wolves-in-minnesota-live-very-different-lives-compared-to-wolves-in-wyoming/

[cheeser]

Wolves In Minnesota Live Very Different Lives Compared To Wolves in Wyoming - Cowboy State Daily

A wolf seeking a fresh meal in the humid Minnesota darkness needs sharp ears and patience. Lots of patience. While wolf packs in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho are going after elk and other big game, their cousins in Minnesota, at least during warmer months, frequently hunt or fish solo, grabbing...

cowboystatedaily.com

 

[NECALI]

To bad they didn’t reintroduce these wolves in Yellowstone instead of their monster Canadian cousins. Things would probably be a whole lot better.

 

[mtmiller]

To bad they didn’t reintroduce these wolves in Yellowstone instead of their monster Canadian cousins. Things would probably be a whole lot better.

Have some facts to back that up?

 

[bwanakubwa]

That article is such a crock of bs

 

[BrentD]

That article is such a crock of bs

Why? What have you got that's better?

 

[rjthehunter]

Being from MN, and having plenty of first hand experiences, I can guarantee they're not surviving by grabbing what they can get. They're surviving off of deer. Plenty of evidence laying around the woods.

 

[SAJ-99]

Colorado is looking for wolves. This would be a good experiment. Not that facts matter.

 

[BrentD]

Being from MN, and having plenty of first hand experiences, I can guarantee they're not surviving by grabbing what they can get. They're surviving off of deer. Plenty of evidence laying around the woods.

Being from Minnesota and also having plenty of experience, I'd say they eat a whole lot more than deer (and that has been well documented by others many times).

 

[bwanakubwa]

Why? What have you got that's better?

I've handled both populations. No significant size difference, obviously there would be a diet change, pack size outside of yellowstone isn't different from mn wolves, MN wolves do kill moose regularly, that's what stands out to me

 

[bwanakubwa]

Colorado is looking for wolves. This would be a good experiment. Not that facts matter.

Maybe Colorado should transplant some suckers and blueberries too!

 

[SAJ-99]

Maybe Colorado should transplant some suckers and blueberries too!

Maybe just slow-moving midwesterns will do?

 

[Northwoods]

I’m sure some wolves do eat spawning suckers, it’s an easy meal when they are in small streams but the sucker spawn is a 1-2 week event. I’ve seen plenty of bear poop around spawning suckers but never wolf poop. Of course bears love to crap right on the trail. I have never seen wolf poop full of berry seeds like bear poop. I’m sure wolves eat some berries, my dog does. And again, bears seem to take a deuce where everyone can see it. His population estimates are very conservative and why not also mention the high end of population estimates as well? There’s definitely lots of moose and deer predation going on in Minnesota, expensive studies have reinforced elementary biology, and we now know that wolves eat moose. I’m not saying wolf predation is bad, our forests in northern Minnesota can only support so many deer and moose, but why sidestep the facts. I wish wolves ate more beavers. Not many trappers any more and the dang things are everywhere.

 

[BrentD]

I’m sure some wolves do eat spawning suckers, it’s an easy meal when they are in small streams but the sucker spawn is a 1-2 week event. I’ve seen plenty of bear poop around spawning suckers but never wolf poop. Of course bears love to crap right on the trail. I have never seen wolf poop full of berry seeds like bear poop. I’m sure wolves eat some berries, my dog does. And again, bears seem to take a deuce where everyone can see it. His population estimates are very conservative and why not also mention the high end of population estimates as well? There’s definitely lots of moose and deer predation going on in Minnesota, expensive studies have reinforced elementary biology, and we now know that wolves eat moose. I’m not saying wolf predation is bad, our forests in northern Minnesota can only support so many deer and moose, but why sidestep the facts. I wish wolves ate more beavers. Not many trappers any more and the dang things are everywhere.

No doubt they eat deer and moose. Who said otherwise?
But the most common fur I see in wolf poop in Minnesota while grouse hunting is beaver. By far. And that has been well documented by people that actually study wolf ecology.

They eat deer. They eat a lot of other stuff as well. If you ask hunters they will tell you that bird dogs are a major part of their diet.

 

[Gellar]

I’ve heard Thomas speak. The Minnesota wolves also eat a lot of beavers this time of year. The researchers can follow them from lodge to lodge. Beaver have a very high fat content and it gives the wolves extra calories at a time when other critters are at their lowest populations of the year.

Sorry Brent, didn’t see your post until I posted about beavers.

 

[BrentD]

I’ve heard Thomas speak. The Minnesota wolves also eat a lot of beavers this time of year. The researchers can follow them from lodge to lodge. Beaver have a very high fat content and it gives the wolves extra calories at a time when other critters are at their lowest populations of the year.

They are eating a lot of them in August/September/October for sure, because Sept/October is when I'm seeing the poop. I would think that this time of year, beaver are well protected by ice and deer/moose are quite a bit more vulnerable.

 

[Gellar]

Where the Voyageur wolf project does its study, Voyageurs National park, is inside a heavily wooded area. Deer densities are not that great as they move to areas of regrowth from the forest industry and to areas along the roads where there is grass growing. So wolves in the study not eating deer in their study is very predictable. Outside of that area in areas with more logging and more deer it is likely the wolves eat more deer.

 

[sapperJ24]

I have never seen wolf poop full of berry seeds like bear poop. I’m sure wolves eat some berries, my dog does.

One of my dogs loves eating berries off the bush as well.

I first became aware of a nearby wolfpack due to the high volume of small, berry-filled turds on the road. My initial thought was bear cub due to the purple/blue color and volume of berry remnants, but then I started seeing almost continuous little turds down the road. A little bit later I flushed a couple pups out of the high grass, and again, thought the little black pups were bear cubs at first, but the grey one gave it away. Anyways, I found it quite interesting and unexpected.

Do I think this is typical, probably not. Much to the deer and elk's disappointment there's not many berries around in the fall and spring.

Around 4:19 in this video the wolves work over some bushes for a bit.

 

[MNElkNut]

I attended the MN DNR roundtable a few years back where they stated that wolves kill over 50% of the moose calves before September. So that is a direct contradiction to the articles statement that wolves in MN don't eat moose. I am not anti-wolf, but I do get tired of contradictory information. As an iconic species in MN, I wish we were doing more to save the moose.

 

[more_cowbell]

Depends on one’s definition of “significant” difference in size (or more accurately, average size).

This article or research paper from 2012 which another member linked to in a different thread, does note differences in sizes of wolves based on region and diet, and noted there was still controversy over this kind of thing.

An Account of the Taxonomy of North American Wolves From Morphological and Genetic Analyses

Abstract. The available scientific literature was reviewed to assess the taxonomic standing of North American wolves, including subspecies of the gray wolf, Canis lupus. The recent scientific proposal that the eastern wolf, C. l. lycaon, is not a subspecies of gray wolf, but a full species...

meridian.allenpress.com

Excerpts:

Development of even more powerful genetic markers has led to new, highly controversial interpretations, * * * * Other controversies include whether the current Great Lakes wolf population is evolutionarily representative of the historical population (Leonard and Wayne 2008) * * * and the taxonomic identity of wolves of Pacific coastal regions (Muñoz-Fuentes et al. 2009). The lack of consensus among researchers on so many important issues related to the taxonomy of North American wolves prompted the present review.

Differences in habitat have been correlated with variations in behavior, including migration and prey selection. For example, Kolenosky and Stanfield (1975) have described variation in Ontario wolves, where larger wolves of boreal forests specialize on moose Alces americanus and caribou Rangifer tarandus as prey, while smaller wolves in deciduous forest habitats specialize on white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus.

Trends of increasing size among wolves to the north and west of southern Ontario and Quebec have been noted in morphometric studies covering the Great Lakes region. The association of smaller wolves with white-tailed deer in deciduous forests and larger wolves with larger prey, such as moose and caribou, in boreal forests has been frequently cited (Kolenosky and Standfield 1975; Skeel and Carbyn 1977; Schmitz and Kolenosky 1985). When wolf skulls were divided by source habitat into deciduous forest (eastern wolf) and boreal forest (C. lupus), discriminant function analysis distinguished 75% of boreal wolves from eastern wolves, and boreal wolves were >25% larger in body mass (Kolenosky and Standfield 1975).

….

This review was initiated because of the wide range of views expressed by different researchers and research groups on some major features of relationships and classification of North American wolves.

 

[mtmiller]

Interesting conversation.

Ep. 166: Hunting with Teeth | MeatEater Podcasts

Steven Rinella talks with Diane Boyd and Janis Putelis.Subjects discussed: Cyclone fences; swapping a motorcycle for a first wolf experience; Wolf rendezvous sites and snagging a wolf in a blind set; wolves killing wolves; wolves and border security; the myth of the super-wolf; did the wolf...

www.themeateater.com

EIS might me of interest to some as well.

https://fwp.mt.gov/binaries/content/assets/fwp/conservation/wildlife-reports/wolf/eis_1994.pdf