5. How Efficient is the Wolf?
Just how efficient is he in procuring game? Usually not very efficient when pursuing the larger game. For every deer, elk, moose, etc., that he is fortunate enough to catch and kill, try recording how many hunters and poachers carcasses he has cleaned up. How many gut piles he has salvaged. How many snowshoes he has caught and eaten. How many beaver and muskrats he has taken. Then how many chases that he had to give up because he just couldn’t out run the animal as well as how many wolves got an antler run through the guts or the lungs, or how many skull fractures he sustained from the lightning fast kick or strike of a moose or a big white tail buck.
Oh yes, I myself witnessed a buck deer getting a buck wolf up on his antlers and dashing him against a tree and cliff till that wolf was sick as hell of deer and lay around for a week or better while he healed up.
Some say the Wolf harasses the game. Nonsense. I have witnessed a wolf pack jumping a herd of deer and after selection of the individual deer, usually defective, the rest of the herd went right back to their browsing, seemingly not even disturbed. I have seen caribou jumped by wolves circle away from the wolves line of travel and go right on feeding. The selection of individual game animals is no more traumatic than a sudden thundershower is to us. They have lived together for about one hundred million years. Why not?
Efficient? Hardly. Of some fifty-one moose chases that I recorded, there were 6 kills and 2 injuries that were either harvested later or died from the effects of the attacks. Not really a very high percentage of harvested prey animals