I recently had the great pleasure of killing the biggest buck in my 30 years of whitetail hunting. The story is probably no different than the other 100 deer hunting stories you hear over the course of a season. Deer hunting, in general, is often comprised of hours of waiting and mere seconds of action. We hunted the first weekend and my bride and son both dropped nice young bucks. I spent my first 18+ hours on-stand without seeing anything more exciting than couple of squirrels and a chickadee or two. We were out of town during the second weekend, so we were anxious to get out on the last Saturday to see if the rut had picked up. After a couple of hours in the stand I was getting a bit tired of the cold wind in my face so I got out of my stand, checked a few scrape locations for activity then decided to take advantage of the wind to do a little still hunting. There is a high ridge to the west of my stand and I made my way to the top and started moseying north. I hadn’t been walking more than 10 minutes when I heard a bit of crunching. I lifted my earflaps, looked down to the west and saw the big fellow in the picture to the left trotting right up the side of the ridge. He had his head down and nose to the ground with his mouth open and slobbering. For some reason my eye was drawn to his back and a conspicuous patch of missing fur from some recent battle with another love-crazed buck. By the time I had the rifle up he was 20 yards away, which is precisely the moment he noticed I was standing there. By the time this fact registered in his brain it was too late. End of story.

Browsing through my regular reads recently I’ve come across a couple of stories and comments about wolves and the perceived effect of wolves on deer hunting. This is nothing new. The debate over the timber wolf has been raging from Yellowstone to Minnesota and parts farther east for years. Bemidji lies on the western edge of the largest wolf population in the lower 48 states. I’ve had only two encounters with wolves during the deer hunting season. The first was with my son while we both sat on the same stand one afternoon during the firearms season. Watching what we were hoping was a deer moving toward our stand we quickly realized that we were looking at a wolf slinking through the trees making it’s way north in pursuit of its next meal. We got down from the stand shortly thereafter assuming nothing would be around, but were pleasantly surprised when Trev dropped two young deer while we were walking on a trail just west of our stand. The second encounter was during late October during the archery season. I was sitting on the ground on what basically amounts to a small hill in the middle of a patch of woods. The spot afforded me a commanding view of the woods around me. I saw movement to the east and then observed what I thought was a black bear until I saw the long busy tail of a wolf as it moved silently to the south of my position. On a whim I grabbed a blade of grass and blew the old dying rabbit call. To my surprise two more wolves appeared from the slough to my north and trotted right up to the base of the hill on which I sat. We stared at each other for a minute and they turned around and headed right back to the north. I stayed put and within a half hour of this encounter I had two deer milling around the back side of the hill… completely calm and seemingly unperturbed by the presence of their second most dangerous predator.

The examples I have given you, while true, are simply stories. Anecdotal information that has no more bearing on the complex interplay between wolves, deer and humans than do stories that describe less peaceful encounters. Wolves kill deer… this is a simple biological fact. However, from my earliest, most rudimentary understanding of the relationship between predator and prey one of the basic tenets of this relationship is that predators invariably tend to kill the weakest members of the herd; the very old, very young or very sick. So for me, the idea never crossed my mind that our hunting area would soon be the next Gobi desert of deer hunting… that certain decimation was about to befall the local herd and hunting as we knew it would soon be over. To be quite honest… in this particular area hunting has really been very good the last several years.

The problem with much of the debate surrounding the timber wolf is that opinions are too often based upon anecdotal information or downright false information that tends to perpetuate the worst myths and bolster the notion that there is a direct correlation between poor deer numbers and the close proximity of wolves. Dr. Glenn DelGuidice wrote a very good article based upon 15 years of personal research collaring and monitoring the activites of 450 whitetail deer and 55 wolves in the heart of the largest wolf population in the lower 48. You can read it here:

http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/natural_resources/animals/mammals/wolves/delguidice_wolf_article.pdf/delguidice_wolf_article.pdf

These are the type of people we should entrust with the observation and management of our wildlife populations. It is a pretty well-established fact that whitetail deer, bison, elk, moose, caribou and wolves flourished quite nicely on this continent before our European ancestors began to arrive. We also know that decimation of these populations was accomplished primarily by these same ancestors largely through unregulated commercial hunting. Only through the efforts of some of our earliest conservationists… many of whom were avid hunters… have we been able to arrive at the system we have today that scientifically maintains wildlife populations through research, control of harvest and improvements in habitat.

So what about the wolf? I think that the long-term survival of the wolf in terms of both population and reputation lies in the removal of the wolf from the endangered species list sooner than later. This takes the debate away from the national spotlight where the extremists from both ends of the spectrum have had free reign and places the responsibility in the hands of each state where wolf management plans have been crafted and ready to put in place for the last 10+ years. While this most certainly won’t appease the most sensitive among us who oppose the killing of anything for any reason, it will certainly go a long way toward further protecting those who make a living raising livestock in wolf country and should help assure deer hunters that there will be controls in place that will keep the wolf populations from growing out of control in their favorite hunting areas.

In the meantime, as sportsmen, I think we all have a responsibility to take the time to educate ourselves. Our worst enemy is ignorance whether we are talking about wolves, muskies, or any other topic that directly relates to our favorite pastimes. If we take the time to learn and share facts… not anecdotes, we will be in a much better position to effect change through reasoned and articulate discussion.

I’d love to hear your thoughts!