location going to work at GM in Oshawa. He said "It was as tall as the hood on my truck!". Well, maybe not THAT tall, but it was very impressive! The other I saw was in travelling to Peterborough in mid afternoon, and it was one of the most beautiful animals I have EVER seen, bar none! I don't get the U.S. point of view, frankly. But then I haven't lived in the west, or owned a cattle ranch!

I've hunted bear in the spring (before spring hunting of bear was shut down)on the border of Algonquin Park, and always just after it got dark, as we were waiting to be picked up, the wolves in the Park would start howling... The only other sound in the wild that sends such a thrill up my spine, is the loon, I kid you not.

The wolves, in the area where I hunt them, are big and beautiful and I would not like to see them exterminated. To me, in this area, they provide one of the greatest hunting challenges because you rarely see them.

Yes, they kill some game animals, but NOT anything like bears, which are proliferating. And in some areas they (bears)are destroying moose populations because they kill the calves in spring and summer. I'm a dedicated bear hunter because we have too many, but, frankly, the wolf is much more of a challenge because we don't have the wide open areas of the west. We have to deal with a lot of forest and underbrush! YMMV.

Bob

www.bigbores.ca

Big rugs regardless of camera angle

I need to qualify a couple of things:

The coyote I'm referring to are the eastern coyote, which is quite large compared to the western variety...

And, the so-called "brush wolf" has great variance in color: usually, the coloration is mottled, but there are "red", brown, grey, black, tan, pink and blue... Well, no pink and blue ones yet... but usually they are greatly varied in coloration and mostly mottled. You know them when you see them. It's fairly obvious they're neither Timber wolf nor coyote. Also, they are much more aggressive and tend to run in packs. The Timber wolf is much more shy and reclusive.

Bob

www.bigbores.ca

Dear Sitka deer,

You are correct. You actually have had some of the very large Canadian wood bison in Alaska ever since November of 2003, and some have been born in the state, but they are held where wolves likely cannot get at them even if they wanted to.

But you do have the smaller plains buffalo living in places where wolves can kill them.

I have read that Alaskan wolves do not tackle the adult plains buffalo so it only stands to reason they would avoid wood buffalo which are on average 200 pounds heavier as well as being much taller than a plains buffalo.

Size matters to predators.

Wolves in the high arctic are smaller than their moose-eating woodland counterparts just as high arctic grizzlies are smaller than their salmon eating Kodiak Island counterparts.

So Bergman's law isn't really a law as it does not mork in many cases. Its important not to take people with PHds, like Bergman, too seriously. They tend to be bureaucrats with stolid minds rather than intellectuals.

They gave us global warming which is an interglacial, they gave us the Canadian red wolf which is a feral dog, and they gave us the eastern panther which has never even existed.

There are only two kinds of cougars and the Darien Gap in Panama seems to be the dividing line between the two species.

A bit of skepticism is always a good idea because nowadays junk science is more common than real science. Charles Darwin didn't have a PHd.

I don't know anything about the "eastern panther", but we have cougar here in Ontario, and have probably have had them "forever". But the MNR biologists denied having them until recently. I've not come across one here in Ont. but have seen their tracks. Several years ago, I told my CO friend about this and he laughed, thinking it was a joke. I have friends who live in my prime hunting area, and they have seen a pair in winter near their house.

ALSO, back in the '70's, when I was travelling through a part of New Brunswick late at night, where I at one time lived, I nearly ran into a black cougar. I stopped and looked carefully at it, using the headlights of my car. My oldest son, who married a lady from that same area, saw one in plain daylight. He thought it was a bear when he first saw it. As he approached rather close (travelling down a 3km hill)he realized it was a "panther" or cougar. I did some research, after my sighting, and discovered there was a "black phase" cougar that had moved from Florida into NY State, in the Appalachians. The article was quite old, but it's a mere step from there into Quebec and the Eastern Seaboard provinces. New Brunswick didn't acknowledge the presence of cougar either, at the time, but they do now.

I won't go there, but Darwinian "science" is some of the "junk science" mentioned, albeit unwittingly.

Bob

www.bigbores.ca

There were native cougars in southern Ontario a century ago. The name "Erie", for Lake Erie means panther in an Indian language. I think the last one in southern Ontario was shot near Orillia and like the wolf they were completely annihilated in SW Ontzario when farms replaced the hardwood forest.

The ones in NW Ontario are probably wild and from the Alberta or the Black Hills.

The ones in SW Ontario now are likely captive cats released from roadside zoos. One caught in Quebec had South American cougar DNA. A cougar bit a farmer in eastern Ontario a few years ago. It was in the Globe and Mail. I don't think cougars in SW Ontario come from the west because there are no deer for them to eat for miles along the north shore of Lake Superior. One might make it across in a year when showshoe hares are at the peak of their cycle but I doubt it because the snow from Saulte Ste Marie to Wawa and west is very very deep in the winter. I once cross country skied about 20 miles from the ACR railway to Lake Superior in mid winter and the forest was lifeless. Too much snow. Everybody ses black cougars but thzere has never been one. Its caused by a low sun and backlighting and by mistaking house cats for cougars which is more common than you think. i was shown some ontario cougar photos and they were house cats for sure. I have caught wild cougars and raised quite a few in captivity.