Interesting fact about Alaskan wolves...

Me thinks that 1000 kills a day in Alaska might be a tad light - but I trust Ted Spraker. He's one of the good guys on our Board of Game. A sincere friend of hunter/trappers and he doesn't take alot of guff from the anti's. I beleive that ADFG here says that there are more than 11,000 wolves calling our state home - if that is true and combined with their need to teach their young how to hunt annually by killing and not eating the whole animal 1000 kills MIGHT be a conservative number. JMHO

Daryl
 
What I would like to know is based on their estimate of moose/caribou kills, how many wolves do they estimate are in Alaska?
 
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Me thinks that 1000 kills a day in Alaska might be a tad light - but I trust Ted Spraker. He's one of the good guys on our Board of Game. A sincere friend of hunter/trappers and he doesn't take alot of guff from the anti's. I beleive that ADFG here says that there are more than 11,000 wolves calling our state home - if that is true and combined with their need to teach their young how to hunt annually by killing and not eating the whole animal 1000 kills MIGHT be a conservative number. JMHO
Daryl



Daryl - this study was done in about 1998. I left the state in 2000. Based on what I knew at that time, the wolf population in most parts of Alaska were growing. The Kenia was the exception. They had some breeding problems causeing health issues. The state was trying to introduce new wolves, aka - new blood, into the pack back then. Dont know how successful they were.

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What I would like to know is based on their estimate of moose/caribou kills, how many wolves do they estimate are in Alaska?



Don't quote me on this, but if I recall correctly, the study was based on an estimated 7000 wolves at that time. Possible 9000, I can't recall which. Daryl is now saying they estimate the wolf population to be around 11000! Wish I lived up there now!!

Mark
 
Wish I lived up there now!!

Mark - Its a great place to live and raise kids. Outdoor oppurtunities are many, lots of land to roam on and you don't need to knock on doors like in America.

Wolf hunting here is a difficult game. So much land that is not very accessable (no roads). If it were easier I suspect the hunting community would be able to have an affect on that number without having to go airborne.

I will continue to practice my technique by calling coyotes in America on vacation trips and hope someday a wolf walks into my crosshairs in Alaska.

Daryl
 
Wolf - One of my favorite critters. If you are interested in learning more about our wolf go to the following site:

http://www.wildlife.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=wolf.main

For detailed stuff click on Wolf Management Reports as well as Wolf Research Publications. Tons of information there and for particular areas of the state. I live in unit 12 hunting that unit as well as 20E & 11.

Sharkathmi - On the Kenai they were trying to introduce the larger interior wolf as they believed them to be more lice resistent as that was the main health issue there. Didn't work very well. In fact some of the introduced wolf made the 1000 mile trek back to the interior carrying some of the lice!

This spring wolf were hunted by heliocopter as fixed wing aircraft weren't doing the job. The hunting community doesn't have much effect on the wolf and the trapping community only makes a small dent as measured under the sealing requirements. The season in my part lasts from aug 10 to May 30 under a hunting license and Nov 1 to May 30 with snares.

AKsigns - Modify your coyote calling technques using alot of wolf social sounds adding with food (large size) sounds once you have established that you are a trespassing wolf. Then shut up for a while. Seems to work best.
 
John - thanks for the advice.

do you call with your mouth or use electronic and hand calls for the howling sounds? if so where did you get them?

The wolf sounds that I have on my Foxpro seem to have background noise but it does make our one famous semi-tame wolf in town freak out and come running to the caller. Just waiting for him to leave the park.

Daryl
 
Aksigns - I use mouth & hand calls. I like using a modified funnel, the same one that I use for moose, to increase my call range when using my mouth. Its a must when its real chilly out. I also have howlers that I can get deeper tones out of then those of coyote. Food calls are mainly moose & caribou calf sounds which can be made with many of the existing hand calls used for coyotes & fox.
 
50% of all moose calves are taken by black bear. That is why I have begun to concentrate on them lately. That figure came from a biologist who works here on the Kenai.

Loren
 
A healthy pack of 8-12 wolves will kill one moose about every three days.

Consider that there are between 11,000-15,000 wovles up here and those numbers start adding up quick.

Now the greenies will tell you they only take the sick, weak and young. That is patently false. They're opportunists that'll kill any ungulate they come across and don't conform to the Walt Disney version the greenies push.
In years with heavy snowfall, they have a decided advantage as the can stay on top of the snow where moose and caribou are wading up to their bellies.

Of course we undertand what happpens when the young are preyed upon in disproportionate numbers.....you start running out of broodstock to keep the populations up.

You folks down in the L48 are about to learn a hard lesson about wolves and game management.

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Thankfully there has been effort to manage wolves and in some cases bears under the last 2 govenors but the one before them really hurt us.



Knowles hurt us on a lot of fronts besides fish and wildlife management. I went to "wolf summit" they held in Fairbanks in 1992 where they brought in the discredited PETA trash mercenary with a wildlife biology degree out of DNP and knew then he was in bag for them. A lot of native folks voted for him, yet they were the one's he screwed over the worst in the long run.
 
Shared this post with Ted Spraker, mentioned biologist listed above. Here is what he had to say:




Loren….Interesting read but some of the figures are puzzling. What is the 1000 kills per day? Two studies (Nelchina and Kenai) have shown that an average sized pack (7-10) makes a kill about every 4.5 days and about 75% of those kills are moose. During the Kenai study, the Swanson River pack was followed and back tracked for 45 days resulting in documentation of 15 moose kills, 6 calves and 9 adults. And black bears killed an average of 40% of the “collared” calves in two studies on the Kenai in the early eighties. In other studies brown bears killed more, 56% of the collared calves in Unit 13 in the late 1970s. There have been a fair number of calf mortality studies and the results depend on the density and variety of predator.

Lice were documented on Kenai wolves in 1982. Between 1983 and 1985, we captured and treated about 150 wolves but were never able to capture all pack members, resulting in re-infestation the next year. Since coyotes and dogs are now infested with this same species of lice, our chances are nil to get rid of it. The lice, Tricodectes canis, only survives on wolves, coyotes and dogs, hence the sub-specific name canis. Fox and lynx will not become infested with this species of lice.

We introduced 18 wolves captured near Tok to determine if Kenai wolves were genetically predisposed to the lice infestation. The Tok wolves became infested soon after the release if they joined infested packs. Of the 18 Tok wolves, two left the Kenai immediately following their release. One was an adult female and the other a yearling, I think it was a male. The female was trapped in 14B near the Chickaloon River and the yearling was shot near Cantwell. These wolves did not transmit lice to the interior since they were so heavily medicated with ivermectin, kills all internal and external parasites, that they were clean for at least 6 months, and they were killed before that. Additionally, they were free of lice when captured and didn’t spend enough time here to join an infested pack. About 10 of the remaining 16 were trapped locally (most within a year of release), one was killed by a moose (that’s the one with a broad-head in his skull) and
the rest were never recovered. All were ear tagged so if they showed up anywhere in the state they would known where they came from.
 
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