Working for a meal
1-3 Feb
Winter Study
notes from the field
1 Feb – Middle Pack spent most of the day milling about an area near Grace Creek overlook. They gnawed on the hide of a calf – it was all that remained of this calf that they had killed sometime last week. Chippewa Harbor Pack spent the day hidden in a thick stand of spruce, about 200 meters from a site NE of Hatchet Lake, where they had been feeding on a dead moose.
Very little remained of either moose, and today was the first that we knew of either of these kills. They were probably made last week when we hadn’t been able to fly.
(We’d mentioned before that one of the collared wolves we’ve been following closely had dispersed from Chippewa Harbor Pack this summer and has been spending much of his time in East Pack’s old territory. From now on, we’ll call him Romeo. You may also recall that last night he challenged a cow for her calf.)
The cow and calf survive – very likely suffering no more than an awful memory. By morning Romeo ended up 9 miles from where he began the night. He laid down where the Greenstone ridge arches her back, black basalt rising almost vertically from the swamps that extend SW from Chickenbone Lake.
Today Romeo slept with an empty stomach, and perhaps with anxiousness for finding a mate. About 40 meters from Romeo, another smaller (probably female) wolf had also curled up to sleep on the same edge where swamp and rock meet. Is one of these wolves unsure about the prospects? Is the smaller wolf no prospect at all - perhaps a sister, visiting his brother for the day, and soon to return to Chippewa Harbor Pack?
2 Feb – Middle Pack left the scattered remains of their last meal for a swamp up the Washington Creek, about 3 miles NE of Windigo. Here they stood watch over an adult moose that they had wounded during the night. The wolves engaged the moose just enough to keep it from feeding or lying down. This went on all day – the moose unable to escape and the wolves unable to kill, without risking mortal injury.
Most of Chippewa Harbor Pack (CHP) remained hidden in the thick spruce near the site of the moose carcass they’d been at the previous day. We are beginning to wonder if CHP wasn’t feeding from this carcass so much as guarding it. Three days ago, CHP had chased a wolf from this general area out onto Pickett Bay. Perhaps that wolf – who might be the alpha male of Paduka Pack – made the kill, and CHP chased it off the carcass.
While most of CHP lay hidden, the CHP wolf who led that chase wondered from the pack and milled about near Pickett Bay. This CHP wolf may have some special interest in the wolf he had been chasing – both are presumably male wolves.
For the second time in as many days, Romeo attacked another a cow and a calf. This time near Brady cove, and this time both moose left blood in the snow.
3 Feb – Chippewa Harbor Pack traveled across their territory – another day without a new meal. Middle pack spent another day before the moose they’d wounded. But the moose was lying down. When a moose knows its going to die, it doesn’t lie down. If the moose was unable to stand, the wolves would have killed it. Did the moose know he or she wasn’t at risk, despite seven lingering wolves? From photographs, we learn one of the wolves may have been injured in their encounter with the moose. By nightfall, the wolves left the moose.
Romeo left the cow and her calf he had wounded the night before and roamed the drainages north of the Greenstone.
We also noticed the tracks of a couple wolves near Hatchet Lake, and wondered if they could belong to Paduka Pack.
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B
C
D
E
A
The alpha male (light-colored wolf) of Chippewa Harbor inspects a subordinate female. This is an early sign that mating season will soon be here.