Started putting my line in on Sunday. Made it about 20 miles despite the low snow conditions and finding every rock out there. Plenty of wolf and wolverine sign which was a welcome sight.

Good to see you out there!

Nice

Darn nice area to trap I'd say , I look forward to riding along and the pictures to come .

Hope you hammer those wolves and wolverines, good to see you again and look forward to following along.

Looking forwards to your journey.

Checked the line last week and struck out. Got my nephew out with for the first time and he had a blast. Saw plenty of moose and one group of caribou. Ptarmigan numbers are looking good. Spotted a lone wolf on the way out but couldn’t close the distance.

On this weeks check we picked up a surprise lynx in a wolverine cubby. It decided to reach into the conibear. The belisle held on without issue. Wolves came in but missed at a pee post. A wily fox decided to visit a wolf kill and uncovered my trap then crapped next to it.

That is funny with the fox Thanks for sharing and congrats on the lynx!

Sounds like you need to bring some snowshoes and a 20 gauge!

Nice cat. Gotta love a belisle

Had an interesting day on the trapline today. Had a moose decide to step in a No BS wolf trap on a steel drag at a pee post. Thankfully it only made it about 100 feet before the trap came off. Then we get to a wolverine cubby and one of the 330’s is tripped and there are fox tracks all over and a little frozen blood on one jaw. Follow the fox tracks down the line to my next set and have a gorgeous cross fox sitting in a #3 patiently waiting. Get to the next to last set another wolverine cubby with a 330 and it has been sprung by a moose and is now a little bent up and sitting at the end of its attachment cable to the tree. Needless to say the fox came in after the moose and cleaned my bait out.

Dang I am a little behind on posting. Dec was a slow month. Wolves are traveling through all the time but never in the right spot at the right time. So I keep adding gear for them. With the low snow conditions wolverine are going up and down the mountains instead of traveling my trail. Explored a new area and broke that in this past weekend.

I keep adding wolverine sets anytime I cut tracks and that paid off this past check!

The ermine population is high and they are having a lot of fun pulling bait from wolverine sets. I am amazed at the size of bait they are able to drag out without setting the trap off.

Awesome country and pictures.Good luck with your new sets.

Every now and then just to make sure you are not in good physical condition I recommend running out of gas while running the line solo. Thankfully it was on a side trail I was exploring close to the trailhead and there was a decently packed down trail.

Four years later I ordered the new sending unit for my sled. lol

Dang that would not be good

Nice wolverine.Would wolverine be up in the top of mountains like this?

Nice gulo

At times yes they are up top. A lot of wolverine spend their time in the alpine and go up and down the mountains in search of food. There have been some neat wolverine studies involving tracking collars.

I've found occasionally that some individual wolverines get quite good at hunting ptarmigan that are roosting in their little snow caves. Those wolverines spend a fair amount of time in the high alpine, around the last willow growth that the birds feed on.

Pete

Nice wolverine Rob!

Nice.Thanks

Here are a couple good reads on local Wolverine research.

https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=wildlifenews.view_article&articles_id=692


https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=wildlifenews.view_article&articles_id=1075

Awesome! Living the dream in Gods country!

If you want to take a deep dive into wolverine studies, you can Google Audrey Magoun and try to unravel various sites and studies. A lot of the information is buried in ADFG archives, but with diligence can be found. She was a bit of a pioneer using cameras and hair traps to study wolverine. She did a fairly long study in southeast Alaska and brought a lot of new information and ideas regarding habitat usage, territory size and travel of individual animals.
Another source of really valuable information is another study conducted by ADFG in the northern southeast area by Kevin White, LaVerne Beier, and Ryan Scott in the Berners Bay area.
The information gathered by that study is amazing, and included some pretty incredible statistics on individual wolverine that gave me pause. I had access to anecdotal "evidence", as well as follow-up information not included in the study proper, and outside the study timeframe, including a "lost" collar that turned up 2, (or was it 3?), years later that originated on a male wolverine captured in Berners Bay, that travelled northwest almost to Skagway, returned to the bay, then went north over the ice fields, then south to the Taku River, went north again into British Columbia, crossing the Taku in winter, (and presumably crossed over ice), gaining access to the stupefyingly jagged Tracy Arm area. It then went northeast again, travelling an un-known path to the headwaters of the mighty Stikine River system. From there it followed the river downstream, toward the coast. On its way, near Prospect Creek, still in British Columbia, it encountered a set made by a trapper. That was the end of what I consider the most amazing, documented travel of a furbearer I ever had the privilege of confirming. I should add that I had un-feted access to those doing the study, including the biologists and pilots used during the study. That not only gave me "inside information" regarding locations, weather and geographic conditions, lures and baits tried, and, naturally, frustrations related to trapping wolverine in general, but also other information that came from those people that didn't constitute pertinent data for the dictates of the study but were very informational to a trapper.
To make it even more amazing is, that wolverine started his incredible journey, (and all the information gleaned from him), from my trapline of 13 years. In fact, the very spot of his capture, happened within 100 yards of another Tman member's line. He and I basically pursued the same population, and ADFG decided to join our party, if you will.
For me, at least, it was worth the knowledge gained from the study.

Thanks