Hunting hounds attacked by wolves
By Luke Laggis
City Editor
The bear hound training season is underway, but hounds can’t be trained for the situations several have already encountered this summer.
Wolves have killed four dogs and injured five others since the training period opened July 1, according to officials with the state Department of Natural Resources.
Investigators from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services investigated the incidents and confirmed they were wolf attacks. The attacks took place west of Rhinelander in Oneida County, south and west of Neillsville in Clark County, east of Clam Lake in Ashland County and north of Argonne in Forest County. Three of the dogs killed were hunting hounds, while the fourth was a pet that wandered away from its home in an area where hunting hounds are trained. All five of the injured dogs were bear hunting dogs.
Adrian Wydeven, DNR mammalian ecologist, said wolves have pups in rendezvous sites at this time of the year, and it is probable the wolves were protecting their young.
“Any hound that goes through one of those areas is going to get attacked,” said local conservation warden Jim Jung.
The Oneida County attack involved what has become known as the Cassian pack.
“The pack is fairly new that we know of,” Jung said.
While relatively new as a pack in the area, Jung said wolves have been traveling through the area, which includes a vast block of county forest, for years. He said wolves have spun off from the large population in the Willow Flowage area, and DNR a howling survey last year determined there to be two adults and two pups in the area.
“We ask bear hunters to exercise greater caution and avoid training or hunting near known wolf den sites – hunters should be familiar with caution area maps on the DNR wolf Web site,” Wydeven said, noting that all packs involved with dog incidents likely produced pups this spring.
Hunters may obtain Class B pursuit tags that allow them to train dogs by pursuing bear from July 1 to Aug. 31 each year in Wisconsin. Jung said every year hunters come to the state from across the country to train hounds.
“We’re one of the last states that allow non-residents to come and train for bear,” Jung said. “We have a big influx.”
The gray wolf currently is listed as a federally endangered species and persons convicted of killing a wolf are subject to possible jail time and fines.
Caution area maps can be found on the DNR Web site