A wildlife manager's perspective of Minnesota's first gray wolf hunting season
Posted by Tom Rusch on Thursday, December 20, 2012 Under: Gray Wolf
With
the inaugural 2012 Minnesota wolf season now closed in the Northeast, I
thought I would give you my impression of how it went, from the
wildlife manager’s perspective.
Although the season has been surrounded with emotion, controversy and rhetoric on all sides, it has been much more routine in “the trenches.” The Tower Area wildlife staff has registered and done necropsies on about 25 wolves over the past month, pretty much without fanfare.
We have registered thousands of furbearers annually, for years: Fisher, marten, otter and bobcat. With wolves, it’s just a few per week by appointment. Hunters and trappers come in, generally very low key. They are treating the season like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to harvest a unique big game animal. There has been little animosity or disdain that I typically hear during deer seasons.
No back slapping and trash talking, either. Just hunters that are thankful for the opportunity to hunt and trap wolves. They are proud of their accomplishment, but modest, like most successful hunters.
We did not expect the high success rates we are seeing in the northeast. Personally, I thought 50% of the quota would be filled, max. Both early (deer) season and now late season hunters and trappers have harvested the full quota of 59 wolves in the northeast zone.
The “fun” part has been the necropsies. All successful hunters and trappers must bring in the carcass of their wolf. We take “biological” samples including a kidney, liver and muscle sample. In addition, we pull a tooth (to get the age) and the reproductive tract from all females to assess the reproductive history.
Again, this is nothing new. We take biological samples from deer and moose, bobcat, fisher and marten each year. But, none of these have compared to wolves in one aspect--the stench! Wildlife managers develop a pretty strong tolerance for diving elbow deep into dead stuff. Blood and guts and the different smells that go with dead animals are all in a day’s work, until you open up a wolf. Whew! They are the raunchiest smelling critter I’ve worked on, hands down.
Wolf hunters, trappers and taxidermists I’ve talked to all agree, wolves are in a league all their own, stink-wise. They are a challenge to hunt and a challenge to the nostrils.
It was an interesting season we all enjoyed. We found out that wolf hunting has a lot in common with fishing. Dead wolves don’t stop getting bigger! We didn’t weigh the wolves as they came in already skinned out and typically had been dead for several days.
But, most likely weighed 50-90 pounds. That’s quite a bit less than some of the wolves making the rounds on the internet since the season opened in November.
Although the season has been surrounded with emotion, controversy and rhetoric on all sides, it has been much more routine in “the trenches.” The Tower Area wildlife staff has registered and done necropsies on about 25 wolves over the past month, pretty much without fanfare.
We have registered thousands of furbearers annually, for years: Fisher, marten, otter and bobcat. With wolves, it’s just a few per week by appointment. Hunters and trappers come in, generally very low key. They are treating the season like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to harvest a unique big game animal. There has been little animosity or disdain that I typically hear during deer seasons.
No back slapping and trash talking, either. Just hunters that are thankful for the opportunity to hunt and trap wolves. They are proud of their accomplishment, but modest, like most successful hunters.
We did not expect the high success rates we are seeing in the northeast. Personally, I thought 50% of the quota would be filled, max. Both early (deer) season and now late season hunters and trappers have harvested the full quota of 59 wolves in the northeast zone.
The “fun” part has been the necropsies. All successful hunters and trappers must bring in the carcass of their wolf. We take “biological” samples including a kidney, liver and muscle sample. In addition, we pull a tooth (to get the age) and the reproductive tract from all females to assess the reproductive history.
Again, this is nothing new. We take biological samples from deer and moose, bobcat, fisher and marten each year. But, none of these have compared to wolves in one aspect--the stench! Wildlife managers develop a pretty strong tolerance for diving elbow deep into dead stuff. Blood and guts and the different smells that go with dead animals are all in a day’s work, until you open up a wolf. Whew! They are the raunchiest smelling critter I’ve worked on, hands down.
Wolf hunters, trappers and taxidermists I’ve talked to all agree, wolves are in a league all their own, stink-wise. They are a challenge to hunt and a challenge to the nostrils.
It was an interesting season we all enjoyed. We found out that wolf hunting has a lot in common with fishing. Dead wolves don’t stop getting bigger! We didn’t weigh the wolves as they came in already skinned out and typically had been dead for several days.
But, most likely weighed 50-90 pounds. That’s quite a bit less than some of the wolves making the rounds on the internet since the season opened in November.
In : Gray Wolf
Tags: "gray wolf" hunting hunt minnesota endangered species dnr tower wolf timber "great lakes"
Tom Rusch is the Tower Area Wildlife Manager for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources' Division of Fish and Wildlife headquartered at Tower, MN in northern St Louis County. His dedicated 4 person staff covers 3.1 million acres of State, County, National and private forest land in northern St. Louis and northern Lake Counties. He hunts, fishes, camps, traps, bikes, hikes, snowshoes and shed hunts year round in the swamps, forests, wetlands and lakes of the northwoods of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Ontario. He is a 24-year veteran of the Minnesota DNR and has worked in the wildlife management field for 30 years in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Missouri. He has lived on the Iron Range with his wife, Deb, since 1991. Tom can be reached by phone at 218-753-2580 ext. 240 or by email at tom.rusch@state.mn.us.
