Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy
Tundra, I want to make sure I understand this correctly. Each wolf will kill 25-40 caribou per year?
If my grade 3 math serves me well, that means a pack of ten will kill 250 per year. How many packs of ten are running around? At an estimated population of 4200 wolves in Alberta (Wikipedia) how can anything survive that?
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That is absolutely correct. On the high end of the biologists number that pack of 10 would kill 400 caribou. Just depends on which guy/gal you are speaking to. They survive it and have forever......although they take a pounding. We have no management plan for wolves up here anymore. The risk was identified years ago and the last time a "cull" was performed to my knowledge was back in the 50's (poison). As far as I know there is only one "professional" wolf hunter up here nowadays and he shoots 80 - 200 a year. He does not trap or does very little of it to my knowledge. We do have unlimited tags for them and are legal to hunt them off snowmobile but it is really tough when you are in the trees. More of an opprotunistic chance when you see them on a lake. I'm pretty efficient up on the tundra for them as we can cut tracks and run them down.....even if it's a 50 mile track before you catch up.
I've personally witnessed a single wolf on the calving grounds killing/eating as many calves as it could until it literally could not walk anymore. It layed there for 2 days and then got up and started again. We were there with a bunch of naturalists who also watched the display over a week. If I heard one more "it ain't pretty but that's nature" comment I would have snapped. I was there for "bear protection" and it was all I could do not to start pluggin' em'. You really want to see something clean em' up.....you should see how many a grizz can slam back.
Caribou drop 90% of there calves within' a week or so....literally thousands of them.....pretty amazing to see it. The main migration of caribou is something to behold. The land literally moves and you can not see it.....literally 10's of thousands of animals, shoulder to shoulder moving as one......very moving and powerful to witness it.
I would equate your deer to a caribou.....they would need less moose or elk due to the size of the animal. When you start doing the math it gets kinda crazy.
tm
edit.....I have no idea how many pack of 10 we have up here but my operator at our hydro site called me yesterday to say the caribou have started showing up as well as a pack of 20 wolves he'd seen. We have no shortage of em' up here.