Old grizzled lone wolf in northern Minnesota
Voyageurs Wolf Project:
This large, grizzled old male was a lone wolf that wandered around our area last winter. He had a distinctive limp due to some likely older injury on his right foot/leg. We do not know much about this wolf, other than a few years ago, we observed him and 3 other wolves wander through the southern edge of the Windsong Pack territory. However, these wolves were not an established pack in our study area but it is possible they occupied a territory just outside our area, and just briefly trespassed on the another pack's territory (not that uncommon of an occurrence). Last winter, we know this old male had an encounter with the Bug Creek Pack on February 5 as we had one observation where this old male goes by a camera and a minute later two Bug Creek Pack members go trotting by. And then ten minutes later, we observed all 6 Bug Creek wolves traveling from the direction the old male was headed. They had to have encountered the male, who clearly was not in a position to outrun an entire pack. But obviously, this encounter ended amicably for the old wolf lived and was uninjured. We observed him numerous times after that. A few days before that encounter with the Bug Creek Pack, we observed the old male chasing a deer but do not know how that ended. This wolf didn’t seem like it could run that quickly, given its injury. And then in mid-February, we captured this old male scavenging some bones from a deer that the Thuja Pack killed. We suspect this wolf largely subsisted by scavenging. By the end of the winter (April), this wolf was still wandering by himself. Given how old he looks, we suspect he doesn’t likely have many years left but will be interesting to see if he is still alive and around this winter.
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