Blew it on a wolf - Season 12

Chas

Chas

CGN frequent flyer
GunNutz
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Location
N.E. Ont - home of the Concrete Goose
And we're back....

You may have seen my previous posts about our hunting experiences while wolf hunting since 2009 along the north shore of Lake Superior, and how it usually works out in the wolfs favour. We have 5 or 6 hunters that regularly get together to chase predators once the moose and deer seasons close. Well, here we go again for another season......

Last Sunday's escapade starts because of a goat... There was a serious accident on Highway 17 on Friday just below the goose statue. One of the vehicles involved was transporting a pair of goats, and one escaped from the crash. That night, it ended up in the Ministry of Natural Resources parking lot with a crew trying to catch it, including QHPenny. I have a capture pole and went out to help but they had tackled it when I got there. While the group was talking, one lady commented abut all of the coyotes howling in the bush while they were trying to round up the goat.

Seeing as the MNR base is just down from the golf course and it we have approval to hunt there after November 15, thought we should give it a shot. I filled a tag with a coyote on the golf course in January, and My72Jeep tagged a wolf, so each of us have only one tag left for the calendar year. QHP and Paddle2DaC each had 2 tags and agreed to come along. So we met at the golf course gate just before legal time, but QHP didnt make it as she was up late the night before dealing with the goat.

Nice morning, 2C but overcast. We walked across the golf course and set up in the trees against the last fairway facing the bluff that is behind the street I live on. I was in the middle with the caller P2DC and M72J set up 70 - 100 yards either side.

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I started out with a "Coyote in heat" call sequence, the same one I used when I shot a coyote in the same spot in January. After a minute or so, P2DC looked over his right shoulder and there was a coyote standing in the trees 25 yards away from him. They stared at each other and when the coyote looked down, he swung his 9mm carbine up but the yote started running. He would get glimpses of it in the scope but never got a shot that he could take.

Within minutes of this we had a pack in the solid bush 4 fairways behind M72J open up and they were howling and yipping like crazy. I had a speaker malfunction and took me a bit to get it up and running. The pack was moving towards the Magpie River and after 6 or 7 minutes of raising hell, they went quiet and we never saw them.

At 830 we decided to move as we could only hunt for another hour (we have to finish by 930 when hunting in the 2 locations in town). We headed over towards the clubhouse and river. P2DC sat in the trees between the two fairways that run parallel to the river, facing the river as his carbine was limited to a 100 yards or less. I sat on the other side of the trees and could see down a long fairway and into the driving range. M72J was behind us watching the fairway that the pack had been adjacent to, and I placed the caller between us and him.

Started out with a couple of howl sequences with no response. Moved into some rabbit in distress calls including one I had never used before, very high pitched and raspy. As soon as it was playing, a bunch of ravens started raising hell around the caller, so I turned and looked at the caller over on my right side as we often have animals show up where the ravens or crows are circling and calling.

P2DC is looking the opposite way down his fairway when two coyotes come out and start heading to my fairway through the strip of trees. He sees I am looking to my right and texts me "Look Left!", but my phone was on my pack and on vibrate, and I didnt hear it. Now the bigger coyote is in the middle of my fairway about 200 + yards away and he cant do anything with the 9mm.

I am watching the ravens and I hear P2DC call me - he got up and ran across the strip of timber - and said "look left!" By now the first coyote has crossed into the trees on the far side (I never saw it) and the second one is in the middle of the fairway. I swung the rifle on the bipod and "woofed" at it to stop it. It stopped for a second and no matter how hard you squeeze the trigger, it wont go off when the safety is on! So I fumble with the safety and the coyote starts going, but P2DC "woofs" and it stops. I dropped it with one shot at about 220 yards with the .22-250 and using my handloaded 55 grain Nosler ballistic tip.

Shaking and laughing with P2DC about the turn of events, and when he told me one had already crossed, I passed him my rifle in case it came out on the driving range. My caller had automatically gone off with the pup in distress call when I fired, so I kept repeating it on the handset. After a minute or so P2DC says - "ones barking back at us" and sure enough, somewhere in the timber in front of us is a coyote baking.

And then we hear "BOOOM!" from where M72J is sitting. All quiet and then the barking starts again - we laugh and P2DC says "He missed it", and then the text comes in "I missed it at 200 yards offhand" from M72j. He was sitting at the 200 yard marker when it walked out on the tee off and started barking at him. In retrospect, I dont think it was barking at him as he was camouflaged up. Turns out I had shot a pup, and I think it was its mother barking the pup in distress calls saying "I am over here dummy - now get your butt over here".

So we saw 3 or 4 coyotes, had another pack work around us, all in 2 hours of the first morning of our fall predator hunt. Best use I know of for a golf course!

SVYuPrS.jpg


Off to Timmies where we ran into Wayne and a coffee to celebrate. Pup was nicely furred but not very big - probably no more than 20 - 25 lbs. Nice bright sharp teeth.

Well that is all my tags used until January 1. I called my wife and asked if she knew any good therapists I could see to get me through the next 32 days.....

Oh well, out comes the 22 magnum and I will hunt fox.

Regards
 
Can't wait for this thread to get going with the new year. It's one of the things that gets me through the winter
 
Excellent start. Real shame you have to burn tags on damn coyotes! Should be allowed 4 tags! If you shoot two coyotes then you still have 2 wolf tags. Ridiculous!

Glad you atleast get a reset in January for tags, Good luck and thanks for starting this thread again
 
Great read. Thanks for sharing the adventure again with us Looking forward to reading more...
Best of luck with the wolfs... :)
 
Update 1

On Saturday, Paddle2DaC, Troy and I headed to the golf course with me along as videographer. We set up with P2DC facing the bluff and Troy facing the fairway behind him. I was sitting in the strip of trees between the 2 of them. Caller started out with a female coyote interrogation howl followed by a female challenge call. We heard a group behind us in the heavy timber after the first call, but they were quite far from us. As soon as the second call finished a ticked off coyote started barking loudly at us from the timber about 100 yards to our right. Sure enough it runs out and stops broadside to the only guy with no gun or tag. P2DC saw it run out but it stopped with a spruce tree between them, and Troy was facing the other way. After a couple of seconds of standing there, it turned tail and ran back into the bush. We tried for a while longer there and over by the river with no joy.

P2DC and I then headed out to the hydro line to see if he could score on a wolf. This was the first time for calling there this year. Started with a "lonesome wolf" howl and about 20 seconds after it finished, one answered back, and then a whole pack started howling, yipping and barking. Sounded like they were about 1/2 km away and behind the local landfill site. Waited for a couple of minutes and we played a "wolf confrontation" howl and the pack responded right away, and they were a lot closer and very agitated. I asked P2DC how many shots he had and he said 3 - I told him to shoot straight because all I had was a folding knife (and he is a lot younger and can outrun me...)

I said to P2DC that we should cut the distance and we moved down the hydro line and into an adjacent cutover. P2DC climbed up on an old log deck so he could see down a trail and a cut strip where I have a bait site. I sat back by the hydro line to watch the action. Another "confrontation call" and the pack lit up - right in front of P2DC. They were incredibly loud and agitated - I figure they were no more than 50 - 60 metres in front of him. But they were in the timber and just wouldnt show themselves. Waited for a while, tried a single howl, no response and we backed out after waiting a while with no sign of them. We have had this happen to us before - they raise hell with our calls and close the distance, but wont show themselves.

On our walk out we figured probably were 5 or 6 animals that we were dealing with. We got out to the truck and drove into the landfill and talked with the attendant. I asked him if they ran over him and he said there were 10 wolves! Someone was unloading garbage and he saw them running down the treeline along the edge of the landfill.

We showed up this morning with 5 hunters and put 2 on my bait, QHPenny and My72Jeep on a bait they have 100 yards or so away from it and I sat on the power line with their daughter. No response to any of the calls. So were they there and didnt respond, or were they a transitory pack moving through? M72J and I went in to check our cameras this afternoon and the attached pictures are his from the baitsite about 200 m from the hydro line. You will see there is one large black wolf and if you look closely, you will see there are 5 wolves in the other picture. My guess is that we have a resident pack and that they either didnt want to play today or were somewhere else.

De7huF8.jpg


5kZdcre.jpg


Picture of the black one from my camera:

vlqomNy.jpg


So that's it for this weekend. Only 25 more days to January 1.....

Regards
 
Last edited:
Chas said:
On Saturday, Paddle2DaC, Troy and I headed to the golf course with me along as videographer. We set up with P2DC facing the bluff and Troy facing the fairway behind him. I was sitting in the strip of trees between the 2 of them. Caller started out with a female coyote interrogation howl followed by a female challenge call. We heard a group behind us in the heavy timber after the first call, but they were quite far from us. As soon as the second call finished a ticked off coyote started barking loudly at us from the timber about 100 yards to our right. Sure enough it runs out and stops broadside to the only guy with no gun or tag. P2DC saw it run out but it stopped with a spruce tree between them, and Troy was facing the other way. After a couple of seconds of standing there, it turned tail and ran back into the bush. We tried for a while longer there and over by the river with no joy.

P2DC and I then headed out to the hydro line to see if he could score on a wolf. This was the first time for calling there this year. Started with a "lonesome wolf" howl and about 20 seconds after it finished, one answered back, and then a whole pack started howling, yipping and barking. Sounded like they were about 1/2 km away and behind the local landfill site. Waited for a couple of minutes and we played a "wolf confrontation" howl and the pack responded right away, and they were a lot closer and very agitated. I asked P2DC how many shots he had and he said 3 - I told him to shoot straight because all I had was a folding knife (and he is a lot younger and can outrun me...)

I said to P2DC that we should cut the distance and we moved down the hydro line and into an adjacent cutover. P2DC climbed up on an old log deck so he could see down a trail and a cut strip where I have a bait site. I sat back by the hydro line to watch the action. Another "confrontation call" and the pack lit up - right in front of P2DC. They were incredibly loud and agitated - I figure they were no more than 50 - 60 metres in front of him. But they were in the timber and just wouldnt show themselves. Waited for a while, tried a single howl, no response and we backed out after waiting a while with no sign of them. We have had this happen to us before - they raise hell with our calls and close the distance, but wont show themselves.

On our walk out we figured probably were 5 or 6 animals that we were dealing with. We got out to the truck and drove into the landfill and talked with the attendant. I asked him if they ran over him and he said there were 10 wolves! Someone was unloading garbage and he saw them running down the treeline along the edge of the landfill.

We showed up this morning with 5 hunters and put 2 on my bait, QHPenny and My72Jeep on a bait they have 100 yards or so away from it and I sat on the power line with their daughter. No response to any of the calls. So were they there and didnt respond, or were they a transitory pack moving through? M72J and I went in to check our cameras this afternoon and the attached pictures are his from the baitsite about 200 m from the hydro line. You will see there is one large black wolf and if you look closely, you will see there are 5 wolves in the other picture. My guess is that we have a resident pack and that they either didnt want to play today or were somewhere else.

De7huF8.jpg


5kZdcre.jpg


Picture of the black one from my camera:

vlqomNy.jpg


So that's it for this weekend. Only 25 more days to January 1.....

Regards
Click to expand...
Chas if you look closer at the photos I sent you, you can see 6 wolves in one pic.
 
Sounds like you've got plenty of coyotes (and wolves) around! I get that the MNR wants to control the wolf harvest using a tag system, but I've never understood why you need to use the tag on a coyote. It would make a lot more sense if you could keep hunting/shooting coyotes up until you either shoot your wolf intentionally or have a whoopsie and have to use your wolf tag. I know it would be hard to enforce and some guys might not know a young wolf from a large coyote, but would it not be relatively easy to maybe do a weight rule? e.g. coyote/wolf hunters must carry a suitable scale and any canine weighing over 40# or 45# must be tagged. I'd think by the fall, even a young wolf would weigh more than 45#? And the vast majority of even very large coyotes will weigh less than 45#. I keep a scale in my pack and I've shot a few really "huge" coyotes and haven't registered one over 45# yet (I shot that scaled right at 45# and one that scaled 42# - but those two were way out in front and the vast majority I've weighed were 30-35#). I guess we're just spoiled here in the south, but no season/no limit/no tag coyote hunting.
 
TacticalTeacher said:
Holy wolf hunting, Batman.

Great job. You still running that Primos Alpha dog I remember from hunting with you down around Elmvale area??

Cheers and stay safe!,

Barney
Click to expand...

Currently using the FoxPro but still use the Alpha Dogg. The FoxPro has a somewhat better sound but the Alpha Dogg handset is a lot better than the FoxPro.

Stay safe down there..


PS - no action on the golf course and had a single wolf howl back from the hydro line but a long ways away....
 
Well we are still at it although I am relegated to hunting foxes or team photographer. On Christmas day, My72Jeep and QHPenny went out to check their bait site. QHP walked past the bait and was checking a cut strip when she saw a wolf at the end of the strip. By the time she got the scope cap covers deployed, it had moved into another strip and was further than she wanted to shoot and didnt get a shot off.

Boxing day the 3 of us hit the hydro line first thing in the morning. Due to a turkey induced stupor from the night before, I didnt show up at the spot that Paddle2DaC and I had agreed to hunt at. He checked that spot out, and headed to the golf course to see if he could find a coyote. We were texting back and forth while the 3 of us had the caller going for wolves off the hydro line. We had no response after about a 1/2 hour when we played a 90 second double wolf howl. When it finished, a whole pack erupted about 1km away. I texted P2DC and told him to head out our way and cover the hydro line corridor behind us.

Now we havent seen or heard a pack there in about a month (when the 10 of them ran across the landfill site heading to us). Cautiously played a couple of howls after P2DC was in place - nothing. Waited about another 15 minutes and replayed the double wolf howl. The pack let loose probably within 200 yards of us. They had silently traveled the distance over the 40 or so minutes since we first heard them. We are in a really dirty cut and we couldnt see them. Tried another howl and nothing - no response. P2DC was watching the hydro line where the ridge we were on crossed it but nothing came out. We played a canine pup frenzy twice with the hope the pack would come in. A raven came and set in a cedar tree above the caller and raised hell, but nothing came out. The fact that they came silently to within a couple of hundred yards of us and only responded to the one howl sequence was very interesting - just goes to show you that you never know what may show up to your calls.

We waited a bit longer, then packed up and headed out to where P2DC was waiting on the line. While he was standing there, a wolf came out crossing the ridge heading into where we had been calling. He dropped to his stomach, made a woof call which stopped the wolf for a second, but it kept going and P2DC couldnt get a shot.

This morning P2DC and I set up on the hydro line but no response to the calls and we saw nothing. There was a huge wolf track that came down the line right on top of our boot tracks from yesterday. It walked up to a bait site, turned around and walked back up the line. After we pulled out, I drove down the main road and about 2 kms from where we had been hunting, the pack came onto the road and was heading towards the last dam site on the river. We have seen this before, when the pack used to be cycle through every in 7 -12 days, so will see if they stay true to form.

We have never had a pack show itself over the years I have been posting this thread, despite them being very close in the trees howling back at us. I have tried barks, howls, challenges, pup in distress calls over the years but they just wont step out where we can take a crack at them. Always exciting when it happens though!

No pictures of the pack but we do have a couple of locals - and a fisher.

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Some people...

f:P:f:P:f:P:

I have mentioned in previous posts that the municipality has authorized 10 of us to hunt in now 3 locations in town for coyotes / wolves with certain restrictions in place to deal with safety. In our fourth year now and have never had an issue until yesterday.

We paid to have two 30x30 inch signs made with the wording "Warning Predator Control Hunt in Progress". On Sunday January 3, 2021 at 7:25, I erected one sign at the trail at the end of my street and hung one on the back of my truck at the gate at the entrance to the snow dump. These are the only 2 access points that the public use and it was an hour before sunrise. Legal hunting time was 7:58 and me and My72Jeep were at the snow dump. I apologize for the quality of the following pictures I took at the time.

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At 8:05 I observed a man exit from the trail behind us and stand in the middle of the road looking towards the dump where I had my caller playing a coyote howl. He then crossed the road and entered the trail on the north side of the road, negating the area I was watching. Whomever he was, he had to walk right past the sign at the end of the street to enter onto the trail.

At 8:15 I observed a woman walking a dog up the road heading directly towards where I was sitting at the end of the road. Before I could approach her, she exited onto the same trail on the north side of the road. A couple of minutes later she came back onto the road by the gate. She had walked directly past the sign hanging on my truck.

Shortly after that she drove up the road in her truck heading to the snow dump, again going right past the warning sign on my truck. Am I missing something or are the signs not clear??? And the municipality has warning signs up as well, although they have fallen into disrepair,

I left my firearm where I was sitting and walked out to talk to her. I explained that we do not hunt at the snow dump very often based on snow removal activities and weather, but when we do, would she please respect the signs and not walk her dog up the road. She was quite surprised that I had seen her do this and said she was talking to the dog and coughing. Yes you were I replied (she couldnt see me in white camo sitting behind a snow bank).

I again respectfully asked her to not walk the dog in while we had the warning signs up and that we could only hunt until 9:30, and that if we did call in a wolf or coyotes while she was holding a leashed dog, it could be a hazardous situation. She said he had never seen anything there, and I told her that i had shot 1 coyote there, and called in a couple more (and forgot about the lynx that swatted M72J electronic caller there). I was polite but kept repeating the message, when the warning signs are up, please dont walk your dog or drive your truck in where we are hunting. She is very opposed to us hunting wolves and when I said the municipality authorized us to do so, she said "Then the municipality is stupid". Repeated the message again, and got the response "well we have our schedule" meaning that her and her dog walked there (and to hell with us).

I honestly thought I had made no headway with her on the issue, but another lady who walks dogs with her called me a couple of hours later and told me that the woman has now agreed to not come into the snow dump when we have our warning signs up.

First time in 4 years we have had an issue, and hopefully that is the end of it
 
That is very frustrating.
We have had the RCMP called on us 3 times this year while legally hunting ducks.
The police were very good. They checked with the COs before coming and were very friendly.
 
There is no reasoning with these kinds of people. UNTIL a wolf or coyote kills their dog then its KILL THEM ALL FOR US.

I deal with people like this on a regular basis. My grand fathers property has the Bruce trail that goes through the corner of the property. Every deer season we put up chicken fence to say TRAIL CLOSED FOR ONE WEEK then have dates and signed by my father and uncle that run the property now.

They both had people walking the trail an hour before dark. They climbed right over the chicken fence and carried on. My dad keeps wanting to fire a shot off to scare them but hasn't as he knows better.


The only reason the Bruce trail goes through our property is the deal my grand father made, Its closed for the deer gun hunt for 2 weeks a year. Most people respect that, But a few don't and will ruin it for everyone else.
 
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