By Dave Orrick
Minnesota wildlife officials are closing the state’s first regulated wolf hunt in the animal’s core range.
With 57 wolves killed out of a quota of 58, the Department of Natural Resources on Wednesday, Nov. 14, announced that wolf hunting in the northeast portion of the state will close at the end of shooting hours Thursday. The area includes the Arrowhead region, where at one point, the last surviving wild wolves in the Lower 48 lived before recovering under protection of the Endangered Species Act.
Of the two other wolf-hunting zones, the northwest remains open, with 60 wolves killed out of a quota of 133, while the east central closed Nov. 5, with eight wolves killed out of a quota of nine.
The closures affect only the “early season,” which runs through Sunday in some of the northwest wolf hunting zone. A second season, which will be open to trapping and hunting, will run from Nov. 24 to Jan. 31. Like the first season, the second has a harvest quota of 200 wolves.
Wildlife officials had been unsure how successful Minnesotans would be in the inaugural hunt. It now appears hunters are experiencing higher success rates than Western lands, where hunting has been legal for several years.
In addition, the Department of Natural Resources is reminding hunters and trappers selected by lottery for Minnesota’s late wolf hunting season to buy their licenses by Thursday or the licenses will be sold to others.
Any unclaimed late-season licenses will be offered at noon Monday first come, first served to lottery applicants who lost.
This report includes information from the Associated Press.