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Extreme Wolf Hunt
It was 20 degrees when I left my home in Leetonia,
Ohio, 8 degrees in Fort Erie, -1 in North Bay, -13 in New Liskeard
when I stopped for supper, -18 in Cochran and then -25 degrees in Kapukasing,
Ontario, pop 9500, my final
destination. Definitely the coldest weather I’ve ever been in much less
tried to hunt in. I was in Kap, as the locals call
it, to hunt timber wolves. Kap is known as a place
of extremes, General Motors has their cold weather testing facility located
there, that alone should give you a clue as to the extreme hunting
conditions, but let me expound.
I
really didn’t know too much about the wolf hunt other than it was
totally different than how most people hunt wolves. Most hunters get a wolf
as a bonus on other big game hunts or by sitting and watching a bait from a blind for extended periods of time. I almost
went on such a hunt last winter but the plans fell thru at the last minute. I
found this hunt while checking a website, AccurateReloadin.com (thanks Saeed!), where someone started a thread asking about wolf
outfitters. There were a couple of suggestions but one stood out as it was in
Ontario
which is within driving distance for me. I clicked on the provided link and
sent an e-mail requesting more information. The next evening I got a phone
call from Peter Martin of KapRiver Retrievers and
Outfitters and he spent the next 20 minutes explaining his wolf hunts. He
said they find a set of fresh tracks and then drive the wolf to the hunters.
Peter told me it’s
sub-zero weather, lots of snow, four wheel drive trucks and
snowmobiles. The next day I checked to see if I could take a week vacation on
short notice and by that evening I was booked for a mid-February wolf hunt in
Northern Ontario. Snow, bitter cold, 4x4
trucks and snowmobiles, it sounded like just kind of adventure I was craving.
Little did I know how much adventure I would get in the next 5 days!
I
wasn’t sure what to expect and didn’t really get a whole lot more
information when I got there. I arrived late at night and woke up at 6 AM. I
went to the kitchen and someone gave me a much needed cup of coffee. Peter
said, “There’s toast and cereal, we leave in 20 minutes”.
Holy crap! I better get moving, my gear is still in
the truck! I get my gear , get dressed and meet the
other hunters and guides. First there’s Bill Lange, a retired sales rep
from Missouri
who had just hunted with Peter 2 months ago on an early December hunt. Then
there’s Brian Peacock (sorry about the snoring!) from Massachusetts, a printing executive who
was like me on his first wolf hunt. Then there were the two guides, first
there’s Ryan MacAulay, more affectionately known as “Dog
Boy”, Ryan’s the one with legs like steel pistons that follows
the wolf tracks on his 60 inch snowshoes. Ryan is from Prince Edward Island and is in his second
year with Peter. Then there’s Ken Jones, owner of a black bear hunting
outfit in Kap called “the Bear
Essential” (bear.essential@hotmail.com), he helps set the hunters,
check and replace baits and anything else that needs done. Then there’s
the man that orchestrates the whole thing, Peter Martin (The Wolf Commander,
I made that up but it fits!). An intense, driven man, Peter not only does
wolf hunts but is also a licensed chiropractor and breeder of world class
Labrador Retrievers. Peter has personally helped over 250 hunters
bag a wolf and has taken over 50 himself, he really knows wolves! He started
hunting wolves in 1980 and outfitting wolf hunts in 1996 and has perfected
his hunting method to the point where the wolves, one of North
America’s top predators becomes the prey and Peter becomes the ultimate
predator himself. You can actually see the man go into “wolf
mode”, he becomes so focused on outsmarting the wolf that everything
else is a mere distraction from the overall battle between Peter and the
wolf.
Here’s
how he does it. First he finds blocks of timber any where from 50 to 500
acres in size. Each of these blocks has to have snowmobile access around it,
whether it’s a logging road, power line, haul road, snowmobile trail or
river. Then there’s the bait; dead, frozen dairy cows, which are cut up
with a chainsaw into manageable 50 to 250 pound chunks. He uses lots of bait,
well over 100 tons a year, yep, you read that right,
over 100 tons of dead cows a year! One or more of these baits are put into
each block and then the hunt begins. You go from bait to bait to see if there’s any wolves feeding at the bait, if
there’s action then the block is circled on a snowmobile. If
there’s tracks going in and not coming out then the trap is set.
That’s the best way to describe this hunt, a great big trap. Peter and
his merry band of wolf chasers block off three sides of the block, they do
this by putting transistor radios on a trail or riding back and forth on
snowmobiles. The jaws of the trap are the hunters who are set up to block off
the fourth side, this is the weak spot in the trap, time after time and day
after day Peter and his men push wolves to the hunters who either get the
animal, don’t see the wolf, miss or have a misfire.
So
back to the hunt, we load up in trucks and drive to a country road where the
snowmobiles are unloaded. We get our gear and Peter asks if anyone knows how
to drive a snowmobile, I volunteer that I drove one 30 years ago, this is enough to get me elected as a designated
snowmobile driver! We ride down a trail, Peter stops, looks
up and down the trail and motions me off the snowmobile. He backs it off the
trail, comes over to me and says, “Watch the trail, if a wolf comes,
kill it”. Then he’s gone, taking Brian to his post. So here I am
in the middle of Northern Ontario, it’s 18 degrees below zero and I’m looking
around wondering why I’m in this particular spot, I mean there’s
miles and miles of trails but I’m watching this couple hundred yard
stretch of trail. Right before we left the house Peter gave everyone a 2-way
radio, he said put them on and don’t take them off until we get back, I
dig my radio out and turn it on and start to wish I hadn’t drank so
much coffee! I look around at my surroundings, which looks exactly like every
other stretch of trail I can see. Soon I’m visited by some chickadees,
a couple ravens fly past, they look like big fat crows but they sound
different, maybe it’s because their vocal cords are frozen! It’s
cold, real cold, I’m sure glad I had my wife get me those hand warmers,
they work great! After a bit a big white snowshoe hare hops on the trail and
I wonder if they taste like a cottontail, then decide my 30-06 is too much
gun for rabbits. We stayed put for an hour or two, then Peter picked us up
for the next post which turned out to be a coyote. You have to be careful
shooting coyotes in Ontario,
if you get one you have to use your wolf seal, then
you have to go buy another $247.66 seal. Your only
allowed 2 seals so you should probably pass on shooting coyotes. Well
that’s how it went the first 2 days, we did
have one wolf cross right in front of Ken as he went to reposition Bill and
almost ran over him with his snowmobile.
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