RON SEELY | Wisconsin State Journal
What do wolf hunters do with the animals after they shoot them?
Almost all of the 116 wolves killed during the state’s first regulated recreational hunt will probably be mounted or perhaps turned into display pelts, said to Tom Hauge, who directs wildlife management for the state Department of Natural Resources.
The hunt, which has been described as a way to control depredation on livestock and other run-ins between wolves and humans, is largely a trophy hunt.
Hauge said that’s unusual in Wisconsin, where in most cases, hunters eat the meat from the animals they shoot.
Hauge said the only other animal hunted in Wisconsin as a trophy is probably the bobcat, which is highly coveted by hunters for mounting.
Bill Vyvyan, a taxidermist in Neillsville, said it costs about $1,500 to mount a wolf. If the hunter just wants the pelt, it costs about $120 per foot, from the nose to the end of the tail, he said.
Does anybody eat wolf?
Not likely, Hauge said.
“I’m not going to say that there isn’t somebody out there who would,” Hauge said. “But it’s just not in our culture.”
There are some famous cases of people eating wolves. Lewis and Clark shot 18 wolves on their trip, according to their journals, and ate one.
And they ate that wolf only when they were near starvation. They did eat a lot of dogs — 190, to be exact.
More recently, actor Liam Neeson was quoted in an interview in Outdoor Life as saying he and other cast members on the movie “The Grey” ate wolf in preparation for the survival film.
They didn’t like it. Neeson described it as “gamey.”
That movie was roundly criticized by wolf scientists as presenting a wildly inaccurate image of wolves as man-eating monsters.