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Posted: 10/27/2018 12:34:18 PM EDT
I just saw a FB post about 16 elk killed by wolves. I don't know if it real or true but if it is, you guys will probably handle the problem.
Link Posted: 10/27/2018 2:23:43 PM EDT
[#1]
Quoted:
I just saw a FB post about 16 elk killed by wolves. I don't know if it real or true but if it is, you guys will probably handle the problem.
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It would have be a large pack to kill that many elk.
Link Posted: 10/27/2018 2:37:53 PM EDT
[#2]
Oh crap, it was over two years ago, sorry.
Link Posted: 11/1/2018 4:00:17 PM EDT
[#3]
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Quoted:
Oh crap, it was over two years ago, sorry.
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IIRC correctly the it was a mix of calves and cows. Also not sure of the aftermath but I want to say game and fish went out and took care of several of them.
Link Posted: 11/20/2018 11:10:04 PM EDT
[#4]
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This happened at a feedground up near Bondurant. You'll see varying interpretations of this depending on how folks feel about wolves, but it happened.
I've seen quite a few wolf kills of game, but nothing like that. I'd say it's rare, from my experience here and in northern Canada.
I did come upon a mass kill of domestic sheep up Dog Creek, near my house, a few years back. Sheep weren't fed on much, and there were quite a few dead. Spent a couple hours checking it out, but it was in the summer, and the sign was hard to read. It was in a god-awful deadfall draw: the wolves had run the sheep off the bench above where the grazing was. I later heard they killed a herder's Pyrennes. The folks in charge more or less exterminated this pack. I saw a big drop off in activity in my area, and on my cameras, after this. They wouldn't do the same for an elk kill.
When I lived up North, I once woke up to a line of dots out on the lake ice. When the sun came up I realized it was eleven wolves. It was nearly 50 below zero. When the sun warmed them, they got up and headed off up the river. I backtracked them and found where they'd killed a moose in a bay that night. Cracked bones, hair, and bloody snow.
Few years ago I was winter tracking for a wildlife survey in GTNP. I was up Berry Creek in the north of the Park. I had the key to the NPS cabin up there to use as a base. On my way up I came upon a similar scene: moose had been killed and eaten, maybe two nights before. I cast around for an hour on skis and figured it was a cow and maybe 6-8 wolves. Again, cracked bones, hair, not much else. I found where they left, and followed them for a while, but it was getting dark, and the tracks were over a day old.
 I used to live up north where there had long been an equilibrium between wolves and the big game. We could hunt them (3/year), and they were trapped. People don't understand how hard it is to get a shot at a wolf, or trap them. It took them a hundred years to exterminate them in Wyoming with mass hunts by ranch hands, trapping, poison and, in the end, aerial hunting. Most folks don't know that Yellowstone Park used to have a trapper on staff to control the predators, so folks could see more animals. Hunting wolves in Wyoming isn't going to wipe them out.
 As far as the elk, I can only relay my experience up behind my house in the Snake River Range, in the Gros Ventre, and in the Teton Wilderness since the wolves showed up. I still find plenty of elk, and the numbers G&F come up with bears this out. My feeling is that their habits have changed somewhat: they seem to group up more, and avoid some areas which they formerly used. They are more likely to go down into the valley floor here in Jackson early, but I'm not sure how much that has to do with wolves. Most of the ranches are divided up, and there isn't hunting in the valley like there was.
This fits with my experience of moose up north, where they were used to wolves: I rarely saw moose in places that were very far from "escape cover", the kind of thick deadfall/brush country where a moose could lose wolves.
Up where I used to live in Moose, Wy., in the Park, before the wolves I would see dozens of moose on a winter morning out in Antelope Flats- sagebrush with no escape cover for miles. That's changed.
Here's what I can't figure: up behind my place there are a lot of mule deer- lots of does and fawn pairs. And, I see plenty of wolf sign. But the deer seem to be thriving. They don't travel in bands, like elk. And they aren't as big, or as fast. You would think the wolves would have an easy time with them. But I see as many, or more, than ever. Last deer kill I came upon was in bow season- saw a bear over a mile off above Taylor Creek. By the time I got there, he had moved off with what was left of his kill- it was a muley fawn. Followed him into the timber, then thought better of it.
I don't think the wolves will be much of a real problem, except for livestock, as long as we can hunt them, particularly if they'll let the seasons go into the winter.
Link Posted: 11/21/2018 1:49:21 AM EDT
[#5]
I have a pack of 7 that live about a mile and a half from the house here, they rarely come down to where the humans are and they don't kill the deer, they have taken a couple of Moose over the last decade and they go after the elk which lives up behind the house, but they do eat a lot of snowshoes and other small animals.  I find a lot of snowshoe carcases, which I know some of them are taken by bobcats as well.

When they are on the prowl, the normally head west where the elk population is much larger and I have found elk kills from them.
Link Posted: 11/21/2018 10:45:26 AM EDT
[#6]
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Quoted:
I have a pack of 7 that live about a mile and a half from the house here, they rarely come down to where the humans are and they don't kill the deer, they have taken a couple of Moose over the last decade and they go after the elk which lives up behind the house, but they do eat a lot of snowshoes and other small animals.  I find a lot of snowshoe carcases, which I know some of them are taken by bobcats as well.

When they are on the prowl, the normally head west where the elk population is much larger and I have found elk kills from them.
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It DOES seem like they prey on elk as a preference, over mule deer, when they go after big game.
Last winter I had a camera out a half mile from my house most of the winter. I would get pictures of a pair of wolves about every week, and regularly get elk, mostly young bulls, on the same camera. I don't know why these elk didn't move down. But the point is that single pair of wolves wasn't likely to be able to deal with those elk. They were probably surviving on small game, and maybe winter kills at the nearby feed ground.
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