MChewk, i think the rolling in stink is a coverup as bowhunters and others use skunk or other smells to cover human smells....the animals wouldnt think a rotting smell to be a threat.....the rotting smells cover the natural preditor smells that prey animals know very well. My take on rolling.

Personally, I find that a stretch. The amount of logic required to think, "if I wear this smell, I won't smell like a predator", is far more than a canine, even of the highest intellectual order, possesses.

Wolves often run down or corner their prey.I doubt if what they smell like,plays a big role.Jack,thanks for doing this.I'm really learning a lot.

RDFX, but wouldn't the odor be EASIER for any animal to detect and then bring them their interest/curiousity up of what is out there. A skunk is not a threat to a deer or coyote but it does cover up a human odor (threat).

Great Thread, thanks all. Here's my take on scratch kicks from what I've seen with dogs,coyotes and red fox. The adults do this at sign posts to announce this is my Island ,stay out or else. When there's multiple scratches from a pack it seems its an overlap border sign post used by multiple groups. These are hot!
To get the adults it helps at times to make scrathes to imitate this behavior.
As far as the rolling goes, dogs just like to stink LOL..

MChewk, the smell isnt a threat, as skunk quill doesnt make prey scared as in deer ect., plus a rotten smell isnt a threat either but if a yote, wolf, fox , bobcat smell comes up and the prey associated that smell with trouble then a more attentive alert. I could be wrong but this discussion makes trappers think and questions-questions is a good thing.

Jack. Somewhere in the Mech/Boitani book one of the authors mentions that only the dominant pair raises their leg when urinating....even the female. IF that is true....how is it that ALL wolves seem to be susceptible to capture at a pee post ??

Also, along that same line of thought, is it only the dominant or breeding pair that engages in "scratching back " ??

Until recently, I had two pairs of dogs, one male and one female, each. The pairs were in-separable from their pal, but the pairs could NOT be together.
One pair spent most of the day in one compound, and the other pair in the house. However, the main yard, (about 1/3 acre), was the place we would let them run, exercise, and do their business, one pair at a time. The girls were pretty much in-different to were they peed and crapped, but the boys made it serious business when it came to scouring the land for marking. LOTS of peeing, as well as scratching, but the interesting thing was what I call "High Marking", where one male would back up to a short stump, a piece of wood, or whatever else was on the ground, and crap on it. He would then scratch and throw dirt with all four legs with great gusto.
When I let the next pair out, the second male would re-mark all the urine, then find the last boy's pile, back up to it, and try to crap higher up the stump. Then would turn around, give it a good sniff and look-over, then scratch and throw dirt as far as he could.
I would never pass up a canine turd in the woods, and would instead pick it up, and place it where it will be noticed by a passing canine, (a rock or short stump), add a squirt of urine on the edge of said rock or stump, and set a trap accordingly.

OK one has to question...why cover up what you JUSTED MARKED?

I've never seen them cover scat.The big disturbance from the scratching by the pack is the visual,to go along with the scent.I bet there is growling going on too.

I have to agree with Viking. The thought process it takes is, I think, is above-and-beyond the conscious thought process of a wolf (and I personally give wolves a lot of frontal lobe credit). On the other hand, I can agree with RdFx, if we allow ourselves to consider another scenario for this process to develop. Again, I'll apologize up front for the length of this post, but allow me to ramble a bit.

A thousand generations ago, Stinky and his littermates were whelped. Through some genetic quirk, Stinky had a propensity, even at a young age, to roll in every darned raunchy thing he came across. Mom wolf was forever rolling her eyes and giving Stinky time-outs against the den walls for coming home with these vile smells rubbed into his neck and shoulders.

But, it also was genetically programmed that Stinky was quite the strapping young lad. Despite his being in trouble most of his young life, he grew into a good-sized, well-muscled frame. At two and a half years of age, he left the pack and wandered for a time, but always managed to periodically bring down a deer or a calf elk or a beaver, so he survived. (He was still rolling in Gusto-like smells every chance he got). Well, Stinky finally ran into a vacant territory and met up with a sweetheart and they (despite the missus not liking the way Stinky smelled) produced their own litter of pups. A couple of these pups had that same genetic signature from their father that dictated they roll in every pile of raunchy smells they could find. Ah, but they were very successful as well, always able to tip over a needed meal, and for the next thousand generations, this series of offspring (with the propensity to roll in rotten gut-piles) were marginally better than their peers at killing elk, so their offspring were a bit more successful than the non-stinkers. Thus, the genetic quirk that started the long line of stinkers became, over a thousand generations, the norm.

All kidding aside, I see this as a more likely scenario than conscious thought.

Let me go a bit farther. How many of you wolf-trappers out there have caught wolves that had recently festooned their pelts with vile smells? I've handled a metric boatload of wolves, and to me, they always smell like a wolf! They are, to my sensitive nose, stinky (no doubt), but they simply smell like a wolf. Not like a maggot-infested gut-pile or a raunchy pile of dead fish, but like a wolf. In fact, I have videos of wolves rolling in Gusto and other loud call lures, but each and every wolf I've caught simply smells only like a wolf.

Jack

White17, Boco, MChewk, Viking, RdFx, et al.

Great discussion and exchange of ideas. I appreciate it all!

I'll start out by asking a question back to White17. To catch a wolf at a pee-post set, does that wolf need to necessarily pee on the post? I think not. All they need to do is be curious enough to walk up to the post and sniff, and if the trap is positioned correctly, it goes "snap". I'm of the opinion that whether it's a dominant wolf or not, it will check out the "interloper's" sign post.

Too, I'm getting the opinion that pretty much all of us on this thread are in agreement that the "moon-walk", scratch-back is indeed done as a dominance display, and I'm personally of the opinion that it's in order to provide a visual sign (as well as the urine/defecation for olfactory sign) that puts a virtual exclamation point on their statement. That is, "You are trespassing, we're gonna catch you, kick your tail, and probably have you for lunch!"

Jack

I've noticed with coyotes if I imitate scratch kicks the adults respond like they are ticked..
Curiosity kills lots of coyotes! All K9s just have to pee to let the world know they were there and to let others know this is my island.. The next dominant one to come along just has to mark over, less dominate just a sniff. It doesn't have to be urine or gland from the same species for them to react. My 100 pound non nutered lab is a fine example. We have a chitsu/pecaneeze cross and a corgy. The Chitzu is the alpha. The lab never marks over the chitzu but the corky he marks over EVERY time, with pinpoint accuracy.. If the neighbors Pitts are out he scratch kicks and gets all bristelled and edgy..
Great discusion, great thread, thanks

Well said, Trappergbus. I'm in total agreement.

I kinda like making them mad, they seem to forget about where the paws go LOL.. Snap...

Jack,I don't think there are any packs in the area I trap but occasionally a single passes through and one time,three.There are a few,abandoned mine shafts in the area and judging from tracks,the wolves seem to get excited when the get to one.The tracks show a lot of pacing outside and in the case of the three wolves,one ventured inside.

Before this past season,I scouted an area with a couple shafts.You have to get within 30' to see in the entrance of one of the shafts and at that point,it was easy to see a pile of wolf scat in the entrance,very prominently placed and just out of the weather.

Any thoughts on their interest in these shafts?Bears and lions occasionally go in there too so my only thought was,they were hoping to find something to play with or at least,see who has been there.

Hey Guys, I've been reading this post with great interest and I apologize for getting here so late. As I read of the kick back theories I can't believe no one has concluded that the act of kicking back is yet another way for k 9's to leave sent. Everyone that collects glands , also saves the pads of all four feet right. Are these pads believed to be a gland or is everyone just saving them for filler ?

Hey Golf!

Sometimes I have a difficult time seeing the forest for all the trees in the way. Like the proverbial light bulb flashing over the thick noggin of the cartoon characters, your observations and reasoning, I suspect, are spot on!

Contrary to popular belief, all canids have "sweat" glands all over their bodies. However, only on places where they have no hair (nose pad, foot pads) are these glands actually functional for sweating (merocrine glands). The remainder (at the hair roots) are apocrine glands that produce pheromones, and don't actually sweat. So, it makes perfect sense to me that the moon-walk (kick-backs) is indeed an effort to get more of their "sweat" on the ground in another effort to advertise their presence and a virtual billboard warning others to high-tail it somewhere else. Too, I still have the opinion that the visual marks are important advertisement as well.

Anyway, thanks for shedding some light on this interesting discussion.

Jack

Do you see these kick backs in rocky ground or just in soft soils?

Dirt here is roughly what concrete mix looks like dry; rocks from sand to to big to throw with just enough dirt to grow plants mixed in and i don't recall ever seeing a canine scratch at a toilet or p post. Maybe I haven't been paying attention, but I do recall a number of dogs that did the kick when I lived in the north.

Reading this reminded me of a particular dog in Idaho that always kick scratched an area three feet long every time he wet and made me wonder if it may a regional thing or soil related. Couple places Ive seen 20-xxx piles of coyote dung with nary a scratch. Figured those to be boundary markers, but don't know.

tjm, this is why I asked the question ! I have seen dogs kick back in places that you could not see a mark when they were done. Maybe in rock or tall grass or weeds. I have found kick backs that I assume were made by a coyote, sometimes with a dropping and sometimes without. Perhaps the times I saw the dogs do it without leaving a mark their was more there than I realized or I just wasn't paying attention. When a dog or coyote kicks back in short grass or bare dirt is when it seems most noticeable, to me anyway !