Anyone who talks to Wausau, Wisconsin resident Tim Witzeling would know that he takes pride and joy in the 400 acres of land he owns in northern Lincoln County.
“We’ve owned this property for almost 20 years and hunt deer and bear there,” he said.
“We’ve always had wolves there — bears, too — but this year we’re not seeing bears on trail cameras or decoys like we used to,” Witzeling said. “This year we’re using three decoys about a mile apart, in a triangle shape. We get a few bears, but we usually get a lot more activity.”
“We’ve had about 16 bear permits over the last 18 years and only two have gone unfilled. One was a hunter who turned down five bears because he had a few and wanted a big or unique bear, so that’s basically a full permit. The other one that went unfilled was my son who came back from Iraq and only had four days to hunt. The biggest bear I’ve ever seen showed up on the third day, but we scared him off and we never saw him again,” Witzeling said. “I’ve got two hunters this year with permits and they’ve been waiting nine years to get them.”
Most of the animals Witzeling sees on his cameras are wolves, and he believes the number of wolves this year is why he can’t keep bears on bait.
“Looking at the photos from my trail cameras, it looks like we have eight wolves hanging out close to the bait. One pack appears to be a family group with a male, a female and four pups, and the other group, judging by the lifting of their legs, is a pair of young males. In previous years, we haven’t had anything but the occasional problem (with wolves), but this year it looks like the pack is basically camping on the bait. One of the photos from our trail camera even has a shot of the ATV we rode in on with two wolves in the background of the photo. It’s pretty clear to me that they were just on the bait,” he said.
Witzeling isn’t alone. A quick check with two Wisconsin Bear Hunters’ Association (WBHA) officers revealed they’re getting calls from members with similar stories. Carl Schoettel, WBHA president, and Lucas Withrow, WBHA vice president, said they’ve heard from bear hunters about a gigantic wolf presence on bait this year — at least more than in the past.
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Schoettel also hunts bears in Lincoln County west of the Wisconsin River. This summer, he has noticed a decline in the number of bears weighing 80 to 150 pounds. He wonders if those bears are disappearing because wolves are hunting them when they are juvenile in their first year.
Withrow hunts in Ashland County and always encounters wolves on his decoys. He uses cameras on his decoys not for bears but to track the presence of wolves.
“A lot of people around the state are starting to see this type of wolf presence at their bait sites. I’m getting calls from a lot of other hunters. A hunter in Vilas County just sent me pictures of seven to nine wolves at bait sites,” Withrow said.
Witzeling’s cameras are set to 30-second intervals, so the images he captures compellingly tell the story of the events taking place at his catch location.
“It’s obvious that the bears open the baits by knocking down the tree trunk, and a minute or two later the wolves come and chase the bears away. I also noticed that this year there are no sows with cubs, which is really unusual,” Witzeling said.
Wolves have been known to kill bear cubs and juvenile bears, but they have also been observed eating sweets, bread – and pretty much anything – used as bait.
Witzeling’s land is in an area with a long history of wolf presence. In fact, it is a mile west of Averill Creek, home to what is known as the Averill Creek Wolf Pack. In the 1980s, wolves were first confirmed in north-central Wisconsin when a wolf was found nearby that had been killed by a car, leading to the naming of the Averill Creek Pack.
“I don’t mind sharing the woods with a few wolves, but the deer population on our property seems to be declining steadily. We’re in northern Lincoln County where there’s woods, not in the farmland of the southern part of the county. Between the wolves, bears, bobcats and coyotes, I think the predator population is just too high up north. There just aren’t enough deer to get the population back to anything close to where it was,” Witzeling said. “It’s tough to have a half-million dollars tied up in the ground and not have enough deer or bear to hunt.”
To add fuel to the fire, as this article was being filed, a modern wolf appeared on Witzeling’s camera. He captured a photo of a black wolf at the bait site. The other eight wolves are all gray or salt-and-pepper.
“From Thursday, Aug. 24, through Saturday, Aug. 26, at 11 a.m., we had 515 photos on one of our cameras. About 10 of those photos were bears — the rest were wolves. All three of our decoys were full of wolf photos,” Witzeling said.
