Is this lice damage on this wolf? Another one we caught out of the same pack had a few patches of mange on it. But this one looked different and a lot bigger area of damage.

Is the belly dark or red coloured?
Could be shoulder/chewing lice.
You should be able to see them crawling up the guardhair if you have it hanging in heat.
If you are an old geezer you might need a magnifying glass to see them all crawling-they are very small.
If it was alive for a while in the snare/trap it could also have wrecked itself on brush.

Could be smelling bad too by now. The skin secretes oil in defense of the lice. Those look like louse rubs. They cause the animal non stop irritation that causes them to rub the guard hair off. The under fur mats and smells bad. As boco says, the belly, groin, and between the toes get a rootbeer colored stain. They are pretty worthless as the skin does not tan well due to the secretions.
You can see them, my golden picked them up from coyotes, Ivermectin took care of it.

It didn’t stink or have much smell other then dirty wolf smell. The leather side was dark in all the area where the damage was. I didn’t see anything crawling on it but I was looking for flea sized bugs not something smaller.

Whatever the cause it's a dang shame ! Always hate seeing damaged critters.
You guys seeing an increase in Lynx population ?

To bad.

It is still good to thin out the wolf population on the trapline,especially when zoonotic disease like lice starts to spread in the population.
I used to be bummed out when I caught lousy wolves,nowadays I just leave them in the bush and am glad I got to take them out to help out the overall health of the trapline.
Sometimes you will see it in the grotzen on the shoulders.That and the red belly is where it seems to start.
There is still a lot of good Fur on these wolves,If you want to make fur articles.but they are no good to send to auction.
Once the rubbing extends to the flanks,they are pretty much worthless except for skull and maybe claws.

Chickenminer seeing a lot more rabbits but hardly any Lynx. Lots of marten.

Boco I plan on getting it tanned anyways. Looks like enough fur to make a hat out of.

I have one in the freezer this year that looked kind of like that. Only she was strange looking, I actually wondered if she was getting over lice or mange or something (not that I've heard of wolves or coyotes ever getting over it) it was like a dog that got cured of mange, probably half to two thirds of her body was short haired, but it had guard hair, it was just short, like it was growing back in healthy. She did have the typical red belly, but not bad. The other five out of the pack were healthy and well haired, including two that I'm sure were her pups. I didn't send her out to the tannery because of it, but thought I might try to mess with tanning her myself, if I screw up somehow I won't be ruining a good wolf hide. Maybe I'll make something out of the good fur.