Blew It On A Wolf - Season 8

my72jeep

my72jeep

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Northern Ont.
I've been hunting with Chas for just about 2 full years now. We were out for 8am -17 on our goto area, after an hour and only a yote at 500 yrds ( not worth the shot) we packed up and did a road recce. Looks like there are 3 in the area, but not to be seen by us. We then went to a new area about 20 km north where Chas has seen some new activity. We park and walk in about 200-300 yrds to where an old logging road splits into a Y. We set the caller out sit down and run through about 15 minutes of Rabit calls and nadda. Then Chas hits the lone Wolf howl and boom a wolf steps out onto the right fork about 40 yrds away. As I'm on the right I can't see it yet but as Chas brings his 22-250 up I do the same with my .243 safety off as it comes up, Chas goes see it? At this time it's still in the trees on the right and for the love of trees I was not seeing it. Chas says take the shot, as he believes in sharing the thrill as I at this point haven't got one, as he said this I finally saw its head and that's all I saw is its head as the scope set at 5 and it was real close. Then it moved I saw chest, aimed and shot. Chas says he saw the impact. Well it ran 7 feet and dropped. My first of many I hope.

 
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just for my curiosity, what are you doing with him? Keep the hide or will visit a local taxidermist?
congrats on your wolf
 
Glad My72 Jeep started the thread. Unfortunately I havent been on the site for an extended time due to my fathers passing away in the spring, dealing with estate issues and being out of town with little / no internet access for extended periods.

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. In addition to Gunner410, My72Jeep and his wife (who is hooked more than he is on predator hunting and shot the largest wolf of the group in March), 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.......

I officially retired after working 39 years with the same agency and one of the retirement gifts I received was a Foxpro Fusion electronic game call. I transferred some of my favourite calls from my Primos Alpha Dogg that I have been using for the past 4 years and tested it out. Call volume and clarity are excellent, the remote controller has a few quirks that I don’t like such as having to reset a couple of settings on it everytime you turn it off and on. Battery life seems horrid – it takes 3 AA batteries for the control (same as the Primos). I could get a whole season on the Primos, on the Foxpro – it used three brand new Quantum batteries in a weekend. And when you put in new batteries, you have to reset the date, time and settings which is a PITA.

Well so far, things have been rather slow, with mild temperatures and very little snow until Wednesday. There are lots of coyote tracks around town with regular sightings in the community and a few pet attacks. There were only a couple of wolf tracks where we regularly hunt on a series of power lines, but lots of coyote and fox tracks. I drove north of town last week and found tracks from two packs – each with 7 or 8 animals in it. At one location, across from a pulp load check pull off on Highway 17, I saw the biggest wolf track I have ever seen – at first I thought it was a bear track. We have seen this before in that the wolves move into the area around town when the snow depths increase and displace the coyotes.

Gunner410 decided to pass on hunting this weekend, so I met up with My72Jeep and headed out to the power line near town. I didn’t check the thermometer which was a mistake as it was -17C and the boots I wore were not up to the challenge! Set up on the hydro line and called with a variety of rabbit in distress calls After 20 minutes, a coyote came out on the line on a ridge at approximately 500 yards away. It stopped and looked in the direction of the caller but kept going across the line – the time was 8:16. After another 45 minutes, we packed up , headed into town for a hot Tim’s coffee and different boots.

We headed up the highway and pulled into the pulp check pull off and parked behind a tractor trailer unit. We walked across the highway and onto a road system that paralleled the highway. Where we set up was no further than 100 yards from our truck, with a thin strip of bush between us and the highway. There were very fresh tracks of a couple of individual wolves, and a pack of 7 or 8 had gone through very recently (I found the tracks here the previous Sunday, and checked a couple of times through the week and saw no new tracks – we have seen this before in that packs seem to cycle through the same locations every 7 -9 days).

Set up, and started with a number of rabbit in distress calls. I was sitting about 2 feet to his left and we were watching the same direction into a gravel pit. Heard the transport start up and pull onto the highway and we could very plainly hear any traffic on the highway. After about 20 minutes I switched up and played a wolf confrontation howl sequence that lasted about 30 seconds. Didn’t play anything else and about 10 minutes later a large wolf stepped out of the treeline 40 yards in front of us, and the rest is history.... She was staring right at us – I was watching her in the scope. She knew something was there but we were sitting in the shadows and were wearing full white camo. After about 40 seconds she took a step forward and I whispered “SHOOT!!!!!!”.
I figured that she wasn’t going to hold much longer and was starting to pull the trigger when My72Jeep fired with his .243.

I saw the bullet impact in her chest through the scope and he she ran into a clump of small trees and disappeared from sight. She didn’t come out the other side so we figured she was down. His shot set off the Foxbang function on the remote which automatically set the caller off with pup in distress calls. We ran these for 10 minutes or so to see if another wolf would show itself (happened to us before doing this) but nothing came out. She only went a few yards and was lying in the snow. Beautiful wolf and pelt with a large blocky head - we have yet to weigh her, but I am guessing she is about 80 pounds. Back to town to show her off to our friends, including Gunner410 (there is a pattern every time he doesn’t come with us…).

We went out this morning with another hunter, and Gunner410 cancelled out as he was partying last night. At 8:18 AM, the same coyote came out and crossed in the same location as yesterday. So tomorrow AM, we are setting up within 150 yards of his crossing route and see if it comes back out again… We checked out the pulp check location and there were more fresh tracks from a couple of wolves so we set up and tried again, but nothing came out.

So we are off to a good start, and hopefully the rest of the season will be successful.
 
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I know how Tiger Woods feels when he whiffs a 4 foot putt..

Gunner410, My72Jeep and I went out this morning to the hydro line to see what we could call in. Unseasonably warm temperatures on Boxing day followed by seasonal temperatures have resulted in diminished snow depths with a very heavy ice crust on top. We crunched our way out to the hydro line and set up with Gunner410 and I on a ridge watching east and My72Jeep set up across the road watching the line to the west.

Lots of ravens flying this morning so I started with two raven calls on the Foxpro Fusion (same call twice, each lasting 18 seconds). I just put the controller down and looked up and there was a coyote 40 yards in front of me, running from my right to left. I got the scope up and on it and “woofed” to try and get it to stop. Instead it let the clutch out and shifted into high gear. I took a shot and immediately knew I missed it. Now it was in overdrive and running across the line. I tried another shot and missed, and then Gunner410 shot at it as it was streaking to the tree line and missed.

When I shot the first time, the FoxBang feature kicked in and the caller started with a “pup in distress” call. I replayed it a few more times to see if anything would come out but no joy. I asked Gunner if he had hit it and he said no. We stayed for another 45 minutes with a variety of calls and then packed up to go and check for blood. My72Jeep came walking up and said as soon as the pup in distress call started, he saw movement in front of him and there was a red fox running towards him. I had the caller set up on the ridge between us and it was running towards the call. He said after hearing three shots, he didn’t want to show up with a fox if we were standing there with a wolf. Furbearers 2, Hunters 0.

We checked where the coyote ran and into the bush and confirmed there was no blood or fur on the snow. My72Jeep checked his trail camera in front of where he was sitting and he had pictures of a wolf, a fisher, two coyotes and a fox from last night - I am hoping he will post some of the pictures here.

We have had a coyote explosion here which is unusual as we are on the fringe of their distribution on Lake Superior. Every day there are pictures on social media of coyotes walking in daylight through town. When I dropped My72Jeep off at his house yesterday after a morning hunt, there was a coyote standing on the ice on the river a block away from his house. More than one person has stopped me and ask if I can shoot coyotes in town, and we are actively working towards this with municipal council to let a select group do some predator control. Coyotes elude me - I missed one deer hunting once, I wiffed a 75 yard shot at one with Tactical Teacher, and now this one. I know I will get one sooner or later ....

Playing the two raven calls back to back has worked well for me over the years – especially a couple of years ago it resulted in a wolf walking out immediately and getting shot (https://www.canadiangunnutz.com/for...Wolf-Season-5/page3?highlight=blew+it+on+wolf). More than once we have had critters come out to see what the ravens were feeding on.

Well, tomorrow’s another day, and Gunner410 has to work, so that usually is a good thing for us….
 
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Wonder why coyotes are sticking so close to town now?

My guess is the wolves have them on edge and are using the town for safety.

Same thing around here with foxes and coyotes. See the foxes around town and coyotes on the outskirts.
 
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