9, January 2025 Stampede!

    You can say what you want about timber (Canis Lupus) aka gray wolves, as most everybody 'round here in northwestern Minnesota (and southern Manitoba) unhesitatingly does; the wolves supporters well in the minus category in Roseau and surrounding counties. The wolves were removed from the Endangered Species List protections in 2021 and management returned to individual states. I suspect some wolves are still shot on sight even though it's illegal. The major complaint being how wolves compete with deer hunters; secondly the wolves depredation of livestock i.e., cattle, turkeys, sheep, goats, etc -- and even domestic animals, such as dogs. 

https://assets.senate.mn/committees/2023-2024/3130_Committee_on_Environment_Climate_and_Legacy/CY%2022%20MN%20WS%20Wolf%20Summary%20final.pdf 

It isn't uncommon to see a gray wolf in Palmville Township feeling safe at 400+ yards away while unaware that many deer hereabouts are shot from that distance.

 Still, the woods around us seem empty of any animals at first glance. Of course, birds come to bird feeders yet; and there's always squirrels to be seen as a result. I see hundreds of rabbit tracks northwest of our house; so then also an occasional coyote and fox track intermingled among them. Deer are largely nocturnal at this time of year, being in their brush-eating phase, as farm fields are devoid of cereal grains and hay. Toward evening a few are seen on field edges, four or five in a bunch, pawing through the snow in high hopes of finding hidden leftovers of last fall's harvest. 

 

Hoar frost accents the trees across Mikinaak Creek. Not a deer (nor wolf) in sight.

Our woodland and yard has seen an increase in deer tracks andthose who have come in at night and pawed up the snow to get at the green grass underneath. On the occasional sunny day, some deer, feeling safe in the yard, are seen appreciating a short nap.

    On Sunday evening, last, I had the occasion to come home from grocery shopping in Roseau, when I spotted a large canine-like track on the township road leading to our place, so I stopped my car and got out to take a look.

Using a glove for scale, I figured the length of the track to be 5.5 inches, so it wasn't a coyote track, but that of a gray wolf, and just one from what I gathered. I looked for other tracks as wolves have come through here for years, commonly three or more at a time. This wasn't a huge track, not as big as some I've seen. It went north from along the shoulder of the road, then turning onto our winding farm lane above the creek. Catching a single deer track, it followed it to where the deer went off the lane, down the ditch of the east side, over an embankment and into the creek basin.

This is another example of a wolf track using a pen for scale. The pen is 5.25 inches long. This canine track was deep-set into the wet gravel of a road suggesting to me the animal carried some weight as would a wolf.

Gray wolf across Mikinaak Creek about eight years ago. We might not see them as often as they see us but their tracks are not so easily hidden.

   I wasn't dressed warm enough to follow the tracks farther. I'd just keep my eyes open and maybe chance sight of one, like I did in the above image.

   On Monday evening, on another trip by car, I noticed a 'stampede' of deer tracks all coming from the creek, up the steep face of the ditch, onto the lane and across it heading west through the four rows of spruce trees on the opposite side through them and into a woodland of poplar, willow, and spruce adjoining the much larger 100-acre plantation.

Tracks of several running deer, from L-R, from the creek bottom, up the embankment, up the steep ditch grade and onto the farm lane, across the vehicle tracks, down the opposite ditch and into the spruce trees planted there. Two large wolf tracks came up from the creek and onto the road; one split off south following the shoulder.

Farther south along the winding lane, the single wolf crossed the lane and through the spruce rows heading west paralleling the running deer that the single larger wolf was pursuing.

This single track I thought was what I call 'a double-back'. It came from the woodland north of this road where all the deer ran from the lane. Losing the scent or a particular deer it was chasing, it then circled or 'doubled' back downwind, to the east/west township road that intersects our farm lane, hoping to catch its scent. Perhaps successful, it ran up the farm lane again and back northwest into the tree rows.

 

The wolves chased the deer from the creek, on the right side, across our farm lane, and into the tree rows on the left. The wolf that doubled back during the chase ran back up the lane, then back into the tree rows again.

    There's been quite the murder of crows west of here that we suspect is the result of a deer kill that the birds have found. I plan to hike out there this coming weekend to find it. I'll add the image post-publication should there be anything left but blood in the snow.