Since we have a lot of members down south that have never trapped where wolves are present, thought I'd post a picture of a kill I ran across last trip out. A pack of 10 wolves caught this old cow moose out on the open gravel bar and dragged her to the ground. This kill was not there three day's before but you can see they had pretty well cleaned the moose up by the time I found it. Pretty amazing how much meat they can sometimes eat in such a short time.


If anyone has pictures of wolf kills in their files feel free
to post them here on this thread. They are always interesting
(gruesome maybe, but still interesting).

Neat pic Spek, they made short work of her

Fortunately, I haven't seen one of those in about eight years.

I have only found bones of bunch of moose in the trees before probably five or six that wolves have gotten. Seen one wolf kill of a caribou this winter, had a gruesome looking face on it with its tongue out and eyes wide open. People have found quite a few wolf killed caribou within a few miles of town. Set up some traps and snares around them, only gotten a big lynx, decided I needed better snares and wolf traps so I pulled them out.

They sure do a number on them! Looks like one of our deer carcasses after the eagles have worked on 'em for a week.

Here is a wolf kill I found this winter it was a young bull.

Borrowed these from the following website...
http://www.outdoorsman.com/articles/Wolves-Are-Inhumane-Beasts/

I wish I'd have taken more. I know it isn't any better to see them clean up the carcass, but it sure pissses me off when I find the kills (and there have been lots) where they just took a chunk and left most of the moose! Wish I'd have taken more pics of them!

Like SpekJones said, it's amazing how quickly a pack of wolves can consume a moose. Here are a few pics of wolf killed moose and a caribou.

Thanks everyone. Lot of good pictures and comments.
Keep them coming.

Heres a couple of caribou kills I found, the second pic is obviously an older kill.

Well, I have a lot of wolf-kill pictures too, altho not on this computer, but I found a couple. As best as I could tell, only 4 wolves killed this younger moose this past winter,... the only wolf sign I saw all winter. They killed it, ate on it for a couple days I think, then left & never came back. Of course right after I set it up, it snowed close to 3 feet,...








I know what you mean,... one winter I found 8 wolf-killed moose laying along a 5-mile stretch of river,... and not a bite taken out of any of them,... I have no problem with wolves killing what they need to survive,... but when I find them engaged in rampant & wanton killing/waste like that,... it's time to get involved,....

And here's another one from a couple years ago,... wolves killed it & left, never eating anything,... but finally other critters had drilled a hole into the caboose,... I found it just before trapping season was over, so I didn't set it up.




It's a little tougher to set up a kill site when it's out in the open on a lake with virtually no snow,... and when there is virtually nothing left,... many times they don't come back to it anyway,... at least in my area.




But when they drop one in thicher brush, then you can many times even the score somewhat. It was about -35° when I came up on this, and it was still steaming. Of course, 2 days after I set it up, we got another 2 foot snow dump, but still got 3 of the 6 in this pack.

What are the Wolves trying to prove by killing a Moose and not eating it?

Trying to scare other Wolves away, by saying we will kill for the heck of it?

Maybe the Moose died from natural causes?

Maybe we don't understand Wolves entirely, so the purpose of killing a Moose and leaving it, welcomes other predators to come and feast so the Wolves can ambush them in a location that the Wolves have picked?

I'm just thinking out loud.

We had "problem wolves" in the past roaming up north of our village killing off moose. If you have a big healthy pack made up of mostly older larger pack members killing is a whole lot easier and probably funner. You got to remember that killing is a game to them, just like a dog killing a ground squirrel, chase it, chomp it, leave it, just on a much larger scale. With all the caribou around our village, I seen kills with just the backstrap and hindquarters eaten out, and I even set up on a caribou that was killed and left for the ravens.

Spek, also for the sake of those unfamiliar with wolves...........
How do you know
it was a cow?
it was old?
there were 10 wolves?

MT

Thanks Nunamiut, I didn't know they killed for fun. Makes it even more scary for me to go in the woods.

I agree with Nunamiut. Sometimes they kill because they are hungry and
sometimes just for the fun of it. I have seen them kill a lot of moose and
just eat the tongue or maybe not eat any of it, then leave it and never come back. I also found where a pack of 14 traveled a little over 40 miles, killed an adult moose and totally consumed it, bones and all, in about 18 hours time. They were obviously pretty hungry. The only bones left were the parts of the jaw bones with the teeth in them, the hip joint sockets from the pelvic bone
and the hooves (and the toe bones were chewed out of them). The hide was chewed and puckered and most of the hair chewed off it. It takes some powerful jaws to crush up all the vertebra, pelvis and skull bone on a moose like that. That's the only kill I have found that was that well comsumed. Most of the time they do not eat the major bones.
On the questions brought up by Martenpine the moose in the first picture did not have antlers nor antler bases on the skull. This time of year the bulls have all shed their antlers anyway, but you can still tell by looking at the skull if it was a bull or cow. As far as the age of the moose all I can say is that judging from the size of the hooves and the bone structure it was an adult moose, and I have a habit of referring to any female moose
as an "old cow".
Getting a good count on the number of wolves in a pack usually requires either a visual count or you have to follow their track for a ways. A lot of the time they follow single file especially in deeper snow and it is very hard to get a count on them. But on harder snow they will often fan out across the open places and you can get a good count on the tracks. This pack had came down river for a couple of miles and there were several places where it was easy to count tracks.
We don't have deer or caribou in this area but they do change up their diet occasionally;

In " Alaska's wolfman " he talks about wolves killing for fun when the caribou can't run through the deep snow but the wolves can run on top of the crust and not break through killing as many caribou as they can and only eating a few.