Drew a minnesota wolf tag

I pulled a mn late season wolf tag. Looking forward to hunting wolves for the first time.

I'm looking at hunting the arrowhead region near Tofte as I've bear hunted there before. Season starts Nov 29th I'm planning on hunting as soon as possible. Had a friend draw two years ago and they closed the season before he was able to make it up to hunt.

I've read that trappers have good luck but I would like to shoot one. I know this is a fairly new hunt here. But was wondering if anyone has any experience in the area.

Pms are welcome

Thanks

No experience, but it's a great tag to draw, regardless of where it is.

Lots of work to get us here. Enjoy that hunt and bag a toad!

Her is one from the Isabella area.

I worked in Ely a few summers ago. We saw wolves weekly northeast of town past winton on the way to moose lake, lake 1 and that area. You should try and talk to a pilot at the forest service base in Ely. They know where the wolves are at! Good luck, it should be a fun hunt. I heard on the radio that wisconsin has already reached the quotas in a few areas of their hunt.

I don't have any experience in the Tofte area but do have quite a bit of experience SW of there a bit. If you are interested in a different area, send me a PM. I can put you in the middle of a lot of wolves. Here is a picture of my dad and I with one that I called in during the 2012 season. A 120 pound male.

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Congrats on your tag. Like Ben, no experience, but have heard them as far south as Solana St. Forest, just east of Mille Lacs lake. Hope your hunt is great fun and successful.

Thanks for all the replies.

I agree Ben, its been a long time coming, and I feel very fortunate to have the tag in hand. Going to do my best to give this tag justice. Work will have slowed considerably by then, and I'm hoping to have a new custom in hand to try out on one of these critters.

Thank you to all who helped get us this season.

It'll be a blast to just step into the woods with a wolf tag in my pocket .

Gellar said:

I worked in Ely a few summers ago. We saw wolves weekly northeast of town past winton on the way to moose lake, lake 1 and that area. You should try and talk to a pilot at the forest service base in Ely. They know where the wolves are at! Good luck, it should be a fun hunt. I heard on the radio that wisconsin has already reached the quotas in a few areas of their hunt.

Click to expand...

I have also seen a bunch of wolves in these areas every year. Id love to hunt wolves up there sometime!!! good luck!!!

I agree hunt early the quota can be met fast
Trappers like the late season, and many of them are good at what they do!
I saw a big one by the golf course few weeks ago!
No tag for me this year!
Call CO Darren in GM, he has hired trappers or shooters I forget to thin the in town pack out.
they have been eating dogs chained up outside!
He will give you good info.

Nice wolf, NoWiser! I'm hoping to take one here in MT.

Passinthru,

Good luck on the hunt! We had 8 of them hanging around our deer camp. 6 of the 8 were jet black. Unfortunately, nobody had wolf tags or it would have been too easy! Saw 2 sets of deer tracks in 3 days of hunting and came home early.

Two of the three seasons have closed and the last one is done tomorrow. I figured they'd close fast so I headed up the day before the season, didn't figure they'd close this fast though.

The area I hunted closed in 6 days. I'm guessing our wolf population is higher than what's being reported. Or else we just have awesome hunters and trappers.

I read that 90% of the late season wolves were trapped, I had a hunting tag, so couldn't use a trap.

Here are some photos from my hunt. It was pretty exciting to see fresh tracks opening morning in the snow that had fallen the night prior. Got the blood pumping waiting for daylight. I followed the pack into a huge clear cut and started my season there with some predator calling and howling. No dice but fun.


I wear a size 12, thought these were good size tracks





I found four sets of moose tracks, two sets were a cow and calf pair and two sets individual animals. These were many many miles apart on different days. Three of the four sets of tracks had a wolf pack trailing them. Pretty disappointing.



I am obviously an excellent hunter by all the tracks in the fresh snow I was finding, but nothing standing in them but me.




Fortunately we just had the founder of the ely wolf center come out with a paper saying the wolves are definitely having a serious impact on our moose population. He hired his own statistician from the U of M countering two earlier dnr reports that stated our moose population is declining because of climate change. I guess wolves do eat moose calves

I never cut a deer track more than two miles in from lake superior. I saw a couple deer by the lake around hwy 61 but traveled a ton of miles into the national forest and bwca with not one deer track.

A couple of the mornings were chilly, wind chill advisory -25 to -40 makes for a frozen face mask.





Thanks for all the replies and insight it was pretty cool to just step into the woods with a tag. Thanks again to all that made a wolf season possible.

Having trouble with photos uploading off my phone will try a different method.

Did you do any calling or howling?

Yep, that's pretty much what I did.

Setup and predator call with cottontail, snowshoe,or fawn in distress calls. I even tried coyote in distress, coyote howls, lone wolf howling and a pair of wolves howling. I was using a foxpro caller.

It's such a blast to have fox and coyotes come into the call ready to kill whatever is making that racket, I thought it would be really cool to see a wolf come in that way.

But, I know they're intelligent and more wary than coyotes. So the tactics will have to change next time around, especially when the season closes in 6 days.

The only howling I heard was at night and we're not allowed to hunt them at night. I had no responses during the day.

I spoke with the C.O. you mentioned, he was very helpful and had good information.