Wisconsin hunters have more wolves, less bears crawling all over bait sites this year

Anyone could tell by talking to Wausau, Wis., resident Tim Witzeling that he takes pride and enjoyment from the 400 acres he owns in northern Lincoln County.

“We’ve had the property for almost 20 years and hunt deer and bear there,” he said.

“We’ve always had wolves out there – bears, too – but we’re not seeing bears on trail cameras or baits this year like we have in the past,” Witzeling said. “We’re running three baits about a mile apart in kind of a triangle shape this year. We have a few bears coming in, but we usually have a lot more activity.

“Over the last 18 years we’ve had about 16 bear tags and had only two go unfilled. One was a hunter who passed on five bears because he had a few already and wanted a big or special bear, so that’s basically a filled tag. The other that went unfilled was my son who was home from Iraq and he had only four days to hunt. The biggest bear I’ve ever seen came in on the third day, but we spooked him and we never saw another one,” Witzeling said. “This year I have two hunters with tags and they’ve waited nine years to get one.”

Most of the animals Witzeling is seeing on his cameras are wolves. He’s convinced the number of wolves this year are the reason he can’t keep bears on the baits.

“Looking at the pictures from my cameras it appears we have eight wolves staying close to the baits. One pack appears to be a family group with a male, female and four pups, and the other group, judging by their leg lifts, is a pair of young males. We haven’t had anything but intermittent issues (with wolves) in past years, but this year it appears a pack is basically camping on the baits. One of our trail camera pics even has a shot of the ATV we drove in on with two wolves in the background of the pic. It’s pretty clear to me they’d just been on the bait,” he said.

Witzeling isn’t alone. A quick check with two officers of the Wisconsin Bear Hunters’ Association (WBHA) said they’re getting calls from members with similar tales. Carl Schoettel, WBHA president, and Lucas Withrow, WBHA vice-president, said they’re hearing from bear hunters reporting heavy wolf presence on baits this year – at least heavier than in the past.

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Schoettel also hunts bears in Lincoln County west of the Wisconsin River. What he’s noticing this summer is a drop in the number of 80- to 150-pound bears. He’s wondering if those bears are missing because they’re getting picked off by wolves as first-year cubs.

Withrow hunts in Ashland County and always deals with wolves on his baits. He runs cameras on his baits not for bears, but to track wolf presence.

“A lot of people in state are starting to experience this type of wolf presence on their bait sites. I’m getting calls from a lot of other hunters. A Vilas County hunter just sent me pictures of seven to nine wolves on bait sites,” Withrow said.

Witzeling’s cameras are set at 30-second intervals, so the pictures he gets tell a compelling story about the sequence of events at his baits.

“It’s clear the bears open the baits up by tipping over the stump and then a minute or two later the wolves come in and run the bears off. I’ve also noticed there are no sows with cubs this year which is really unusual,” Witzeling said.

Wolves have been known to kill cubs and small bears, but also have been observed eating sweets, breads – and just about anything – used as bait.

Witzeling’s land is in an area with a long history of wolf presence. In fact, he’s located one mile west of Averill Creek, home of what’s known as the Averill Creek wolf pack. In the 1980s the first presence of wolves in north-central Wisconsin was confirmed when a car-killed wolf was found near there, leading to the naming of the Averill Creek pack.

“I don’t mind sharing the woods with a few wolves, but there appears to be a steady decline in deer on our property. We’re in northern Lincoln County where it’s wooded, not the agricultural land in the southern part of the county. Between the wolves, bears, bobcats, and coyotes, I think the predator load is just too high in the north. There just are not enough deer to bring the population back close to where it was,” Witzeling said. “It’s hard to have a half-million dollars tied up in land and not have enough deer or bears to hunt.”

To rub more salt in the wound, a new wolf showed up on Witzeling’s camera just as this article was put together. He captured a photo of a black wolf at a bait site. All the other eight wolves are of a gray or salt/pepper coloration.

“From Thursday, Aug. 24, through Saturday, Aug. 26 at 11 a.m., we had 515 pictures on one of our cameras. About 10 of those photos were bears – all the rest were wolves. All three of our baits were full of wolf pics,” Witzeling said.