according to the news late last night 29 have met their end on the 1st day

That's a good start... Hopefully many more will soon meet their demise.

Woke up to a text from a buddy in MN with a picture of his wolf from this morning! I think they have 3 or 4 more tags left between his boys and his dad. .

6 days in to the season the count is up to 69 now.

This photo was in the Minneapolis paper this week. Now that's a deer camp!

Audio isn't working on the pic, but it's still worth a thousand words!

Hope I have as much luck!

friar

We didn't see any wolves up near International Falls last weekend... had a giant black one on a game cam but none in sight.

Any idea where they are shooting most of them?

Were over 100 now!

http://www.startribune.com/local/178862801.html

quote:

Originally posted by Evan K.:
We didn't see any wolves up near International Falls last weekend... had a giant black one on a game cam but none in sight.

Any idea where they are shooting most of them?

Evan:

I hunted near Birchdale for four days starting the second Saturday. No wolves, and not many deer. My pals around I Falls said the deer hunting was really slow. I know it was for me.

I drew a tag,and scored on one last weekend.

Nice work.

Do you care to share any details? Part of the state, size, number seen etc?

I was near the tiny town of whipholt,mn,in the chippewa natl forest,deer permit area 172.
The female weighed in at 65 lbs.No others were seen by me,however,there were six sighted nearby the same day.
I was using a 30-30 marlin ,with handloaded consisting of a 160 hornady ftx bullet and hornady leverevolution powder.

Good job nice dark wolf. I didnot draw a wis tag. I have one on the game cam every couple of days.

If I drew a tag I have several traps that would have worked well.

Nice shooting jb!

quote:

Originally posted by AnotherAZWriter:
Evan:

I hunted near Birchdale for four days starting the second Saturday. No wolves, and not many deer. My pals around I Falls said the deer hunting was really slow. I know it was for me.

Yes I was on a buddy's land south of Littlefork and saw only four does opening weekend. Too bad they issued only 100 doe tags for zone 108- I didn't get one. Saw wolf droppings on the property the past two years.

We hunted his plot near Palisade last year and there were as many wolf tracks as deer in some parts- he had a big wolf come down a deer trail 20 yards in front of his stand in broad daylight.

Good luck hunting fellas!

quote:

Originally posted by jb:
I was near the tiny town of whipholt,mn,in the chippewa natl forest,deer permit area 172.
The female weighed in at 65 lbs.No others were seen by me,however,there were six sighted nearby the same day.
I was using a 30-30 marlin ,with handloaded consisting of a 160 hornady ftx bullet and hornady leverevolution powder.

jb-I want to thank you for taking this one out of the woods. I hunt just down the road south of Remer. We decided not to put in for a tag this year because for the last 5 years whenever we start seeing lots of wolf sign we just move to a new hunting area. Lots of great deer areas in 172 have been decimated by wolves including the place where I grew up hunting with my Dad. Maybe if I draw a tag I will be able to go back there again. Keep up the good work.

BTW the filled tag count is 129 as of this morning. http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/hunting/wolf/index.html

quote:

Originally posted by Evan K.:
Nice shooting jb!

quote:

Originally posted by AnotherAZWriter:
Evan:

I hunted near Birchdale for four days starting the second Saturday. No wolves, and not many deer. My pals around I Falls said the deer hunting was really slow. I know it was for me.

Yes I was on a buddy's land south of Littlefork and saw only four does opening weekend. Too bad they issued only 100 doe tags for zone 108- I didn't get one. Saw wolf droppings on the property the past two years.

We hunted his plot near Palisade last year and there were as many wolf tracks as deer in some parts- he had a big wolf come down a deer trail 20 yards in front of his stand in broad daylight.

Good luck hunting fellas!

i am headed out to the shack in a little bit; tying up some loose ends biz wise.

MN deer hunting isn't close to western hunting in terms of seeing game, but man, I can't get it out of my blood. The experience is so totally cool.

Best of luck to everyone on this last deer hunting weekend. Back on hunting quail in AZ next week...

The opposition to this hunt still continues to be at a ridiculous level. Finally someone who is a wolf scientist has come out in the Minneapolis paper and said that there is no scientific reason to stop the wolf hunt.

Minneapolis Star Tribune - Opposition to wolf hunt seems purely emotional Article by: PEGGY CALLAHAN Updated: November 16, 2012 - 6:06 PM The science suggests no worries about pack disruption or even cruelty.





I passed another wolf billboard today on the freeway. Its message clearly opposed the wolf season in Minnesota. As executive director of the Wildlife Science Center, a wolf center near Forest Lake, I am well-versed in the emotional extremes that accompany any conversation about wolves.

I served as an adviser to the wolf roundtable in the late 1990s, watching as a roomful of people with disparate values worked together to develop a management plan. The people on the roundtable had access to a panel of researchers, managers and educators who answered questions and brought science into the conversation.

From what I gather, the current argument against the hunt has three concerns: 1) disruption of wolf-pack society through the death of pack members; 2) dangerous population reduction, and 3) fears of cruelty at the hands of trappers in particular.

Science appears to have left the room. Perhaps I can bring it back to the table briefly.

Wolves in Minnesota have been extensively studied, both in captivity and in the wild. Topics from social ecology and behavior to physiology and pharmacology have been examined by scientists such as Todd Fuller, Dave Mech, Ralph Bailey and Rolf Peterson, to name a few.

One of the many aspects of wolf ecology that has been examined is the effect of fracturing on packs. Mech describes "fractured" packs as wolf packs that have lost key members to varying sources of mortality. There are many things in the woods that kill wolves besides humans -- black bears, deer, moose, other wolves, diseases and starvation. Mech analyzed the deaths of wolves due to other wolves over a 22-year period in northern Minnesota's Superior National Forest. He found that these conflicts result in reduced breeding and territorial competition by killing neighboring breeders, referred to by some as the "alpha" wolves.

Since it is the adult or breeding wolves that are the territory holders, they are the ones primarily killed by other wolves. The impact on the remaining pack members has varied, from dispersal to maintaining territory and recruiting replacement wolves. The contention that killing breeders always results in dissolution of the pack is not supported by multiple studies. Wolf pups are of adult size by winter, and have all of their adult teeth by six to seven months. Wolves as young as five months have dispersed successfully from packs and survived. There is reason to believe that should both breeders be taken during Minnesota's wolf hunt, the young of the year can survive.

I have heard from several people that we all worked so hard to recover wolves, and now we're just going to kill them all off. I cannot comment on the plans of other states, but that is clearly not the intent of Minnesota's plan.

The cap of 400 wolves to be taken is conservative by any measure. It is roughly 13 percent of the state's wolf population. Todd Fuller looked at wolf mortality in north-central Minnesota. He found that with a human-caused annual mortality rate of 29 percent, the wolf population nonetheless increased slightly. On Isle Royale, where no human-caused mortality occurs, Rolf Peterson reports that annual wolf mortality from 1971 to 1995 averaged 23.5 percent.

According to John Hart, district supervisor for U.S. Department of Agriculture-Wildlife Services, the agency removes an average of 200 wolves annually in response to livestock loss, or roughly 6 percent of the population. Illegal killing of wolves has gone on throughout wolf recovery. And still the Minnesota wolf population has grown.

Many of us hope to and expect to see a decline in the illegal take of wolves, in response to its elevation to a game animal, to peer pressure and to hunting opportunities. The black bear followed the same path from disdain to reverence.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of this take among its opponents is the use of traps to capture wolves. This I find easy to defend. Unbeknownst to many wolf admirers, the vast majority of wolves that are caught for radio-collaring purposes are caught by a foothold trap. When I assisted Rolf Peterson with wolf capture, the trap we used on Isle Royale to catch and radio-collar wolves looked like the one my trapper friends will be using on wolves this fall.

Traps are restraint tools, absolutely essential to researchers and managers in the wildlife field. Wolves will be caught and restrained by trappers, just as they are by researchers. Five new wolves are wearing radio collars in Voyageurs National Park this month, all caught by foothold traps and handled by professional biologists.

I suspect, however, that the real reason behind the opposition to the hunt has nothing to do with science, and is the motivation behind the string of lawsuits to stop the delisting of the wolf over the past decade-plus. Some people love wolves so much that the thought of one dying is not simply distasteful, it is abhorrent, unbearable. The wolf is no longer a predator that has recovered its population -- the wolf represents something beyond an animal to many. This adoration of the wolf as an icon has fascinated me for my whole career.

The courts say Minnesota can have its wolf season. I believe that legitimate concerns about negative impacts will be laid to rest after the analysis is done. For some, however, there can be no relief as long as wolves die by human hands. For those people, I have nothing comforting to say.

By the way, the billboard I passed has a photo of a red wolf in a research trap.

Peggy Callahan is executive director of the Wildlife Science Center in Columbus, Minn.

I had the opportunity to meet this woman about 20 years ago and she is as credible an expert on wolves as anyone on this planet. At the time she had already been doing research on wolves for many years. I doubt this will stop the outcry, but people should listen to her. She not only does research on wolves on a daily basis, she lives with them! In fact I might call the research center she runs and thank her for writing this article. Finally a reasonable voice from someone who really knows what she is talking about!!!!!

Early season closed last night with a total take of 147 wolves. It was 53 below the 200 quota but the DNR will add 53 to the late season quota. Good luck trappers and snow hunters.

Ask the folks opposed to trapping just "WHY" and get ready for the stuttering. Too many people now base their judgement off those stupid billboards without thinking themselves.

Best of luck to the hunters...

I am back in AZ tonight; even had enough time after my flight today to go out in the desert for some long range shooting practice and quail hunting.

I saw a huge 10 pt on sat but he was running so fast behind a doe running at warp speed I had no shot. A six pt was running after the two of them.

But it was a great time. Love the northwoods of MN.

Leftover wolf licenses sell out in less than a minute

More than 300 leftover hunting and trapping licenses for Minnesota’s late wolf season, which begins Saturday, were sold out in less than a minute Monday.
“They went really quickly,’’ said Rick Nordby of the Department of Natural Resources. He said five people were in line at the DNR’s St. Paul office when the surplus licenses went on sale at noon.
“We got one person through,’’ he said, before the licenses were gone. The licenses were available at the 1,500 electronic license vendors around the state.
The DNR offered 187 surplus hunting licenses and 130 surplus trapping licenses — leftovers that weren’t bought by people who had won the right to buy them in a lottery. Applicants not selected in this year’s early or late season wolf license lottery could buy the licenses on a first-come, first-served basis.
The DNR allocated 2,400 wolf licenses for the late hunting and trapping season.