Wolf Trail Camera Pics

These were passed on from a friend up in Malmo and were taken not more than a mile from Malmo and only a few hundred yards from Hwy 18, no more than a stone throw from lake cabin central on East shore of Mille Lacs.

We’ve had wolves in our area now for several years, but these are the first good trail pics where it was definintely a wolf and not just a blurry image that could have been a big coyote.

I have a couple observations that I’m curious to hear folks thoughts. First, I’ve always heard that wolves and coyotes don’t mix and once wolves are in town coyotes typically are scarce; however, we’ve got a healthy population of coyotes and many trail cam pics of them as well. Maybe coyotes aren’t as afraid of wolves as you would think. What have others observed with wolf/coyote interactions?

Second, we still are seeing deer but interestingly it seems like more of the mature deer, especially bucks, have left the area. My guess is that the older, wiser deer have left the area while younger deer aren’t smart enough or aren’t able to pack up and move into someone else’s territory when wolves show up. Thoughts?

To your first point, I think being on the “southern” end of wolf territory helps keeps the smaller song dogs around. That is the best guess I have. About your other point, I don’t have enough experience in the Minnesota north woods to have an educated opinion. I’ll be interested to see what others have experienced.

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I have a couple observations that I’m curious to hear folks thoughts. First, I’ve always heard that wolves and coyotes don’t mix and once wolves are in town coyotes typically are scarce; however, we’ve got a healthy population of coyotes and many trail cam pics of them as well.

Second, we still are seeing deer but interestingly it seems like more of the mature deer, especially bucks, have left the area. My guess is that the older, wiser deer have left the area while younger deer aren’t smart enough or aren’t able to pack up and move into someone else’s territory when wolves show up. Thoughts?

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We have hunting rights on a large cattle ranch in Pine County. They have had significant issues with wolves in the last year and have at least 2 calf kills that were confirmed by the DNR as being wolf kills.

The observations of the farm owner and his sons is that deer behavior has changed radically over the last 2 years. Where you used to see the about same deer on each clover field every morning and night, now suddenly there will be no deer at all for extended periods of time. They’ll go from seeing 6-12 deer in a given field for constant week and suddenly there will be no deer on that field at all for 10 days.

Now that’s not evidence, but what they suspect is that wolves are moving in the area and the deer’s defensive approach is to just get the heck out of Dodge for an extended vacation while things settle down. There really isn’t another explanation that I can think of.

Wolf kills of cattle in the area of the ranch were non-existant 10 years ago and even 5 years ago they were so rare that there was almost always some doubt if they happened at all. Now it’s not just calves, but cows that are being taken down while having a calf.

With coyotes, I think you are correct, but as with coyote/fox overlap, I think over time the wolves will reduce the population of coyotes simply because they prey on them. To a coyote, a fox is a good meal, and to a wolf a coyote is a perfectly acceptable dinner.

Grouse

Can’t say for sure, but my wife and I have observed that the wolf activity(calling etc.) has been a lot more frequent and closer to our place this summer and fall. Still hearing the ‘yotes, but there’s not as many of them and they’re not as vocal as the year before. Typically, we’ll hear a wolf or two and then a pack of ‘yotes will light up somewhere else and kinda drown it out. Last year we’d hear as many as three groups of coyotes at a time all bouncing off each other…this year it’s wolves from two different directions, then coyotes off somewhere else. Hearing them at basically the same time is interesting, you can really pick up the differences in note and call styles.
As for deer, my little neck of the woods has been a little short on bigger bucks(as the name says, I’m a transplanted flatlander so they all look smaller to me) but I haven’t seen any this year…just does and smaller forks and such. So, strictly unscientific observation is that I see a similar pattern to what you’re talkign about.
Lots of fawns still around, so things are looking good going into winter at least.
Opener for bow is this weekend…I’ll have a little better first-hand observations by this time next week!
-Rev