Eerily Chilling!

Every once in a while I get an email from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR)letting me know of various things going on around the state pertaining to the outdoors, wild life, hunting and fishing. The articles are quite interesting and informative.

There is a report that they publish called "Wolf Depredation Report". This is a report on Wolf activity regarding attacks on domestic animals by Wolves. There was a time that Wolves were on the endangered species list and through good wildlife management practices their populations increased to the point that they now needed to be controlled so they did not deplete other populations, such as the states deer herd, and other game animals. So they were removed from this list and the State of Wisconsin for a few years recently held an annual Wolf hunt allowing hunters to pursue this fairly large animal predator.

Things seemed to be going well for a few years and the DNR controlled the numbers killed and thereby protected their populations from being disseminated entirely by limiting the number that were allowed to be taken each season.

But that management was not good enough for the tree huggers and the States found themselves in court and the judge had the Wolf put back on the endangered list and hunting was stopped. This left the population to now grow and be unchecked with heavy fines if one were to shoot and kill a Wolf, no matter what the reason.

Every once in a while the report mentioned above will tell of hunting dogs being used to track Bears, who happen to get involved with a wild Wolf Pack, being killed unmercifully by these vicious predators. I have seen pictures of a Bear hunter guide, holding up by the neck, his prized hunting dog who was attacked by a band of Wolves. The particular animal in question had nothing left to its body below the shoulders, and had been literally torn apart.

This brings me to my point. Last night when returning home around eight thirty PM, and as I exited my pick up truck to go into the house I hear a lot of barking coming from my neighbors place. Although he does have a dog, I am very familiar with that barking, and what I was listening too was not that.

My second thought was that my two dogs had somehow got out of the house and were running around in the woods barking and playing with each other as they had done from time to time in the past. But this was not that either. The barking sounded like a whole bunch of dogs, many more than two. As I stood there by the truck and listened more intently, I could hear intermixed with the barking and yelping, an occasional howl. I had never heard anything like this before and it was quite chilling to listen to.

Now the area that I live in is heavily wooded. I have five acres of woods, backed up by one hundred and twenty acres of some swampland and more woods. My closest neighbor also has five acres and the neighbor across the dirt road of ours has about six acres. So we are pretty remote and wooded. The area is heavily populated with Wisconsin's famous white tailed deer. In Vilas county where we live it is a buck only county when it comes to deer hunting, and the does are generally protected from hunting. Personally on my land, I have a doe and her fawn that come by the house daily and feed on the grasses and some occasional hard corn that we put out for them in a near by feeder. A neighbor down the road has a similar arrangement but in their case there are two bucks of about two years old that come by with about six other does and yearling fawns that they feed on a regular basis. So yes, we have a very large population of deer in the area, and this is what is attracting the wolves, and bringing them closer to the house, because the deer very seldom travel far away from the feeder.

In the mornings, my significant other will take one of our dogs on a long walk down the road and skirt along the woods which are on her left and right along the way. With what I heard last night, this can be a dangerous situation now and she'll either have to have me accompany her, or I am going to have to have her carry a bell and some mace. But I feel more comfortable walking with her.

As I stood there on the porch listening to the loudness of these animals last night, I could tell they were running behind my house, probably chasing one of those deer for their next meal. The barking and snarling I heard, and the howl that followed sounded like one of the Wolves was giving his victory scream after downing an animal. I went in the house and then back outside, which was now very quiet and still. Just as quickly as it started, it also stopped just as fast. The moral of this story, don;t feed the deer, you'll never know what will come next..........