I live in a small town just north of the Spring Green area and last summer/early fall my neighbor had a wolf pacing his retaining wall looking at his dog.
Banging a shovel spoked it away.

That same spring the other neighbor was feeding a black bear on the edge of town.

In that second document that I posted, they list a known wolf pack located in sw Wisconsin(Crawford County).

What I find interesting, is with no harvest, population grew 16%, but when we harvested 150 the population grew by 13%. Wonder where they are all going?

You cheese hat guys just don't understand the problem! What you REALLY need to do is come and get Minnesota wolves. Lots an lots of Minnesota Wolves so they overtake your wolves. Take extras to be sure.
You see Minnesota wolves only eat mice and rabbits and animals that are sick or wounded and won't live anyway. Just ask our DNR guys and democrat legislators, animal experts all. In fact I bet the Minnesota wolves will hold classes for the Wisconsin wolves that stick around to properly teach them what to eat.
Problem solved. Anything else we can help you with?
Osky

Interesting study done on leading causes of mortality in deer based on region and age.

http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/WildlifeHabitat/research/whitetaileddeer.html

Do your bears and bobcat only eat sick and wounded mice and rabbits too? If so we might need to replace them as well.

Could be natural causes killing a lot of them but also consider that this last year, they were growing from a smaller baseline, because you had harvested 150 the previous year.

This last year we were growing from a bigger baseline as our season was shut down. So our last year that we had a season, we grew at 13% even after harvesting 150 wolves. Now this year, we harvest none, and our population only grew 16%. 150 on 750 would be 20%. It would appear somewhere we have a little overhead.

So thats where all the road kill went!

I quit putting in for for a tag or a point long ago. The whole wolf thing is screwed up on so many levels where does one start? The season is so early that they aren't primed up yet. Who wants an unprime scraggly lookin wolf mount? That's why I went to BC for mine.

I misunderstood your timeline.

Regardless, they will respond to the available prey just like any other species. Compensatory reproduction. Somehow they know what the prey base will support and usually adjust their numbers to maximize efficiency for their own population.

If you were to use those numbers (866-897) less the 28 individuals. That would make those 222 est. packs @ 3.84 wolves per pack. I say that's BS. I had trailcam pics last year on bear baits in Forest Co. with as many as 7 in one single pic. Do multiple packs run together? Or are they not territorial?

Were those spring bearbaits or fall?

Also note that 30 % of areas were not surveyed so count is flawed......

Boco, Those are fall baits. Sept. We don't have a spring season in Wi.

I just asked because you could see a pack of 7 or so wolves in the fall,but the carrying capacity is set in late winter so all those likely would not survive the year.Nature always provides an excess in spring than the land can carry come late winter.2 or 3 of the weaker ones would starve or wind up as wolf food.(or get harvested by a trapper)

I doubt an 80 lbs. wolf is eating 22 lbs. per day of meat. It would be much closer to 2.2 lbs. of meat per day than 22. If there are say 800 wolves in WI about March 1st estimate of the lowest numbers for the year) then having double to 2.5 times that many in May would be pretty normal. As to starvation losses in winter, here in WI there is less starvation loss as there is more prey to eat than in some of the more northern boreal forest areas with fewer species and more snow longer in the year. Even with the pack and rendezvous area the survival rate for wolf pups is quite low and that helps keep populations at lower densities from a natural aspect. Carrying capacity for large predators in WI is much higher than the acceptable social carrying capacity and that is really what the debates are really about. Where to allow wolves and how many. Being as territorial as they are and mobile their ranges can expand rapidly and it is the natural way for territorial species.

Bryce

True. We currently don't have a wolf season, thanks to some wonderful judge in Washington. If any were incidentals by trappers, they would've more than likely been due to illegally placed cable restraints. Or hunters with the SSS mentality. And I'm sure there plenty of those occurrences.

There was a good article in the FHA magazine a few years ago that pointed out that trappers in the fall and winter can take about a third of the wolves in a given area(in this case,algonquin park)without affecting the population at all due to the natural mortality of pups each winter.However once they went above that number,the wolves became less and less each year,and took quite a few years of not culling any to get back to the carrying capacity.
The article was called the great wolfian bathtub riddle,which compared the land to a bathtub filled with water each year,with small holes drilled into it down to the 1/3 mark,with the water slowly leaking down every time the tub was filled.This is analogous to the point in late winter when carrying capacity is set.You can scoop out as much or as little water as you want down to the bottom of the holes,and it will not affect the outcome at all.Once you scoop down below the holes however,the added water each year will not be as much and the carrying capacity will outstrip recruitment,leading to a slow decline in the population.

Good info I'm sure. But I don't see that pertaining to wolf populations in Wisconsin though. When we did have a harvest season for a few years, tags were issued on a preference point system with zones controlled under a quota system. So for us, they aren't as much of a furbearer as they are of "trophy" status. With luck of drawing a harvest tag every few years & some zones closing in as little as 3 days due to quotas being reached. It's almost a joke

yep...lots of profit for the DNR also....can't forget that part

They are territorial but..........in some instances two or more smaller packs may team up on larger prey. The more likely scenario is that with a large food source such as a bait station there is little competition for food so the territorial instinct goes out the window.