Thread: wolves
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Old January 3, 2014, 09:26 PM   #10
buck460XVR
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Join Date: December 28, 2006
Posts: 4,341
Quote:
Originally posted by bcarver:

hey buck460 what you say is almost exactly what I read on the internet.
What I want to know is where you hunt have you noticed a change now that it has wolves. It would help to know where you hunt too

I hunt West Central Wisconsin. There are 4 large packs known to inhabit this and the surrounding area. Two of the packs are known as the Wildcat Pack and the Bear Bluff Pack. The Bear Bluff pack may sound familiar to some and was virtually eliminated a year or so ago because they were becoming to bold and attacking dogs allowed to run loose. There has also been nuisance animals eliminated from packs located in Fort McCoy on farms that are within fractions of a mile from me. I have noticed no change in overall deer populations since the wolves have become noticeably present, but also know that there were wolves in the area a decade or so before most folks realized it and started to whine. While the gun deer harvest this year was down from last year, bad weather for opening weekend and the season starting after the rut had ended were the main reasons. Bow hunters did about the same as last year and I believe the late muzzle-loader season had a higher success rate. Nasty weather for the late antlerless and the holiday hunt also meant low hunter numbers and lower success. With the success of the last two wolf seasons here in Wisconsin(100% or more of quota) wolf numbers will now be stable at a lower number than in the past. This means less deer taken by them.

Quote:
Originally posted by bcarver:

I am neither pro or con. But 32000 deer sound like a lot of extra deer.
That number was a high estimate using a 40 deer per animal per year figure. This means one wolf would eat one deer every nine days. Even if they ate nothing else, this is still a high estimate. In Spring and Fall where they are present, Beaver make up the majority of the wolf's diet, with small game and other rodents being eaten at all times of the year. With an estimated population of 1,600,000 deer in the state, 32,000 is only about 2% of the population. Like I said, a drop in the bucket and not a really a factor in hunter success overall. In northern counties and areas of high wolf densities, this percentage may be even higher, maybe 5%. This still will not make a drastic decline in deer numbers compared to over hunting and hard winters.
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