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RangerJoe -> RE: OT Things to ponder (8/5/2020 6:31:55 PM)
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ORIGINAL: BBfanboy
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ORIGINAL: RangerJoe
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ORIGINAL: BBfanboy
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ORIGINAL: RangerJoe
Do you think that Bullwinkle would be happy about this? Or even feel safer if he went there?
Wolf researchers in Voyageurs National Park believe unlikely food source may be behind moose success
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The surprising thing is that Voyageurs has a relatively large wolf population. But, for whatever reason, the wolves inside the park almost never eat or kill moose in the spring and summer, when calves are at their most vulnerable, Gable said.
“We’ve tracked and found over 800 kills of beavers and deer fawns and everything else wolves are eating,” Gable said.
Out of all of those kills, only three were moose.
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The project made national news when it found that not only are wolves proficient at fishing, they actually set the fish aside, stockpiling them while the fishing is good and eating them when it slows down. Cameras also caught wolves eating blueberries and regurgitating those berries for their young.
What has become apparent, Gable said, is that wolves prefer to ambush and eat beavers than to try to chase moose and their calves.
https://www.startribune.com/wolf-researchers-in-voyageurs-national-park-believe-unlikely-food-source-may-be-behind-moose-success/571988552/?refresh=true
I also think that they also get beavers in the winter near their breathing holes or when they come out in open water. I have seen a wolf catch a salmon in Alaska on a television program.
But blueberries? I guess that a person doesn't just have to worry about bears when picking wild blueberries. The peninsula is supposed to have a lot of good blueberry picking as well as fishing.
You can rent a houseboat and cruise the lakes in comfort. [:D]
I have had two dogs that ate blueberries off the bush while I was picking them. There were so many berries that I did not begrudge the dogs their snack.
I saw a documentary on a nature channel that showed nearly the entire hunt of a pack of wolves taking down a full-grown moose in the NWT. The chase went on for something like twelve hours. At first the wolves could not get close enough to the moose to attack but after many hours the moose tired and slowed a bit.
The wolves then attacked the moose hams, tearing at them to create bleeding. At least one wolf was injured by a kicking hoof. After it bled for a bit the moose slowed still more and ran for a lake, presumably to swim across. The wolves got to the moose on the shores of the lake and the Alpha male got it by the throat and hauled it down. It held the bite for over 20 minutes to suffocate the moose. The Alpha male was so tired it could not eat right away so it rested for an hour or so and the rest of the pack waited until he started feeding before they tried to get any food. After that, the pecking order dictated which wolves ate when.
So between the hunt for exhaustion and the danger of getting stomped by a moose, you can see why they don't hunt them ahead of easier prey.
The fish that they caught were spawning suckers. Pretty good sized ones but at that tie of year, the deer are skinny and the fawns have not yet made their appearance. Suckers are good smoked and then it is easy to get the small bones out of them.
Then there are deer in Northern Michigan that go fishing in Lake Superior . . . [X(]
Deer go fishing? I think you may have got hunter and prey mixed up there.[:'(]
Journal Article
White-Tailed Deer Forage on Alewives
David J. Case and Dale R. McCullough
Journal of Mammalogy
Vol. 68, No. 1 (Feb., 1987), pp. 195-198
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1381075?seq=1
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