25 Jan

Shortly after taking off this morning, we found that Middle Pack had killed, during the night, the moose they wounded the previous day.  At 11:35am, we observed Chippewa Harbor Pack (CHP) attack a large bull moose just NE of Lake Richie (see image).  After attacking for a few minutes, they bedded about 30 meters from the moose and waited, but not for long.  After an hour or two, CHP left the moose and continued traveling NE toward Moskey Basin.  In the afternoon, Rolf and Don flew.  They saw CHP attack and wound a second moose.    

    Throughout the day, we never saw Paduka Pack.  But we saw tracks on the North Shore of Siskiwit that may have been made by Paduka Pack.

        East Pack continued hunting throughout the morning.  They haven’t made a kill since we began observing them on Jan 21.  Here is an excerpt from Rolf’s field notes on East Pack:

 

At 4:07PM, five wolves in the East Pack headed west along the territorial boundary between the East Pack and the neighboring Chippewa Harbor Pack.  They passed by 2 moose that apparently didn’t  look like possible candidates for their next kill.  They headed NW across the washboard ridges west of McCargo Cove, into the wind.  Before long we noticed that they had increased their speed to a fast trot, and within 1 km they were lunging and trotting toward the NW.  We could see that they were sometimes in an old wolf track, and occasionally the leaders would pause briefly and sniff.  At 4:33PM, the wolves broke into a run and soon they run upon a dead moose lying on its side, with only stomach and peritoneal organs gone.  Two days ago the Chippewa Harbor Pack had come through this area, and the dead moose might have been wounded and abandoned by this pack.  The dead moose had been worked on a little by a wolf or two, but not much of the moose was gone.  Ten ravens flushed from the dead moose as the wolves rushed in.  One of the wolves dived into the thoracic cavity from the rear, and its head and shoulders stayed hidden from view for several minutes – apparently the heart and lungs were still present.  The other wolves showed no interest in feeding, but rather ran excitedly around with noses often on the ground, often socializing and rubbing sides with each other as the alpha male and female scent-marked and scratched.  Then the wolves suddenly left the dead moose and started running at full speed down a fresh wolf trail.  Scanning a mile ahead, we saw a single wolf emerge on the ice of McCargo Cove and travel to the mouth of the cove, probably the same wolf that left tracks there last night.  We circled, anticipating an imminent chase, but the pack did not emerge on the Cove and the single wolf simply walked away.  Back in the woods, we found the pack had changed course and the wolves were busy exploring wolf tracks in another direction.  At 5:20PM the East Pack came back to the dead moose, flushed the ravens, and the same hungry wolf began feeding in the thoracic cavity while the other 4 wolves milled about, socialized, and scratched prominently.  

 

26 Jan 2007

  This morning Don flew to Daisy Farm so that he could bring Alex Egan (Park Service volunteer) back from a week-long expedition at the east end of Isle Royale to search for moose pellets and urine samples.  During Don’s flight to get Alex, he observed CHP, just south of Conglomerate Bay, where they had chased a cow and calf into the freezing waters of Lake Superior.  While in the lake, the moose were safe from the wolves, but in danger of hypothermia.  The shoreline was marked with two blood-stained patches of snow.  This is the third moose CHP has wounded without killing one.  CHP spent the rest of the day within a mile of the cow and calf, which eventually came out of the water and “hid” in the thick, shoreline spruces.    

    After just two days of feeding, Middle Pack left the site south of Lake Desor last night.  By midday they were bedded on the North Shore of Siskiwit Lake, where they discovered tracks that we think Paduka Pack had made just the day before.