The Wolf Preservation Blog

Are wolves eating all the elk?

“Answer: There is no shortage of elk where wolves live in the Rocky Mountains.  According to state game agencies, in 2010 in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, there are 371,000 elk, 21,000 more than the previous year.  In Wyoming, the elk population is actually 50% above management objectives set by the Wyoming Department of Game and Fish.  In Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, there are at most 1,700 wolves, which are far outnumbered by bears and mountain lions.  Certainly, with 371,000 elk and many more deer, there is plenty of prey.

However, in some areas, the success of big game hunters has declined a bit, but not due to a general lack of elk.  With wolves back, elk habits have changed, reverting to behavior honed by time as the two species co-evolved in a predator/prey balance.  Now elk are once again more alert and spend much of their time on the move.  They find security in thick timber and maintain vantage points by spending more time on ridgelines rather than lingering down in open meadows and streambeds.  From the ridges, they can see threats approaching and have many directions to flee.

All these factors lead to heightened challenges for hunters.  Some concerned hunters point to specific herds, claiming that the elk are being decimated but, overall, population trends clearly dismiss that claim.

While only a few elk herds are in decline, local and regional fluctuations of herd populations are normal, according to the historical record.  Population trends are influenced by many factors.  Forest fires, for example, actually benefit elk by creating prime habitat.  When trees burn, verdant meadows, rich in nutritious grasses, replace the dead trees, and elk numbers increase.  But eventually, the trees grow back, thick shade decreases underlying grasses, and the elk population drops again.

Wolves keep the elk gene pool strong.  When wolves hunt, their technique is based not only on strategy, but also on opportunity.  They wear their prey down in a chase, singling out the weak, which are usually the sick, injured, old, or young.  The survivors are most often the healthiest, fastest and strongest elk, which live on to reproduce and perpetuate the best genes of their species.  This predator-prey relationship is good for both the health of the elk, and the health of the land.”

**Special thanks to “Living With Wolves, http://www.livingwithwolves.org/AW_question2.html, for providing the information in this article!

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Do wolves kill for sport?

“Answer: Wolves, like all wild carnivores, do not kill for sport.  They kill to sustain themselves.  Though it is uncommon, “surplus killing” (killing more prey animals than can be immediately consumed) has been observed in many predator species.  If given the opportunity to secure future meals, many animals will sometimes do so.  It is a survival mechanism.  It is this survival tactic that has led to the misplaced notion of “sport killing” arises.  It has nothing to do with sport.  Only people kill for sport.

Surplus killing occurs when prey is at an unusual disadvantage, offering an opportunity to significantly lower both the risk of injury to the predator and the amount of energy required to kill the prey.  It is for this reason that surplus killing by wolves, although rare, occurs more with livestock than it does with wild prey.

Typically, when a pack of wolves kills an elk or a deer, by the time the pack has subdued its prey, the rest of the herd has fled and is no longer in the area.  This is not the case with livestock introduced by humans.  Unlike their wild cousins, livestock have lost much of their survival instinct.  Spending a good amount of their existence fenced in or being herded, their reaction to a predator in their midst is very different from that of wild prey.  Calves and yearling cattle, for instance, flee during the chaos of the chase, but once the wolves have made a kill, rather than continuing to move away from danger, they have been known to stand nearby, watching in curiosity, perhaps unable to comprehend the threat and what might happen next.  Instead of fleeing, as a wild prey animal would, sheep, when confronted with danger, often run in frantic circles, triggering predatory instinct in wolves and increasing the opportunity for multiple kills.

Wolves are further mischaracterized as killing for sport when people happen upon a dead animal or animals, killed by wolves, but the wolves are no longer present.  This leads people to assume that the wolves abandoned their kill and therefore, must have killed for recreation or pleasure.  This is far from the reality.  The fact is that wolves are easily frightened away from their kill by the approach of human beings, whom they regard as a predator and tend to fear.  Wolves may be also chased away by other, larger carnivores, eager to take advantage of an easy meal.  So a presumably abandoned carcass is not what it seems.  In nature, where the margins of survival are narrow, surplus food is not forgotten.  Research shows that wolves return repeatedly, almost always eating the entire carcass.

For wolves, more so than bears and mountain lions, hunting can be very risky work.  Unlike the larger, solitary mountain lion that relies on the element of surprise, ambushing and then quickly overpowering its prey, wolves work together as a pack, chasing their prey and wearing it down, looking for vulnerabilities.  This is very difficult and dangerous, and they are often fatally wounded while hunting, gored by antlers or horns or kicked by a hoof.  80 to 90% of the time, their efforts to make a kill fail.  When they succeed, if any food is left unfinished by wolves, it feeds scavengers or other animals.

Misinterpretation of animal behavior and motives often perpetuate a bad reputation for wolves, but reality does not support the theory that wolves kill for sport.”

**Special thanks to “Living With Wolves, http://www.livingwithwolves.org/index.html, for providing the information in this article!

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