My home line is 12 marten boxes one cat jackpot and one snare fence.
Closed it down today will set up another short line on my camp trail and powerline once the mild weather is done.
I had some moose hide and bones at the end of the home line but no snares set there.The wolves hit it hard a few days ago by the look of it.Moose hair turds and urine all over the place.They dragged the hide around out of the bush and onto the trail and completely devoured the hide and leg bones just left the hair,lol
I got a different place to set up a new jackpot for another pack near the camp trail.Do that sometime in the new year when me and the wife go out to stay at the cabin for a few days.
Cat sign is pretty scarce,I think I will give them a pass for the rest of the year.

Go get them Boco

How do you know they’re a different pack, unless it’s quite a distance away? I know the boundaries have changed this year on my line. After taking 6 last year, a fella 10 miles south of one of my jackpots got a pic of an adult with 8 pups in summer. Another trapper who mainly does summer depredation has gotten a dozen over last summer. He lives about 30 miles from my line and traps within a 10 mile radius from his place.
I just started reading a book all about wolves, learning that the biologists don’t really know much, lots of theory and educated guessing. In the end, a wolf will do whatever it wants, nothings written in stone regarding them……lol

I'm sure Boco will tell us, but I'm assuming by the tracks. I know I had a new pack move into an area this year. There was a bunch of three in there last year, all big adult wolves, I took out an old male, leaving a female and a male (could tell by them peeing in the snow, for completely positive sex ID). There was a big bunch with some small tracks in it this fall, that I assumed was that pair with a litter of pups. But I caught six out of them last week, an old, almost toothless female, an older male, two pups and two two year old males. So that is not the pair that was in there with a litter of pups. I think I cleaned that pack, and a couple days later seen sign of a pair in there again. Probably the old pair who has been living there.

Yes further away and I Know the area well being in the bush here since the early 70s.One wolf pack core area is North west,(resident pack on my driftwood line) and other pack comes in periodically from the north east.(resident pack on adjacent line) This is the pack that ripped up the hide and bones.
There is another pack that is core location south of my driftwood line that comes in occasionally but does not stay.
The trapper who used to trap wolves on my north west side sold his line a few years ago and the new trapper does not take wolves so that pack is all mine now,lol.
I believe the trapper on the east boundary may take the odd wolf once in a while.And the big line on the south has not been trapped in at least 15 years Lots of moose in that area and the pack is larger than normal,why they make incursions once in a while into the other packs home ranges.

Once you find the locations where two wolf packs mark territory at a boundary you will see if you monitor the location over a few years that when one pack is thinned out the adjacent pack will know from the regular scent marking that the pack is weakened and will start to make incursions more frequently or in some cases take over new territory if their numbers are left to increase.
Once the individual wolves in a pack come together after freeze up to hunt moose,you can go out near the boundary location that you have identified on a cold clear night and do some howls or even moose calls.Often you will get wolves howling right away,then short time after you may hear another pack howling from a totally different area

When I stayed at the camp on my more remote Mattagami line in the late fall before freeze up I would hear wolves howling west side of the river,then sometimes another pack would start singing over on the east side of the river.

Wolves communicate a lot.The times the hair really stands up on my neck is when you hear them whistle barking to each other in the bush very close and on several sides of where you are.
The first time I heard that was one fall I was checking beaver traps and seen fresh wolf tracks where a wolf had pulled the trap and beaver up on the bank,but had not eaten it,I was sure from the sign I had chased it off when it heard the bike coming on the trail
As i reset the trap and took the beaver I could hear 3 wolves whistle barking just out of sight in the brush on 3 different sides of me.
Had similar happen a few times since,and Ovila Sylvain a big number local wolf trapper had told me about that before I had experienced it so I knew what it was.

What does whistle barking mean in wolf lingo?

They use whistle barking to communicate when close together.Not loud like a howl.

First time I heard that was back before we had a season on them here. I was guiding a lion hunter in the Selway Bitterroot wilderness and walked up a drainage, the night before one pack had came up from down the drainage and another had came down from up the drainage. Where the two packs met the snow was packed down for a couple hundred yards and torn up with scratches and looked like some tussles between wolves. Every bush sticking out of the snow had been marked. I wasn't going to turn the dogs loose, but I walked on up the drainage because there had been a big tom using it and I wanted to see if I could cut his track leaving and tell which way he went. About a half mile further on I had gotten ahead of my hunter and I stopped to wait for him. I whistled to see where he was at, and when I did, wolves started doing that low howl/whistle bark on all four sides of me, within 50-100 yards.

I've heard it a couple times since, and it will certainly raise the hair on your neck.

What I meant to explain this morning, before my breakfast started to burn and I hit post, was that if you pay attention to the tracks you can often differentiate between packs by their composition, not just the number of wolves, but sizes and sexes. Size is not always and indication of sex, but if you can see how they urinate in the snow, that is a positive indication of sex.

Merry Christmas! Your stacking up some fur!

Merry Cheistmas HFT to you and yours
Stay safe Bud,

2 Christmas presents today.
One wejack and one wapistan.

Nice catches

This little guy was busy on the line today.His tracks in the fresh skiff of snow told the tale.
First he hit a bif bait and packed the snow down pretty good,
Oddly enough he didnt check out the nearby marten box.
Instead he headed down the trail to the next box and ate an entire flying squirrel and took the bait from the box,then he went on down the trail to the next box where his luck ran out.
Even though his gut was tight as a drum he was still looking to collect goodies for his cache.

Nice catch.Love seeing those tracks in the snow.

Good feeling to come around a corner and see that.

Boco, you mentioned above that someone "sold their line". Not sure how trapping is done up North. Do you have rights to hunt / trap the territory or area that you are in or is it public? So remote that it's first come, first serve? Do you legally have your own area?

As many have mentioned, GREAT thread and info. Appreciate you taking us along.

Not sure about Ontario, but I’ve heard of guys “buying” lines for $50000 in Alberta too. Not sure if these are real registered lines or just some private property because 50 grand can’t be right! And 50 grand is too cheap for a chunk of land?…lol
He they’re awarded to the most competent trapper who knows the line, family relations and a few other things taken into consideration…..sometimes. Sometimes I hear it’s a real fight.

Only the assetts are sold to the incoming trapper,not the land.
Cabind trails boats motors and other equipment etc,
Size of the line number and size,condition of cabins,acessabitlity (developed and maintained trails and portages) and a large live beaver house count all factor into the cost
traplines that are vacant are usually not developed so need years of work to develop and can be allocated for the cost of a licence.
A good line here well developed with two nice cabins on the river well developed trails close to town and good numbers of all furbearers recently sold for $25 000.About 300 sq km.
An 01 trapper on a registered line has the exclusive right and responsibility to manage the line.
He can hire or assign helpers if necessary as long as they are licenced to trap.
Some lines that were illegally taken from native people in the past in some cases may not be sold by the current holder of the line since these lines will revert back to the native families that used to trap them back in the day if the native family has documentation of previous tenure.The HBC kept meticulous records of all the native trappers over several hundred years so documentation is available at the HBC archives in Winnipeg.