Wolves worry buck hunter
One adult could kill about 15 deer per year
By Jim Lee
Gannett Wisconsin Newspapers
MERRILL — Ron Wage would like to evict a pack of unwelcome tenants from his property.
“But how do I go about it?” he wonders. “My neighbors have all offered suggestions, but none of them are legal and most of them are lethal. I don’t want to do anything illegal.”
Wage owns 360 acres of wildlife heaven in western Lincoln County. In recent months, a pack of timber wolves have taken up residence, dining in the midst of a natural grocery store stocked with deer and beaver.
A biologist estimated there are six to eight wolves in the group, a figure likely to expand in coming months following the breeding and birthing season.
The wolves are believed to be the coterie of the so-called Averill Creek Pack, one of the earliest detected wolf packs in modern Wisconsin.
“I don’t mind having wolves around,” Wage said. “There have been wolves roaming this area since I bought the property about 10 years ago. They were always just passing through. This is the first time they decided to bunk in.”
Wage’s land lies on the edge of the county’s agriculture-forest fringe. Nearby, fields of frigid alfalfa and bent, frozen corn stalks flank stands of cutover aspen mixed with patches of evergreens, grassy swale and extensive knobs of hardwood.
A twisting stream frequently bisected with beaver dams courses through the property. Elevated deer stands are located at strategic positions along the waterway and in the thickly wooded interior.
On a recent tour of the property, wolf signs were abundant on the ice-covered stream bed. Tracks of all sizes packed the snow leading from a recently killed deer to an apparent nearby den site.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” Wage asked as he pointed to heavily traveled paths leading toward an upland fringe through a tag alder tangle. “These runways are like spokes that — I’m sure — all lead to the same (den site) place.”
Wage worries the pack’s presence will affect his deer hunting fortunes, which is understandable considering the former restaurant owner assembled his holdings with the fall hunt in mind.
“We practice our own style of quality deer management,” Wage said. “It isn’t easy when adjacent properties aren’t doing the same. Bucks we pass up are often taken by our neighbors, but we have seen an increase in larger bucks over the years.”
Three years ago, Wage killed an 8-point buck with a symmetrical rack that scored 152 on the Boone and Crockett scale. Two years ago, he topped that with a 14-pointer that scored 161 after numerous deductions for non-symmetry.
In 2007, he bagged a nice 8-pointer that paled only in comparison to the previous two.
“The wolves have set up their den site alongside the river in the most gnarly area of the property,” Wage said. “We seldom hunt it because it is so difficult to get through. But it is an area that attracts deer.
“Once the gun deer season opens and shooting starts, bucks move into the river bottoms because that’s where the cover is. They also move there to find a quiet spot to recover from a rigorous breeding period.
“Now that the wolves have moved in, there are no deer tracks in that area. My fear is that a buck worn out from breeding would be most vulnerable to wolves and that we’d lose the very bucks we’re trying to develop.”
A wolf pack occupies a territory enveloping about a 5-mile radius, and each adult wolf consumes about 15 deer annually, Wage said he was told by a Department of Natural Resources’ biologist.
A pack of four to six adults and several juveniles might be responsible for a deer kill in the area of 60 to 100 animals.
“I’m not anti-wolf,” Wage says. “I just wish the center of their territory was somewhere else.”
He said he’s appreciative of the wolves’ presence but, “I don’t want to be a naturalist. I want to be a deer hunter.”
If Wage could give the pack a nudge to vacate, he’d offer a tip on where to set up housekeeping.
“If the wolves would just move about 5 miles, they’d find plenty of public land, peace and quiet,” he said.
Not to mention, one relieved landowner.