Wolves moved in to my favorite spot. No deer sign. =(
 

Over the last couple of months I have come to realize that the deer population has seen a significant decline in my favorite place to hunt. WMU 314
At first I thought maybe my cameras were not working or there were too many cows grazing or their movement patterns had significantly changed. Then I captured video of a Wolf... I was in denial that it would have much of an effect.

So I kept putting on the miles looking for sign, moved the cameras to new locations that used to provide endless photos. Still find nothing. Literally no deer. Then one image of a cow moose with her hind quarters covered in large wounds, seems like a failed predator attack. (I'll post pic next time I retrieve the card from the camera).

So I have reset the cameras one last time at the farthest edge of the property I have access to. If I get no result after this week then I figure I need to move.

I understand there are so many factors at play but my questions to anyone who may have insight into this:

- How far away do I need to go in the hopes of finding a deer population that is unaffected?

- Do wolves keep moving through areas or do they occupy an area for a season or seasons?

- If the wolves have left the area will deer return this season or does it take years to recover?

Any advice is welcome!

The deer will move somewhere else and so will the wolves. I’ve had this happen to two of my white tail spots in the mountains..... it takes some time for the area to replenish.

My one spot was close a river valley so the deer came back fairly quickly... whitetails follow river Valleys a lot.

The other patch sort of recovered.... but I also suspect that the population never got thick there because the cutblck replanted kinda grew back in and changed the cover-forage.

Shoot dem wolfies!......

In my experience once the wolves move in they stay until there’s nothing left for them to eat. After the pack moves out it can take years for the ungulates to move back in.

In my specific area it took nearly 10yrs for the deer population to rebound to about 50-60% of its pre-wolf level. A disclaimer to note is that there was also a couple cougars come through as well as a couple tough winters in those 10yrs, however the surrounding areas have had a constant higher percentage of deer. Although the weather killed off a few, it’s obvious the “lions share” went to the wolves.

wolves
 

Wolves will stay as long as the eats are good or ranchers start shooting them. It usually takes many years for ungulate population to rebound. I have chart showing how the moose population in Alberta "tanks" when the wolf population "sky rockets". This covers a 80 year period and each time shows moose population taking about 20 years to recover back to normal levels. Suspect deer population will be similar cycle.

wondered if you have seen any cougar sign. The town of Coleman in the Crowsnest Pass has a large resident deer population. They are feeding on all that lawn fertilizer and weed killers. But several times I have looked out the window of the house and there will be a deer sleeping below the window. Some of the deer have large scars like something had grabbed them and the scratches go from the neck to the hind quarters. I think cougars are the reason the deer do not want to leave town.

The wolves have been there for a while, time to change quarry.

Grizz

I often wonder how much is opinion and how much is fact.

IMO even a small pack of wolves would starve to death targeting Whitetails. They would use more energy chasing one down than they would get from eating it.

I believe they would certainly flush up fawns and reek havoc in spring along with every other predator, but I think they would be a prey animal of opportunity not a target. Yarded up deer would be in big trouble during a severe winter as well.

However, the deer are gone. Again just my opinion, but I have found that deer have become very nomadic compared to years past. I find them in pockets with lots of sign and then gone completely in a few weeks. I spoke to several folks with lots of trail cameras and they share this theory. I am talking bush here not farmland.

Early last season I went to a spot that is generally good and couldn't find even a sign of deer. There was wolf tracks everywhere and some moose. Went back at the end of the season and the deer were back and plentiful.

Deer are very smart and much more adaptable than the other ungulates. They will find a way against very tough odds and flourish.

Don’t kid yourself, even coyotes will take down a mature whitetail especially right after the rut. Deep crusty snow will leave the deer sitting ducks for a wolf pack, like shooting fish in a barrel.

I never kid myself, that's why I mention deer yarded up in my post. I have seen what they can do in a severe winter, I just don't think it is their targeted animal. Their style of hunting (hounding) would not be idea for an animal yielding so little meat.

Cougars are deer specialists. Ambush attack with little energy used. A couple of cougars would be harder on your deer herd than a pack of wolves IMO. A mother with cubs probably kills one every other day when the cubs are little and maybe even one a day as they near maturity.

I'm not so sure about that. I watched a wolf chasing down a whitetail last year in January. That deer was almost done when it came busting out of the bush, tongue practically dragging, as it crossed the road 10 yards in front of me. That wolf was seconds behind it. There was a pack in that area and they were hunting whitetail, no doubt about it. The sign was everywhere and it wasn't moose or elk on the menu.

Agreed.... I’ve seen wolves target white tails..... more than once.

I’ve withessed wolves running deer hard on more than one occasion. Buddy of mine in the north country has been covered with deer all summer and they’ve vanished as of recent. He sent me a trail cam pic with nine wolves in the frame and another two passed by seconds before. Not just coincidence.

Just wondering if you could explain why nearly all the wolf droppings I encounter in my area are full of deer hair? And if not white tails exactly what do you feel the wolves are living off of?

Now to address the rampant doom and gloom predictions on this thread. In the areas I hunt the wolves and deer have been co-existing as long as I've hunted there... and significantly longer than that I'm sure. Maybe when wolves move into a new area there is an initial rampant slaughter on the uneducated deer population, but after awhile the deer smarten up. The wolves move in, the deer move around to avoid them, their behaviour changes and they get harder to hunt. But even in the most wolf over run areas I've seen, there are still generally huntable numbers of deer, although they are admittedly very smart, cagey animals.

On rare occasions I've seen deer move in closer to industrial activity when the wolves are around, where the wolves don't want to go, but more often they start avoiding the open areas. Wolves like to use trails, roads, and cutlines to cover ground, just like humans. Favored hunting spots are often the first to go dry, and depressing conversations take place over unfilled tags. A few years back if one drove down practically any road in the Swan Hills after a fresh snowfall and the first tracks down will be wolves and coyotes, while the deer tracks will take far longer to accumulate in these exposed areas, and things can look pretty dismal from the road. When the deer wise up one rarely sees them out in the open, you might find some tracks but to actually see a deer in the open during daylight can become somewhat abnormal. Get 20 to several hundred yards back into the bush and suddenly the ratio switches, far more game tracks, far less predator tracks.

I've hunted the Swan River valley pretty regularly over the past few years, there are so many bear and wolf tracks traveling up and down that river, every single day I've ever hunted there, one would wonder how deer or moose could ever survive in there. But the tracks are plenty, though the animals hard to hunt. This is probably the worst predator concentration I've ever seen, and I've seen plenty of downright terrible ones north of Slave Lake, and the deer are still in that valley. IMO they are a smart enough animal that once they adjust they can survive just about anywhere, though not always in as high of numbers as hunters have come to feel is normal.

I'll second that on "the worst predator concentration I've ever seen". "Shoot dem wolfies" is right.

Wolves are road hunters, they have learned to trot the roads until they catch the scent of a deer, moose, elk, they can tell by the intensity of the scent how close the prey is. Then they go in after it. This is one of the reasons we see so many wolf tracks on roads, cutlines, frozen rivers, etc. They can cover far more ground than in the brush and deep snow. They are far more effective road hunters than humans, we can't smell them and drive by dozens and only see the ones out in the open. The deer can move out of a heavily wolf infested area but it doesn't take too many hours of trotting the roads to find them again. This tactic has enabled them to be more successful hunters and allowed them to breed, raise and feed more young than normal.

I don't disagree that there is a wolf problem, I'm just disagreeing with the opinion that the OP should give up on his area because of presence of wolves. The areas I hunt have been overrun by wolves for at least the last decade and I still fill my tags. I'm also of the opinion that if the wolves are indeed a new development in his area, the animals are going to change their habits and the OP is also going to have to make changes to hunt them successfully.

I can think of several areas in 542 where I used to take deer by walking cutlines about 12 years ago. With an increase in the wolf population, in the last 5-7 years I have hardly ever seen a deer on a cutline in these same areas. To hunt them successfully I need to stalk the game trails that parallel the cutlines. Despite the increase in wolves there are still healthy deer populations, but the old tactics simply don't work anymore, the deer learned to cope and so must the hunter.

This is my experience as well. Wolves move through, maybe grab a deer or two and deer disappear. I am not saying they do not eat them, I am saying they are not their target species and that they don't eat up all the deer and move on.

Once deer know that wolves are in the area, IMO wolves would starve to death targeting them.

When I was a kid there was no coyotes in the province I grew up in. When the coyotes arrived on the scene, the deer population dropped like a stone. The majority of these were determined to be crossed with wolves on their travels through Ontario and Quebec. The Whitetails adapted and the numbers recovered.

A good sized doe would feed maybe 2 or 3 wolves, certainly not a pack. A decent sized pack would have to be killing 2 or 3 deer a night. That would be a tough way to make a living.

I guess, from what I can see, the only source of food in high enough supply to support the wolf population in my area are whitetail deer. So, for lack of a better answer for their current numbers I believe that wolves do target deer. I think that part of the explanation for the greater numbers of wolves now, than in the past, is due to the whitetails being more successful now than in the past due to development. In the few large tracts of undeveloped boreal that Alberta has left, there tends to be few deer and far less wolves in my observation.

However I do not believe that wolves show up and clean out an area as has been suggested. IMO they have a large range that they travel about constantly, taking whatever they can as they go. Once the game gets used to them they learn how survive with wolves around.

But I do admit that you make some good points.

Let me know where by private message and I will hunt some wolves to help clear up your spot/area. Going out to get some elsewhere this year so willing to help if I can.

Wolves
 

I hate to say it but the best thing that could happen in your area is a rancher loses some cattle or horses to the wolves. Once the ranchers get after them they will clean them up in short order by shooting them or bringing in a trapper to thin them out. Hunters alone will never get enough of them to have any real effect on population.

IMO the effort of ranchers, and even trappers, generally only teaches wolves to avoid certain areas. It has very little effect on the overall wolf population, that is governed by game numbers. The wolf numbers in my area have come down over the last few years, but I think that has more to do with the hard winters thinning the game numbers than anything else.

x2

They are a pack animal. Opportunistic hunters. They move around the area they are in and will hunt kill eat what ever they can. They have open tags for all game. They do not stop and say today is deer only. What ever they come across is fair game and lunch. Eat more deer because more targets available for them. They do not pass up any meal that is presented. Even your favourite puppy is acceptable.

Can you provide those charts Curt?

Last week I called in a pack of 6 wolves with a cow moose call...I was wondering why I hadn't seen any deer/moose sign.This is an area where my uncle hadn't seen a wolf since 1989 and had a harvest every year. Me thinks some wolf hunting this winter.

Charts?

I can make some up for you I suppose:sHa_sarcasticlol:

Jeez ole fat finger here! I meant that for this fella

Wolves will stay as long as the eats are good or ranchers start shooting them. It usually takes many years for ungulate population to rebound. I have chart showing how the moose population in Alberta "tanks" when the wolf population "sky rockets". This covers a 80 year period and each time shows moose population taking about 20 years to recover back to normal levels. Suspect deer population will be similar cycle.

[QUOTE=MK2750;3845028]I often wonder how much is opinion and how much is fact.

IMO even a small pack of wolves would starve to death targeting Whitetails. They would use more energy chasing one down than they would get from eating

This is completely wrong

Well you do make a compelling argument. There was a complete absence of Whitetails in the areas I frequent when the wolves moved in. The Whitetails quickly returned in numbers and the wolves are still around.

As an added bonus there isn't a coyote to be seen and the grouse numbers have been awesome.

The logic or science is a bit of guess work and like I mentioned, some opinion and some fact.

I can’t figure out what you’re trying to say? If there was a complete absence of whitetails how can their numbers return? Is there still a complete absence of whitetail?

You say the wolves are still there and now there’s no coyotes but tons of grouse, are you suggesting the wolves are living off of coyotes?

A few years back trapper found where large pack of wolves killed 15 deer in one night. They did not eat any of them just went on a killing spree!