The Story
Blood stains a gray wolf from muzzle to throat as it drops its head and noses the snow in front of a remote camera in northern Minnesota. A small blue tag sits in one ear.
The red is deer. The Bowman Bay Pack had just killed an adult deer that March, and some of the wolves at this camera carry bellies so round the researchers liken them to a swallowed basketball. That is the routine: wolves stuff themselves, lounge while the food digests, then go back to the kill for more. A wolf can eat as much as 20 pounds of meat in one meal, and wolves may go a week or more without eating. In the Midwest, white-tailed deer are the staple.
For the Voyageurs Wolf Project, the ear tags matter more than the blood. This footage confirmed for the first time that two pack members were still alive. Pup 2217, wearing small ear tags, had been tagged in spring 2018 and not seen since. Wolf V067 was collared that same spring, but the collar failed immediately, and its fate stayed a blank until these frames. Confirming who is still alive with remote cameras is one of several reasons the project ear-tags wolves.
Behind the bloodied wolf, the breeding pair rests. V034, the breeding male, is the lighter-colored, collared wolf lying in the background; the wolf in front of him is the breeding female. That spring she rescued her seven pups from a flooding den. Wolf dens can be dug as much as 10 feet into well-drained soil.
Packs are family groups: a breeding male and female, their pups, perhaps last year's young, and sometimes older wolves. In the Midwest they average four to eight wolves in winter. Which wolf wears the blue tag at the lens goes unrecorded, and the frame alone cannot settle it.
The deer fed the pack. The camera took attendance.
