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You're in good hands with all state savings very terms apply all state fire and casualty insurance company and affiliates Northbrook, Illinois. This episode of the Birdshot podcast is presented by Onax Hunt, the number one GPS hunting app and final rise premium quality made in USA hunting vests and field apparel and upland gun company custom built and fit handcrafted Italian shotguns. All right, buddy, here we go. We are we're back talking wolves. I feel like we should have like a wolf sounder. Just some sound effects in the background. Nice mood setter. Yeah, exactly. You know, it's funny thinking back about this episode is it's it might very well be the most listened to episode of Birdshot podcast ever, which is kind of like, I'm kind of like, I get I know why, but it's like really like the wolf one that's you know, but I think it it probably got shared way more than than any of my other episodes. And I kind of knew that. And the reason I say that is even the title, like I had a wolf encounter with my bird dog, I remember going back around my mind like, it's like kind of clickbaity. It's about as clickbaity of a title as I've ever done for the birdshot podcast, which I don't think I really do. But there's something to be said about getting someone's attention in the in the feed of everything else. So it got listened to, I will say that. And here we are, a year later kind of reviving it in in some ways. Yeah, man, it was kind of funny last year, man, you were talking offline and you were talking about doing the wolf encounter story podcast and I'm like, well, it's funny. I just reached out to, you know, a local biologist up there to talk about wolves. Because to your point, you know, it's seems like everybody that comes into the space at one point or another, especially when they first start out, the wolves are concerned. Like, I mean, I remember when I first got in, I used to look at that interactive map that Wisconsin has talking about the wolf interaction and, and sightings. I used to check that constantly before going out. And so it was definitely a worry in my brain. And now fast forward, it's like, obviously I still have the respect for the wolves. And, you know, I'm not going to go into an area that has high wolf activity, but it just goes to show that people in the space really have an interest, a vested interest in this, especially when it seems like, at least anecdotally, it seems like the wolf encounters are becoming a little bit more prevalent year after year. I don't know with you living up in, in that region, obviously I don't, I don't know if you would kind of say that it feels like you guys are seeing more and more wolves out there just out and about. That's a really interesting question. And I would say that it does feel like the conversation around wolves is definitely elevated. And that's multifaceted. I mean, wolves are the sort of like, I think you could say polarizing topic, like it's just, it's almost like they're like a lightning rod, you know, like you mentioned wolf and like, you're stern, a whole bunch of different pots, potentially. But like, so there's, there's lots of conversation with deer, deer hunters, the wolves effects on that and sort of the expanse in the range of individual wolves, wolf packs, where people are having these encounters. And it does seem like more and more every year there's a, you know, and you got to like keep in mind with this stuff, if something happens to a pet or a neighborhood dog, as opposed to a bird dog or even less so a bear hound, a bear dog, you know, because that stuff happens a lot more often. So it's like, it kind of doesn't, doesn't breach the surface of the headlines and stuff. But there was a, there was a dog in was somewhere in Wisconsin over the summer that was sort of walking, hiking, we could probably, I probably should find the article and link it. It was close to the owner and the dog got taken out by wolves basically. So you start to hear about that stuff more and more recently and again, is it because of things that are happening in higher frequency or has that conversation and that focus shifted and put it, put more of a spotlight, I think could be, could, it could easily be both of those things. Yeah. And that, that's honestly why I enjoyed last year when you came out with your story episode and I kind of came out with the more informative episode interviewing Randy Johnson, the large carnivore specialist for the Wisconsin DNR is it kind of provided people with more context such as that, like more consideration into actual how wolves interact with the landscape, how we go about dealing with them, especially, you know, let's face it, we're going out there in their territory, you know, letting our dogs run loose. There's some obvious risk to something like that. And so I, I enjoyed the two episode situation where it was worth you and I, you know, you've started receiving some more questions going into October's same as me talking about wolves, how much do we care about wolves, and we thought it would be a good idea to kind of just recall these episodes, republish them because there's a lot of good information in both of them to where if you listen to my episode on GDI with Randy Johnson, you, you really do get that kind of flushed out rounded education on the wolves and how they're really kind of operating within, within that region. And then you go listen to your episode to where you have actual real life encounters with people doing what we love to do. And the, the kind of the common overlap between those storytellers, like from story to story, just how many commonalities were spanned across all of them, I thought that was kind of interesting. And so when, when I started getting more questions, we thought it'd be worth to just republish both of these episodes, but I thought it was well worth instead of, instead of trying to redo a whole new episode on this, this is obviously something that every year, every fall, people are going into the Northwoods and they're concerned about wolves. So we just thought, let's throw this back out there. Let everybody know that if you caught my episode and you weren't aware that birdshot did one on the storytelling, go check out that episode, which will be linked in my show notes. And then vice versa, if you caught the storytelling episode from birdshot and you wanted to know a little bit more of the actual like information side of things and how it relates to wolves on the landscape, then come check out my episode. Yep. Yep, exactly right. Just sort of felt the information that we covered last year was still absolutely relevant and wanted to put it out there because as you said, it's a very common question that I get from more so from people that are coming from out of state to this part of the world to hunt. Naturally, it's one of those things where you're doing your due diligence, like, okay, going to hunt a new area. What do I need to be aware of? Their wolves are near the top of the list. So yeah, it's something we get asked about a lot. And I think it's one of these topics that the more information you have, the better prepared you'll be and the better your power of observation is going to be when you're in the field. And I think I definitely learned some stuff from both of the stories that I conducted, the counter stories that I conducted with my guest last year. And then when I listened to yours, it's getting the resource professional take on things. I don't know if you, there's a couple of things that stand out to me. I have two key takeaways from both of those, not to spoil it, but I imagine many people kind of listen to this already if you haven't definitely go check out both episodes. But the one from my show was that in the encounters, a pattern emerged about the bird dogs behavior and it had to do with vocalization. And that was something that it's again, it's a small sample size. There were four encounters, but there was a pattern there with folks bird dogs that emerged as I conducted the interviews and we just thought that was very, very interesting. And then the key takeaway that I got from listening to your episode, Nick was when Randy talked about, and it was sort of a more of a, it made me sort of feel good. The wolf pack range, the wolf pack range. You have like six to 10 wolves in a pack, give or take. I don't remember exactly the numbers he said, but their range was like 50 to 60 miles. Does that sound right to you? I think it was, it was something like, yeah, I think it was right at 60 because that was one of my main takeaways as well. Yeah, 60 square miles. And so you think about a pack of that size, that many animals having a range of that much territory, how much empty space there is out there, because the flip side of that is pretty much every cover we go into. You can, if you're trying and looking, you're going to find wolf sign, probably. So you get this feeling that they're everywhere and they are in the sense that pretty much everywhere I hunt is wolf territory, but they are not everywhere all of the time. And that's what I took away from, from your interview with Randy. Yeah. Very similar, that was one of my main takeaways is it did feel, make me feel a little bit better because to your point, I've been in the woods to where I look down and oh, there's wolf scat, but it's like a week or two old or something like that. If it hasn't rained, it's still lingering. And so if you, if you go into the woods and every time you saw any indication of wolves, you would, you would have very limited spots to hunt. And I could argue probably it's not the most effective places to hunt, if you will, right? So yeah, I mean, it was interesting to hear the encounters. It was interesting to hear the information that Randy Johnson provided. But the fact that like really I've only, there's been twice that I've backed out of the woods just over concern over wolf sign, you know, being fresh or there was one, it was in both of them last year, one in Minnesota, I was out and there was a, I mean, there was a steamy pile of wolf crap that it's like, yeah, I'm going to get out of here. They're definitely here. So we just turned around and backed out. But then the next one was actually with you when I stopped off in Wisconsin to where we weren't 100% sure that it was wolves that we were hearing, but we still just, we decided not to take the chance and turn around and back out. I don't know if you recall that, that hunt, but it kind of ruined it was like we were just starting to get rolling, Quinn had just pointed and shot a grouse and we're just sitting there like, well, do we, do we push the envelope or do we, do we play it safe and back out of here? I think we were, yeah, we were, we were, I remember that day very well and what we heard was kind of some yipping and barking off in the distance and it was, it, it was, it was it continued for five or so minutes and so that was one thing. I do think in hindsight, I think there's a pretty good chance that that was a coyote that we heard, but what happened was we heard that and we're kind of, you know, this is pretty fresh off of when we put these interviews out, so like, it's all very fresh in our minds and we're kind of thinking like, okay, like, let's practice what we preach here, practice what we've learned at least and we pressed on through the yipping once and then we went a little bit further down the trail and we found there was some, there was like a dugout part on the trail where there was actually a little piece of corn in there, my suspicion is deer baiting, which is legal in Wisconsin, so I think that was going on and there was a big wolf track right in the middle of this dirt thing, so we looked down, we see this giant wolf track and here's Quinn running around and then we hear this stuff going on in the background and we're just like, all right, like, do we need the third strike? Let's just turn around and take off, so that's what we did and yeah, our day, our day was fine, right? Like we had, you know, you took off and went and hunted somewhere else like we had their whole day ahead of us, there was no need to push it, so that was the, that was the, what we decided to do. Yeah, and I mean, there's no need to overreact, is this better, safe than sorry, back out of where there's plenty of areas to go hunt, why take the unnecessary risk and I think that's ultimately what this boils down to is the wolf subject or concern in the north woods, to me it's no different than a lot of the other concerns that are just inherent in the activity that we like to do, whether you're out west and you're contending with rattlesnakes or even grizzly bears, if you're early season hunting in, you know, western Montana or something like that. Wolves are just naturally in the environment, you know, I put them in the same vein as any of the other nuisance or safety hazards such as the rattlesnakes and grizzly bears, but even, you know, maybe even porcupines, you know, porcupines can do some real damage to some dogs, you know, I think there's just something about the wolves that kind of really captivate our attention and our imagination, you know, it's almost kind of a majestic creature if you will, especially like when you're out just kind of camping, you're at the campsite after hunting and you hear them howling off in the, in the distant, like there's, I enjoy having them on the landscape, you know, I know based on who you ask and when, especially like the local farmers in the area, they'll probably have a different opinion on it, but as far as what we like to do and activities and the birds that we chase, I look at it no different as any of these other potential hazards based on the region and so, you know, be smart about it, play it, you know, better safe than sorry, but don't let it keep you from entering the woods and actually doing what we're out there to do. Yeah, yeah, I couldn't agree more, it's, again, it's one of those things that you need to be ever aware of and hopefully you learn a thing or two from some of the conversations on these episodes today and that's all it is, another thing for you to store away and keep in mind when you're out there, following the dog through Good Bird Cover, which happens to be inhabited by other creatures as well. Exactly, exactly. I will throw in one more thing, I can now say after this spring, I have had more wolf encounters while turkey hunting than I ever have while grouse hunting, which the amount of turkey hunting I've done compared to the amount of grouse hunting is way out of proportion, done a ton more grouse hunting with bird dogs than I have turkey hunting, but I was walking down a trail, walking and calling this spring and came to an intersection, looked to my left and probably maybe 80 to 100 yards away, there was a wolf standing there just kind of looking at me and I took my phone out and got a little video and was he coming to my turkey calls? I really don't know, I was on a trail system that I know that they run pretty regularly, so he could have been making the rounds, he could have been here in the calls either way. Not sure, but I just stood there and took a video of him and eventually he turned and kind of sauntered away as the wolves tend to do. A couple weeks later, I was hunting again, I was walking and calling along this little oak ridge and I hit the call, probably walked a little bit and I heard some crashing through the brush and it was kind of coming closer to me, so I stopped and turned in that direction and just up over a little rise, this time probably not more than 15 yards away from me, a timber wolf came and just stood right on top of that rise and was looking angled behind me where I just had been, potentially where I had been calling, stood there and looked and I heard at least two more kind of behind it and I just stood there, froze, didn't move, looked at it, it never looked in my direction, because again I think I had moved beyond, if it really was coming to check out the sound, the turkey calls or whatever, I was past it and it looked and then just again as quickly as it showed up kind of turned and went out the other way, but that's probably the closest I've ever been to a timber wolf and I wasn't, I wasn't nerve, I mean it happened quickly, but it just was one of those things like I was there, I was aware, I observed and it turned and left and yeah, interesting, but they're out there, yeah they are and you know I've been coming up there, I mean this will be, I don't know, the better part of a decade if not 10 years that I've been coming up to the Northwoods at least for a week at a time, if not longer and the closest I've come to an actual encounter was the one that you just described one me and you were out there and that may have not even been a wolf, but I would be interested to know if you have kind of the same experience and turkey seasons to come to maybe the wolves are keying in on your calling and you know we're not gonna do a full episode on this, this is just kind of a quick intro to this, but I do want to get your take on it, I speak on this in my episode with Randy, what's your take and your gut instinct now after being, after hearing and your experience around wolves, do you, how much stock do you put in hunting a dog with a bell, do you think it's a deterrent or an attractant or neither, where do you land on that, because I think that's one of the kind of the more debated topics when it comes to this subject, yep, and I still, I run a bell on my dogs primarily for the information I get about my dogs, whereabouts and like safety, hunting, bird work, all of that stuff, but also you could add wolf deterrent to the, to the list, am I telling you that a bell is a wolf deterrent, no, but it falls, for me it falls under the category of if you were walking through grizzly bear country and you had, you don't people put bells on their waist belt or something, like it's just, I'd rather, I'd rather not surprise an animal, a predator, a wolf, a grizzly bear, whatever it is, I just think moving through the woods, making that noise and that commotion, again, I, I'm knocking on wood here about as hard as I can, I have not never had a wolf encounter with my bird dogs on the ground and we've run bells so until proven otherwise, it's, I value the other stuff more so than this that it would have to be a real strong, like association to, oh, don't wear a bell because that will bring the wolves in like if that ever happened, sure maybe, but right now I, I don't go in the woods without a bell because it helps keep a closer tap on my dogs to begin with and it's, it's all about this knowing where your dogs are and if you need to get them back quickly, that bell is giving me so much more information than a silent GPS. It's just, I've seen it too many times, dog is working 50 yards to my right and you got no bell on the dog and then all of a sudden the next time you see the dog, he's coming from the left, I had no idea where he was or how the dog got over there. I want to know, I want to have more information on where my dog is for a bunch of reasons. So for that reason, I run a bell. Yeah. I'm right there with you. I run it either way. If it gives me some kind of fringe benefit in terms of deterrence for wolves, then cool. I'll take it, but I run it for other reasons, but I don't think personally after kind of talking to, to numerous people and kind of learning a little bit more about wolves. I don't think that the bell necessarily is a perfect deterrent or I don't think that the wolves become conditioned to where all of a sudden they start becoming, coming to the bell was a dinner bell, so to speak. I don't think that that, you know, if they do, then that that wolf has had way too many encounters with dogs to make that correlation or connection. So yeah, that's just my take, but yeah, man, I'm excited. Like you said, there's obviously some interest, especially this time of year. It's the best time of year that you and I look forward to October, especially in the grasswoods. It's something special. And with that comes a lot of people traveling, a lot of concern over this. So I just thought it'd be great to throw these episodes out there. And if you listen to both of these, you have any comments, criticisms, concerns, stories of your own, by all means, reach out to us. We'd love to hear it. And maybe your story can make it on to the the annual birdshot recall edition of the wolf story hour, whatever you're calling it. But yeah, man, it's hope, hope people find some value and enjoy it again. Yeah, absolutely. I would agree. And I almost forgot. I had to mention this, this one thing. And to kind of follow up on your point there, yeah, if you have had an encounter and you want to share that, definitely get in touch with me. Let us know because I think, again, the more sort of real world experience and encounters that we can sort of talk through, maybe maybe another pattern emerges, something else that we can all learn from. I'd be very curious in that. I did hear, I heard from a lot of listeners after the show last year, I did hear from one person specifically that said, he felt the information that he gleaned from those encounter stories last year, helped him prevent an incident with his bird dog. He heard some noise. I think he heard vocalization from his dog, called his dog back quickly, and then somehow confirmed that there were wolves around in the area. And I'm just relaying what what this person told me that he felt the information he heard on the podcast helped him potentially avoid an encounter. And to me, that was like, that alone is worth putting this information back out there. If that helped one person at all, like, I want people to hear this and I want to I want to make sure that we get this information back out there. So I wanted to mention that as well. Absolutely. Well, if you guys are curious, if you're listening on GDI line, you want to catch bird shot and vice versa, check out the show notes, the link to each other's episodes will be there. And hopefully it's worth your time and you enjoy and learn something new. Absolutely. Thanks for tuning in everybody. Have a great morning season. Alright, we're going to get right into our conversation today about wolf encounters with bird dogs. But before we bring on our first guest, I want to share just a little bit of context ahead of this conversation. And then we'll jump into the various segments. So as you may be well aware, much of the rough grouse hunting, I should say pretty much all of it in the upper Great Lakes region, where I do my grouse hunting is done in areas that are also inhabited by wolves, gray wolves, timber wolves, whatever you want to call them, not coyotes, but wolves. And along with that, there are risks associated with hunting in wolf country. Fortunately, the odds of encounters with wolves and bird dogs are relatively low. But as you will find out on today's show, they are certainly not zero. And while the probability is even less that said encounters and in a worst case scenario, that probability is in fact not zero as well. So there's definitely some seriousness to this conversation. And it's not something to be taken lightly. But I think that having conversations about it and playing a little part in maybe increasing the awareness around the topic and these scenarios could be helpful or beneficial to those of you out there listening. And that's certainly my hope with this episode. And with that in mind, I would like to give a special thank you to each guest that participated today, Ted, Joe, Mike and Ted, all of whom did their best to recall and recount exactly what occurred, what they were thinking, what they went through during each of these encounters and tried to share in as much detail as possible so that we all could learn and benefit from their experience. And with that said, let's welcome into the conversation and on to the birdshot podcast, Ted Kaler. All right, good morning, Ted. Thank you for joining us on the birdshot podcast. I will just say that I wish in a way that I wasn't having you on this on this particular episode. I wish this was a regular episode, but I really, I really do appreciate you taking the time to join us today and participate in this conversation because it is a reality of the situation. So with that, I'd like to welcome you to the show and would like you to introduce yourself and just tell us a little bit about yourself, Ted. Well, yeah, hi. My name is Ted Kaler, and I live up in Northern Wisconsin, have for about the last 21 years, live in the town of Ashland. And yeah, I grew up bird hunting with pointing dogs down in Central Illinois and I've been around them all my life and I've been a bird hunter and I hunt just about everything that walks or flies, it seems like. And I got heavily in the deer hunting for a few years. But now I'm kind of back to bird hunting more than I deer hunt. And I hunt everything from ducks and geese to grouse and pheasants, love going out to the prairies in North Dakota and getting away out there for a couple of weeks and getting out of the big woods, but I like the big woods as well. Yeah. But yeah, yeah, that's a little bit about me. Awesome. Well, I appreciate that. And as much as I would love to dig into that further as we would normally do, we've got other things on our mind today to talk about. So with that said, we'll just move right into my list of questions here and ask you when and where did the wolf encounter that you had occur? It occurred back. Golly, I guess it was 2019. It's been a while ago now and right off the top of my head, I'm kind of blocking on the exact year. But yeah, it was back in, I'm pretty sure, yeah, it was before it was pre-COVID. And yeah, so yeah, the fall of 2019, it was Veteran's Day weekend. Yes, I will never forget that. And yeah, one of my favorite weekends of the year, and you know, everything is great hunting, bird hunting, things are migrating, the deer and rot. And so I was going out to actually, I was at a couple things on my mind that day. I was going to go work on some deer stands in the afternoon. I think I'd killed a buck already with a bow that year, and I was going to go get ready for gun season. And but there's a little 120 acre chunk of industrial forest land surrounded by private land. And this is this is in Wisconsin. I would have read it's at that correct, but I think we can gather that based on where you are. But yes, Wisconsin. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, no problem, no problem. But yeah, I was in Bayfield County in northern Wisconsin. And so yeah, I was heading out. And so I thought, you know, I'll get into like an hour. There's a nice little trail around the whole well through most of the 120. And and I'll just go bird hunt for like an hour before I go work on deer stands. And you know, so through the dog in the truck, and it was it was Saturday, Saturday afternoon. And there was we did get a skip of snow that morning. And so there was about a half inch of snow on the ground. And it was really cold. It got cold early. So it was easy to walk because there's right in the center, there's a swampy place in the center of the 120. And so yeah, so I turn, there's basically two places you can park. And and I, I, I hunt the spot every year multiple times. And I have it since. But so anyway, I, I turned the dog loose. And, and we walked down, you walk down the the old logging road. And yeah, he was, he had a beeper collar on and a bell. I, I read, I read run with run the beeper collar on point mode. Okay. And then just use a bell to keep track of him. He, I mean, he was a fairly close working Britney. And but you know, he would take you would take off from time, you know, like pointing dogs do. I don't write I didn't run track. I'm kind of a minimalist, I'm kind of a minimalist when it comes to electronics and stuff like that. No GPS. No GPS. No, no, no, yeah, no tracking, no shocking. Yeah. And so we had down the trail and, well, I don't know, we've been hunting about half an hour and got a point. And a couple grouse get up and I kill both of them. Oh my gosh. You got a true double. No way. Yeah, one went left and one went right. And I got no, I guess one got up a hair after the, the first sure, but, but yeah, it would, yeah, I've only done that maybe once or twice. Yeah, that's closer than many of us ever get. And, but I, I mean, we, well, we used to have a long season up here that would run through January. And I just still long and, and, and I fortunately get a lot of time to hunt and stuff. So I, I, I haven't, have, well, had other opportunities. But, you know, one of the rare chances is actually got a double. So I was all happy and, and I don't think I had taken any other shots. I think those were the only two birds we, we, we ran into. And went down the trail a little farther at end. And this, and this part, this trail dead ends. And it, but the dog went down into the swamp. I heard, heard his belt go out of sight. And, and then there's, you know, just nothing. I'm standing there waiting, waiting, waiting. And he didn't come back, which I don't know, maybe once a season, you know, he, he would just take off on a wild hair, you know, who knows why. And, but I, I mean, that he was 10 years, dogs 10 years old, and I've hunted with it, you know, and hunted within all his life. And, and so what, so I, when he didn't come back after about 15 minutes, I wasn't that worried. And for whatever reason, it was kind of in a hurry. And I didn't feel like, you know, busting the brush. Yeah. And so I thought, I'll, you know, I'll call, he'll come back. And so I, I headed back towards the truck and, and I thought, well, maybe, maybe he's there. And so I headed back to the truck. He wasn't there. Like dang, you know, and, and I, I walked back down to the road where he was, where I, where I'd blast. Yep. See, dude. And he's still no dog. And I see, I wonder, I wonder if he maybe gone around to the other road where I normally part. And so I left, actually, I got the dog box out of the truck and left it where, you know, where I parked, drove around to the other side of the swamp and, and no dog called and everything. And, and then, then just drove back to where I had originally parked and, and walked back. Now I'm kind of getting a little work. Yeah. And I, I, I walked back to where I lost him and then headed down into the, into the brush. And so there, you know, like I said, there was a skip to snow on the ground so I could, I could see, especially in the frozen spots when the water had frozen over. So I got in, know, a couple hundred yards into the swamp and I started seeing wolf tracks. And then, and, and it just knowed the night before. So this was fresh. So I, I knew that they were fresh and got in a little further. There was an opening and probably about, oh, an acre that was kind of open, open water, but that was, it was frozen, not frozen enough that I could walk on it. And I walked in this, and the snow was still on there. And that was just covered in wolf tracks. And then I really got worried and, and then I, I could start hearing his beeper and I couldn't tell exactly which, which way it was coming from at first. I was down in a bowl. And so you, yeah, that was, you couldn't hear the beeper until you got down in there. No, I could not hear the beeper until I got down there. He was probably, oh, it was, it was, it was a good three, four hundred yards from you at loss. Gotcha. Yeah. And, but just a ton of wolf tracks on the, on the ice. And so I, I, I had a little trouble. I, I actually let the wrong direction at first. And then, you know, and then I kind of figured out where the, and my hearing is not what it used to be. So, well, I finally got, but I could, I could tell that he wasn't moving then, and which, you know, and then, then I, I was kind of putting two and two together at that point because, you know, he'll, he'll, he'd hold point for a while, but it was, you know, not it has been quite a while up to this point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It had been a good hour since I, since I lost him. And then I just, I, you know, followed the beeper to where he was and, and, yeah, it was, it was not a scene anybody wants to see. And, yeah. So I, I'll, I'll just, I'll just, I'll leave it at that. And, yeah, if, if I had, if I had to guess what happened was, oh, and, and one thing that I did forget to mention too, I did hear him bark. Okay. Which is kind of, which is kind of an important point. Yeah. When I, five minutes after I hadn't seen him, I did hear him bark like three or four times. And it wasn't a, it wasn't his bear bark. So like when there's a bear in the backyard, it's a totally different bark with all my dogs have been that way. But this was like, Hey, how you doing? You know, and, or it was kind of excited, but I, when, especially when he was younger, like if he would flush a bird, he might bark a few times at it. So it didn't, it wasn't anything that really, it wasn't anything that, that, that raised my attention or, or, yeah, I just thought how he flushed a grouse or something and something you noticed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't, it wasn't, he hadn't done it in a while because he was older, but it wasn't out of the ordinary, I guess. But if I was to guess what happened, I, because just judging from the tracks that it looked to me like, yeah, there might be 10 wolves. And in talking to the wildlife services, animal damage control person later, that the, the mukwa pack, which they guessed it probably was, had four adults that spring. And then so four adults, plus maybe half a dozen or half a dozen puppies. You know, just, I imagine, yeah. Yeah. And this is just pure speculation. I imagine you popped out, maybe ran into some of those young, the young wolves or whatever and ran over to play. I, I don't know. This is pure speculation. And then, then mom and dad showed up and it was over. But yeah, I, I, that that's just, that's all pure speculation, right? But judging from the number of traction and the evident at the scene, it was, it was, it was quite it's you. Yeah. Oh, man, that's just obviously horrendous. And I can't imagine, I hope nobody listening ever has to go through it. As I'm sure you do, Ted, it just, that's just the worst thing that could ever happen really to a, to a dog in the field. It's just incredible. But so I think we, we established, you know, some of the things that I wanted to at least sort of get out of, out of each of these encounters, which is, so your story is, it scares me even more because obviously the, the, it's just this terrible end result. But you did all of the things that I might tell myself as a grouse hunter to, to sort of comfort myself and say, you know, the dog had a beeper on the dog had a bell on you had taken some shots. You had, you had fired shots in the woods, you know, you were hunting for a while, all of these things where your presence was sort of established and sort of known. And so, but at the end, it's still, it's still happening. You know, your dog still came upon these wolves and, and the result was, was not good. But so you had mentioned three to 400 yard, you couldn't hear the beeper. So we can assume that when the dog stopped moving, he was a pretty good distance away from you. But we don't know exactly how far away he was were the encounter incurred unless you can kind of just sort of assume that from where you started seeing wolf tracks on your way down there. Yeah. I, I would say that the, the encounter probably occurred within like 300 yards of where I was something, something like that. Yeah. And that, and that's a distance that that's a, that's a long ways in the grouse woods. But as you said about your dogs, you know, mind you the same thing, they're oftentimes they're under 100 yards or under 150 yards. But it's not uncommon for them to take a, take a route or follow a scent or something and wind up that far away from you for a short period of time. Exactly. And oh yeah, 90% of the time he was always in bell range when I was hunting with him. I, as I never, he was, I guess he would call, I would call him a medium working grouse dog. I've, I've had another Brittany that was, that works super close. And I've had him that would range out there like a pointer on the prairie too. Not so much in the grouse woods, but yeah. I mean, he, he was a medium range dog. He'd work closer in the, in the grouse woods. He'd work further out on the prairie. So yeah, yeah, that's, yeah, that, yeah, as far as his range and, and, and where things have, but like, like you said, he, he would, and like, he would go off and, and snoop around on, on things from from time to time. But what it was, it was kind of, wasn't the norm, but, you know, yeah, then in, in hindsight, and I think, you know, we're kind of going with sticking with, trying to stick with these questions to keep these sort of uniform. But do you think that there's anything that, that you could have done differently to mitigate or avoid this encounter? Have you thought of anything in the, in the past few years and just thought, you know, geez, I wish I would have done this differently at all. What I would have done. Knowing what I know. Right. In, in wolf country, if I heard him bark, again, I would go right in. Yeah. And, and, and, and that's, that's the main thing. Maybe, you know, maybe I would have a GPS and, and, you know, try to keep the dog a little closer. But yeah, I don't, I don't, I think it, it was just, it was just bad luck. I, I, I hunt a lot, and I hunt in wolf country. And, and I, I know the, and, and I, I want to emphasize that I don't blame the wolves. I mean, they were just do, I know enough about their biology to be dangerous, I guess you would say. Yeah. And they're, and they were doing what they were supposed to, you know, so if you, I mean, you can just watch like the, the documentaries on the Yellowstone wolves and things like that, how, you know, a new, you know, a new wolf comes into their territory. They can kill at their coyotes. They kill coyotes regularly to, you know, reduce competition. And this was just another canine that unluckily wandered into their territory. And, and, and, and, and another thing that it kind of struck me about the area. So it was industrial forests surrounded by private land. And there were, I, I Google Earth that later there were 10 houses within a mile from where this happened. I mean, we weren't in the middle of the big woods. And I, yeah, so these wolves were used to being around people and houses and dogs and hearing cars and things like that. I was shooting. I, I don't vocalize. I mean, I would call the dog and things like that. But when we're hunting and I'm not worried, and I say as little as possible, but still they, but they, you know, I think they were aware that we were in the area. And, and, and you know, maybe if we had been in, in the middle of the school, how to get national forest where they don't see people as much, and maybe they would have been a little more, you know, scared or gotten out of there. I, I don't know. Yeah. That's an interesting, interesting thing to think about though. Yeah. Yeah. So yes, the, the, yeah. So these, uh, and there are people that, uh, deer hunt in the area and things like that. Right. So, so yeah, there, I think they're just a little more used to being around people. All right. Has the in count, but actually I, before I go to that one, I did want to comment on the bark. I'm glad you brought that up because I think when you, when you're talking about that, I, I know exactly what you mean in that you spend a lot of time in the woods with your dogs. You have this, you know, you have this working relationship where they do things consistently and, and within a pattern and you do things consistently and you have this sort of symbiotic relationship with your dogs and you recognize you kind of are on autopilot in a way, but when things happen that are not part of that usual pattern, you note them and it's not necessarily that you do anything about it. Like in this case, but you, you notice it and then in, in looking back, you, you see that as, as something that was different. But again, I, like, I've had that happen to, to me and my dogs, if my dogs make a noise and you're usually they're not, they're not barking or making any noise. They're quietly hunting and if I can't hear their bell, I'm kind of listening for them. And if I hear them vocalize or something, I'm curious, but it's not that I'm going to run and the beeline and go that direction. But again, I appreciate you bringing that up and sort of noting that, you know, if that ever happened again, you might, you might pay closer attention, obviously, with, with what had happened. But I think a lot of people, a lot of people listening would understand that very well because it is, that is part of working your dogs in the field. And you just, you kind of notice those things. But if you're doing something about it is, is, again, you have to have a reason to do so. And it's just hindsight, it's always 2020, right? Correct. Yes, it is. And, and if it would have been, like, what I call his bear bark, which is, when there's a bear in the backyard, it's a totally different part and like a low guttural growl and bark. But this was like, Hey, how you doing? It's the neighbor's dog across the street. And yeah, but even then when you're hunting in Wolf Country, it's probably worth a look, you know, to, to at least make it in that direction. I don't know if it would have made any difference if I would have gotten there. You know, because it would have, I bet it would have taken me five, maybe, I don't know, yeah, maybe five minutes to get to it. But maybe if I just started calling to a, you know, maybe, you know, calling and maybe making a little noise, getting that direction, maybe that would have made a difference. Right. You'll never know and neither will we, right? Right. All right. All right. Has the encounter changed the way you hunt or even the way you think and feel about hunting in the woods with your dogs? It has, it has a little bit if I, well, if I know, like now when I see fresh wolf tracks, especially if there's more than one wolf track, I don't too worry. If I see more than one, I'll go find, you know, and fresh, not super old, I will go somewhere else. You're getting out of there. Yeah. Yeah. I get out of there. I did that a couple times last season. For whatever reason, last season, I ran across more wolf sign than I have ever. And yeah, I just, I just got out of there. I did go, but because it is so close to where I deer hunt, I put my new dog now. It was a couple of years ago. I went back to the spot, you know, the, the, the spot, just because it is, it is such a good little spot, especially when the woodcock are in. And, but I got the dog out of the truck and I took a few steps down the trail and I just couldn't do it. I, I could not go back in there. And so, in, so yes, in some ways, like for that spot, I, I, you know, I have yet to be able to go back to it. But, but yeah, if I encounter more than one set of tracks, so I'll turn and turn around and find another spot. Yeah, that's entirely understandable. Your new dog is, is a lab, correct? Correct. Yeah, I got a point. He's a pointing lab and, and he'd be, I would, I would call it, he's got more of a hesitation than a point, but I, I do enjoy him and I enjoy the, he is a lot, a lot closer working than any of my Brit needs. And, and I, and I duck on a lot more now than I used to. So I, I really didn't enjoy having the lab. Yeah. What was, did that have, you know, no, you mentioned you, you have always enjoyed waterfall hunting and you mentioned that with me the other day when we, when we talked to getting a lab flushing dog, a little closer working, did that have anything to do with, with what you went through or was that not really part of the thought process? No, I would say, now, to be honest, the last, I almost went lab before. So my, my, my Brit needs name was Locky. Locky got killed by the wolves. But before I got lucky, I, I was really, I've got, I've got some really good friends that have some really good labs and, and I enjoyed hunting with them. And I was really in the past, but I've had Brit needs all my life. I grew up with my grandpa had him, my dad had him. And I don't know, I was, I was really stuck on the breed. And I almost went lab when I got lucky. But I just, you know, truthfully, the, the wolf encounter did have a, an impact on my next choice. Yeah. Because, you know, just in hunting with my friends, dogs, you know, the labs would, would stay closer. Like, like the, like the breeder put it to me, you know, the, a pointing dog, they're, they're instinct to their job is to go out and find, find birds that, and then have you come to them, or a lab, their, their main instinct is to bring that bird back to you. And so, so I, and it, it, I do, I do, I enjoy both. I, and I did get a pointing lab. And boy, when he does go on point, it is, it is exciting. But it's, it's, I don't know if he, if he holds for 10 seconds, that's a, that's a long, and I, I've seen other, now, I hope the pointing lab guys don't get mad at their hair because I've seen some pointing labs that boy, I mean, they'll hold just, you know, just like a pointer. And, but I don't, I don't work with him enough to really, you know, to, to, to really, I don't demand that, I guess I'll put it that way. And, and he, he works close enough. I mean, most of the birds he gets, they does lush. I mean, they're, they're in range. And so I, yeah, I, I don't demand that he, we hold longer. So, well, the listeners appreciate transparency, Ted, and I appreciate you telling it like it is. Yeah. Yeah. And, and you two are, you two are having fun out there. So that's, that's all that matters, man. Yes. Yes, we are. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Couple more here. Do you have any thoughts or insights you'd like to share with listeners about wolf encounters? I mean, I think you've shared quite a bit during, during this conversation, but anything else come to mind? Um, yeah, I, you know, I, I'd mentioned before I don't, you know, the wolves were just doing what they come naturally. And, and, you know, protecting their territory. It was bad. You know, it was, it was bad luck for us to be there. And, yeah, I, and I'll, I'll, I'll just, I'll just leave it at that. Yeah. But, um, yeah, I think we've kind of gone through, I'm sure, I'm sure after this is over, there'll be something I'll think about. Sure. Oh, golly, I wish I hadn't said that. Sure. Yeah. But, um, I wonder if, if in your case, because you mentioned you did speak with the, oh, the, the, because of the incident, Wisconsin has a, has a policy, I know, and, and I don't know if I'll have covered this in the intro or whether I have or not, but in Wisconsin, uh, bear hunters run dogs on, uh, bears and it's, it's quite common, I guess, more common than, than a grouse hunter. It's quite common for a, for a hound hunter to lose a hound to a pack of wolves and, and, and again, if I'm, it's typically, as I understand, those dogs are covering ground, they're further away. Again, all, going back to that, all the things we might tell ourselves as a bird hunter, the hound hunters are approaching it a little bit differently and that leads to more encounters like this. But with that said, Wisconsin has sort of a system in place to at least address and observe those reports and those incidents. So, um, did anything, anything of note from that conversation or interactions with the state of Wisconsin in this regard? Yeah. You know, that's one thing I did forget to mention. I, I would like to go, go over sort of the, the aftermath after the incident took place. And so it was, like I said, it was a Saturday afternoon, right? I called up a buddy of mine, uh, and let him know what happened and, uh, but, and while he was on his way over, I, I called the DNR ward and, uh, uh, let them know what was going on and they, uh, were very helpful and said, oh, you need to call wildlife services, department of agricultural wildlife services out of Ryan lander. So I, I, I called the number, I got an answering machine and I'm, I'm thinking to myself, oh, crud, it's, you know, Saturday, I won't hear, hear from anybody until Monday. I wonder what I should do. About 15 minutes later, I got a call back from, you know, the person in wildlife services, which is very surprising, pleasantly surprised. And, uh, uh, they, they called up and I told them what happened. They said, and, uh, uh, they said, you know, just, um, you know, that they would be out on some, you know, so we, we arranged for a time for him to meet me on Sunday morning. And I asked him, well, can I, can I move? Well, I was planning on doing this anyway. I wasn't going to leave him there. Um, oh, you know, where in the situation it was the wolves come back and then make it, you know, so anyway, he said, no, no, take the, you know, take the dog. I said, I'll leave up. I had a five-gallon bucket in the truck. I remember. And I said, I'll leave a, because they'd rip the collars off and stuff. And I said, I'll just, I'll just leave a bucket over the, the collars. And, and I maybe having it two or three, because I put some over the tracks, because I think it was in a couple of places, just so they could see it. And I think it's, it did. Yeah, and confirm everything, just in case it snowed some more. And so, um, so yeah. And so, yeah, he met me back there, like nine o'clock Sunday morning, which, um, you know, it really, they were, they were very professional, did a great job. I was really happy with the way both the DNR and AFIS Wildlife Services, you know, hand, they, I mean, they were on it. And met them out there. The, the biologists for Wildlife Service documented the scene. And, um, you know, gave me the forms to fill out for, for reimbursement and things like that. It means to the report, I'm not sure exactly what it was called, but basically a form and, uh, you know, to send in for them to evaluate. And, uh, yeah, it was, it, it, it went very, very smoothly. I'll, I'll just put it that way. And from, from that standpoint, I mean, nobody, nobody wanted to be there, I think, or have to deal with this kind of thing. But, you know, it's, it's, it's part of, it's part of their job and, and, and both the DNR and part of my bag did a, did a great job. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, um, again, as a result of some of the, these wolf encounters, Wisconsin, I don't know if this is the universal or the same. I don't even know if it's true in Minnesota, but Wisconsin does have a, have like a deeper, depredation sort of reimbursement for, for hunters and, and there's a, there's a protocol, I guess, which laid out a little bit here. So, yeah. All right, Ted. Well, I've, I'll say it again, I really wish you and I had been connected under different circumstances. But with that said, I always appreciate connecting with, with other bird hunters in, in the area. So sorry for the loss of your dog, but I cannot thank you enough for taking the time and agreeing to participate and, and sharing your, your experience and some of your thoughts and, and insights in this for all the listeners of the bird chat podcast. I really appreciate it, Ted. Yeah, no problem, Nick. And yes, we'll have to figure out some other happier thing. Yeah, maybe after I get back from North Dakota or something here this year, we can do a report on the, on the pheasants and sharp tails and ducks and geese out there or something like that. I would, I would happily do that, Ted. And I think we should make a point to do so. So yeah, I would appreciate your prayer report and, and we can remember some good stories from, from lucky as well. Very good, very good. Well, thank you, Nick. All right, Ted, thanks again for participating and you have a great day. You, too. For many upland hunters, along with their passion for dogs, birds, and the places we chase them comes a passion for shotguns. Upland gun company specializes in customizing shotguns for the upland bird hunter imported from Italy and shipped direct to an FFL near you. Select from one of their side by side are over under shotgun platforms and customize the fit function and aesthetics to your liking. Design and build your next upland hunting shotgun with Upland gun company today. 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With a wide variety of choke tubes, constrictions, and available thread patterns, TrueLock Choke Tubes are built to the highest standard. If you're ready to take your shooting to the next level, check out truelockchokes.com and discover why bird hunters all across the uplands trust TrueLock Choke Tubes. All right, buddy. Thank you for taking some time to join us on the Bird Shop Podcast and share a little bit about your wolf encounter. Why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself, Joe. Hey, Nick. Thanks for having me. My name is Joe Parple. I'm from Duluth area and I'm a kind of an old school part of gender like UNIC, which I turn into a upland pursuitous here with my with my aggressator and I've been hunting by myself for quite a while. So you get to see some weird stuff when you're out solo hunting. Yeah, and okay. We're both evolving partridge hunters, Joe. I like that. All right, buddy, we're going to get straight to the point here. We got we got multiple segments on the show. So when and where did the incident take place approximately when and where did this encounter take place? All right. So I was hunting opening Minnesota upland last year. 2022. 2022. Yep. So just north of my house, hunting a piece of public land with some big trails and whatnot through it. It's actually, I think a cross country ski area and pretty big, pretty big woods where you're at. I'm familiar with the area. So this is pretty big woods. Yeah. So yeah, if we're not we're not touching people for quite a while, if you go certain directions and fairly fairly remote, but we were we're hunting a very drizzly day. So we're actually waiting for the kind of the rain to stop. So we're getting the woods. We're so antsy because it was my first first year with my new dog and he was 10 months old, I believe at the time. And so we're coming over this hill, going down near this big, big swamp, which is after my, don't bows up by myself this time. Yep. And so just the two of us and it was kind of an intimate time. Like it was our first time actually like hunting with a with a shotgun and it was, yeah, I mean, it was special. This is the like the thing that I looked forward to for quite a while with, you know, my past dogs and stuff. So you're, yeah, you're familiar with that. I was just so much at anticipation. So we're literally 10 minutes into this hunt. And my, my dog Pike is just over this hill down near the swamp edge. And he, he starts yoping and he goes on point point because you knew he was on point because of your GPS caller, right? I actually had the beeper on him that day because it was so uh, it was so quiet in the woods and I just, I don't know, just trying to kind of get the handle on what was going on. So he had a, he had a 10 second interval beeper going. And he started like yelping and doing some weird stuff. It was just, it was just weird. And then he went on point and then he started barking and yelping more. And I'm kind of like, what did he get a porcupine? Like I've never had a porcupine encounter. I'm thinking it's got to be a porcupine. And you've got a, like you said, this is a, this is a first day hunting with this young dog. So you don't have years and years of hunting with this dog. So it's unusual, but you also don't have a lot of experience hunting with this dog. Yeah, we're, we're brand new to each other, you know, in this relationship. And in all of a sudden, I hear him barreling straight, straight in front of me. He ended up crossing the, the wide ski trail right in front of me. And, and didn't even like pay attention to me. Like didn't even know I was there, which he'd been checking in and paid attention to where I was. Well, the next thing I look and there is a massive timber wolf sprinting, probably no more than 20 yards behind him. And he gets to this trail. And the trail is probably, I don't know, 10, 12 feet wide and stops on the edge of it and just stares at me. And my heart is the timber wolf you're saying now. But yeah, the timber wolf. Okay. So Mike, Mike doesn't pay any attention to you, but timber wolf spots you right away. Yes, Pike crosses the trail. He's lying, he's lying long gone at this point, because he was going wide open. The timber wolf puts the brakes on and stares at me. And I am, I mean, I am so nervous, my heart is beating out of my chest. Yeah. And I had my gun up because I didn't even, I was just scared. You're reacting. Yeah. Yeah. And the thing, the things, you know, looks at me for maybe two or three seconds, which seemed like an eternity. And then, he just trotted away. Just he didn't bolt. He just trotted back where he came from. Sontered back. Yeah. Geez, man. I can, I can imagine the intensity you, you were feeling in that moment. Well, so, so back up, just, you know, less than a year, I lost my, my young dog in a, in a vehicle accident. Yeah. Yeah, hit by a car. And so I'm in, in that moment, I'm thinking, I take my new hunting dog that's months old, less than a year ago, I lost my dog and I'm, I'm like, are you kidding me? This is all happening right now. Oh man. I remember you texted me that day and you, you basically said, I was like, one of the scariest moments of your life. I do recall that. Yeah, I was there. You see. So, all right. So Pike comes flying through you, you at some point, when he was whipping through, you saw the wolf on his heels, 20 yards behind him. Pike flies across the trail, wolf hits the trail edge and sees you, locks eyes with you, turns away. And then imagine, as the wolf is going away, you're calling Pike or, you know, how did you reconnect with Pike? Yeah. Well, I heard his beeper where he was and he was, he was, I don't know, he must have been over a hundred yards off to my right side. Yep. And so I was comfortable with where he was at. So we're in that first hunt and I continue the hunt and it was the day for summaries and I didn't put his GPS on because I'm just thinking, let's do the beeper thing. And it was so quiet with the rain and stuff that you couldn't hear him very well. And multiple times he got out of where I could really make out where he was is pretty, it's pretty hilly, a lot of elevation in that area. So I kept losing, you know, losing him from hearing distance and I was so nervous the whole time. After that, I was done for the day. I just couldn't do it anymore. Yes. Yeah. Understandable. Yeah. That's, it's a little scary that, you know, I always, again, one of these, you have these things that you tell yourself, like you'd hope that Pike would have, he was running for his life. I mean, for lack of a better word, but he, which is a good thing. You met, you hope that dog runs away from any sort of wolf encounter, but you want him to kind of run right back and sit at your feet or something. What was his behavior like when wolf goes away and you do reconnect with Pike? Was he, what was his behavior like? Honestly, it was like nothing even happened to him back to normal. Yeah. Yeah. Like he didn't, he didn't even phase him. I kind of thought so too. Like, that's why I thought maybe we wouldn't hunt anymore or whatever. You have to like use good, so we just kept going. Yeah. Okay. All right. So we kind of addressed this. He was wearing a beeper that was on point only. Is that correct? Nope. He was, it was, it was on a continuous running point. Yeah. 10 second interval beep. So he had, he had that thing going like the whole entire time, which I always heard, like, keep something, you know, noisy on the dog, which would deter the predators, but at least alert them to your presence. So you don't surprise them. And yeah. Yep. Yep. Okay. So no GPS caller that day, but he's got a beeper on running point mode, no bell because of the beeper, obviously. Correct. Yep. All right. So in hindsight, is there anything that you think could have been done to mitigate or avoid this encounter altogether or just something that happened and really no way around it? Well, unfortunately, we're living amongst the wolves where we live. And there's amazing swamp edges that I love hunting that I know other things love hunting it to. Yeah. And I just, I don't know that, I don't know that the encounter itself could have been avoided. I think that potentially I would have handled the situation a little bit differently now, knowing how my dog responded. He's never done that since where he started barking and barking. He was yelp. He was actually yelping. So I don't ever, we'll never know, right? What actually took place, but I don't know how close they got. I don't know if he was trying to play with, you know, trying to play with the wolf or he thought it was, he was a puppy and he was only 10 months old. Right. So I mean, maybe just being really in tune with the cues that seem odd for your dog, like making noise in the words of other hunting. Yeah. But I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go stop hunting the swamp edges where the wolves hang up though. Right. Right. Well, and like you pointed out, for you and I, there's literally nowhere we can hunt that is not wolf country. So it isn't like you can't just go down the road and hunt a different spot where there are no, I mean, there's wolves everywhere. And seeing sign, I imagine is, I pretty much see some wolf sign wherever I go. And I pay attention to it and observe it. Imagine that's the case for you. There wasn't, you'd only been hunting for 10 minutes. So it's not like you probably saw a ton of sign. But if you, if you're walking down a trail and you see some wolf scatter wolf tracks, I, that's like another day in the day in the office, right? Yeah, I would never think anything of it, just based on where I'm hunting. Yep. Okay. Has the encounter, well, and I would like to point out that you're the second person I've talked to and both of these encounters so far have involved vocalizations by, by the dog, bird dogs, that are again, not totally unusual, but they're not commonplace where the dogs are normally doing that during the course of the hunt. So vocalizations from the dog are sort of something that is maybe elevating in some of these conversations. We'll see how the rest of them go. But back to, back to Joe, has the encounter changed the way you hunt or even the way you think and feel about taking your bird dogs into the woods at all? You know, not really. I was, I hunt by myself a lot. So I, it wasn't, that wasn't odd, but I did, I did like right away call my dad and I said, dad, I'm really scared. Yeah. You know, just, you know, what kind of, what do I do? What, you know, what would you do? Would you get out of the woods kind of, you know, it was about halfway through this loop. So it was kind of like, we just keep going. Yeah. But you know, I think, I think it's good to hunt with other people when you, when you can just in case there's something odd or weird, you have, you know, you have another set of hands or eyes or whatever and it's not going to keep me out of the woods. Oh, I'll still hunt by myself, but, but I would prefer to hunt with somebody, I guess when, when situations like that arise. Sure. Sure. Yeah. All right. So do you have any, any other thoughts or insights that you would share with listeners about wolf encounters, things to pay attention to or anything come to mind? I don't know. Just get to know your dog so well that if something's weird or odd, maybe react quickly, if you're concerned that you're in a spot where there's a potential encounter that could turn sour. I was very, very lucky, but had I not been standing where I was? And my dog not come the direction he did where I was. It could end a lot differently. Yeah. That wolf was in full pursuit of my dog. Yeah. That's, that actually reminds me, we didn't, I don't know if we establish that about how far from you, do you think the encounter took place when you heard him barking and stuff? He was probably 40 or 50 yards when the first encounter kind of started kind of evolving. So not far at all. My dog came across the road or the trail in front of me. And it was, you know, where he came across in front of me, probably was no more than 20, 25 yards at the most. And then the wolf was right behind him. Yep. Yeah. And that is, you pointed it out, but that is something, uh, another observation to make is that this was opening day in Minnesota, mid September, very thick woods thick foliage. Um, I have heard that, I think maybe Anganderna has talked about this on my show, but typically that is a time of year where you, you just have a chance, a higher chance of encounters because the visibility and the, the, what you can hear is limited by the thick foliage. So it's easier for a quick moving bird dog to come upon a wolf like that in, in that scenario. Right. All right. Are there any questions that you have or would like answered about wolf encounters or maybe how to, how you could respond to something like this in the future from a, from a wolf professional or somebody of that sort? Well, it does, it does make a person wonder like, would I be in the wrong to take a shot if, if that wolf didn't stop, defend your dog's life? Right. I don't know. You feel, it feels so weird knowing that they're protected, but at the same time, losing a dog is horrible too. Yeah. Yeah. Without a dog. All right. Well, I appreciate that. Any, any final thoughts or anything else you'd like to say, Joe? Well, I was just telling you kind of before the call year today, I had this weird situation where, um, we live on a lake in the wintertime. We oftentimes see wolves out on the, out on the lake walking across. Um, and we had this wolf this last winter that would, he was lay right on the ice, probably, I don't know, 75, 80 yards off the shoreline and just lay there watching my dog in the yard. And he would get up and run away often almost as if he was trying to get my dog to kind of chase after him. And he wasn't on my property. So I didn't really know what to do about it. But just very interesting behavior and it kind of brings up like from a dog's perspective, I think sometimes maybe they just think they're playing with another dog. Yeah. And I know, I mean, there's a lot of things that get said about wolves, some of them true, some of them have true, some of them not true. But I have definitely heard that, that they will, they will attempt to lure other animals, um, away from some place of security or something of that sort of that, that'd be an interesting question for a biologist to see how much reality there is there, but it's definitely something I've heard. Yeah, I'd like to know about that too. All right, buddy. Well, thank you for taking the time to participate in this conversation. And all the listeners will be appreciative. And I wish you the best of luck. You and Pike, the best of luck this fall. I know you're planning on heading out and, and trying your luck on Sharf Tails for the first time this year. I know you're going to have a blast doing that. You and I will keep in touch. We'll keep our fingers crossed that we have no wolf encounters this fall. And, uh, thanks, buddy. And I wish you the best. Appreciate it. Nick, thanks for having me. All right, man. Yeah. All right, Mike. Welcome to, well, well, I should say welcome back to the birdshot podcast. Thanks for taking some time to chat with us this evening. Why don't you introduce yourself a little bit your former guest of the show, but reintroduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself as it relates to hunting and the outdoors. Thanks, Nick. Yeah, it's great to be back. On the podcast, my name is Mike Gommen. I'm a Bayfield County forester. I grew up hunting and fishing. And in the last probably 25 years, really have gotten tuned into upland hunting, rough grouse, woodcock as a county forester. There's a lot of opportunity to refine your skills when you're setting up these timber sales to create this habitat. So, an avid rough grouse hunter in northern Wisconsin. All right. And we are talking wolf encounters today. So we're going to jump right into that. And I will jump off with the first question here. Approximately when and where did this encounter take place with with you and your dog? So the encounter occurred last September, August or September. So 2022 on public land in northern Wisconsin. It's more of an open landscape. There's there's barrens properties across the northern Wisconsin. And I was exercising my dogs in late August, I believe. And I was taking them out for their evening walk. And they spend a lot of time in this area exercising. And there's been wolf sign on the sand roads. I mean, I was fully aware there's wolves in all of northern Wisconsin where I work and play. And so I was just running the dog's head. You know, I've been out there probably 30 times over the last couple of years all the time. Seeing wolf sign never actually seen any wolves. I'm fully aware they're there. So just running the dog without bells. I had I have two dogs. I have an English setter who was two at the time. And then Shig is my older Weimariner. He's he was 11 or so at the time. And they're just both out running. The setter runs larger than than the Weimariner. So just just a nice evening walk, probably 15 minutes into it. Nothing unusual. Elwa. I heard Elwa barking, which is very unusual to hear him bark in the woods. And he was probably 150 yards away. And I was just, whoa, that's interesting. He's barking. And so I start trotting the direction he was barking from. And I'm then I start calling his name. And I hit the tone button on the GPS, which when I tone him, that means he needs to come back. So I'm, you know, trotting that way. Kind of like, Oh, this is very unusual. I wasn't like, Oh my god, that's wolves. It was more like, that's very unusual behavior. I wonder what what's going on. And I can see a ways, but it was a little topography. And I start trotting over the knoll. And as soon as I get over the knoll, I see him, he's just bounding back towards me. Like, you know, no big deal. He's probably out there 120 yards running back my way, because I toned them in a yelled for him. And he's a great, he's bittable that way. He'll come right back. Yep. And so I'm looking at him. He's running my way. The sun's going down. So some of the lighting and shadows, I was like, Oh, a Sig's running next to him. That's weird. That Sig is that far out with them at that time. And I started looking and I'm like, that's not sick. That's, that's something else. And oh, that's like, and then all of a sudden I saw the tail. And oh, there's, that's a wolf running trotting alongside Elwa. And then I can see there was another wolf on basically the other side of Elwa just loping. It's interesting how big these animals are. Elwa is really bounding. And those dog or the wolves look like they're just a slow trotting. And then I can see exactly. And I could see another wolf probably 20 yards behind Elwa. And they were just coming out of some of the short scrubber brush. It's not super dense, but there's pockets of density and kind of broke out into the more open. And as soon as it kind of got more open, and then I could see Elwa really well. And I saw that that wasn't my other dog. That was, those were wolves. I started yelling, Hey, you know, get out of here. They just basically stopped right then and there and Elwa just came bounded back, tail up, just ran right by me and just sailed off the other direction that that was no big deal. And so the holy smokes, that was a very unusual encounter for me out there did not necessarily expect that. And then just like that, you know, the wolves faded off into the background and I frankly just went the other way and kept walking my dogs. I didn't like pack them up and run out of here. It's it's wolf country. It heart rate was elevated a little bit. But that's that's basically the gist of that encounter. Wow. I remember you had texted me about that a year ago or whatever when it was. And I, you know, it's you don't get all the detail when you're when you're in a text message like that. But how okay, so the wolf that was trotting alongside Elwa, what's the distance between Elwa and the wolf? Good question. I would 20 feet, 15 feet close, right shoulder to shoulder, but they were kind of, you know, they weren't fairly close. Yeah, isn't that just interesting? Yeah. And Elwa seemed unconcerned. You know, so Elwa is a very sensitive dog, kind of afraid of a lot of things and he's very old in the woods, he's hard charging, but he's a very sensitive dog. And so you can hurt his feelings. He can get nervous easily. And I was just amazed. He seemed I mean, he was barking. I obviously he interacted with them briefly and then ran back and well, I couldn't believe how nonchalance he was. He just he didn't and then when the wolf stopped, he didn't stop to look at them. He just kept bound and by like, hey, it's met up with my friends and we chatted. Now I'm heading back, Mike, let's keep going. Not afraid at all. Yeah, very indifferent. That's really it's really hard to even imagine that a scenario like that where, I mean, the naturally, you just think, especially after he's barking, so obviously you're assuming like he noticed the wolves and there was some sort of, you know, acknowledgement there, you would think the dog would just be kind of like zipping back to you like with some sort of different body language, but it's hard to envision even a wolf trotting alongside your dog. Like that's just with strange. What a strange encounter. Yeah, I very unusual. Yeah, you just kind of wish you wonder in that five seconds that he was barking, how that all came to be and then how he left it and they let them leave it and just the curiosity, the meat and greed or, you know, of first of all, like, this is wolf country, the longer the county interacting like that, the worse the outcome is going to be. So yeah, no, I'm very unusual. I've been out in the woods with dogs for 20 years and I've never had anything, any dog interaction like that with wolves. So it's very, very unusual, very, and it's unsettling because again, I'm in a wolf country all the time with dogs, right? And then also something like that happens. It's like, well, shoot, why doesn't that happen about every other time? I mean, the woods then, I mean, you know, the dogs and a lot of variables, but highly unusual. First time has ever happened to me. Yeah, yeah. All right. So I think a lot of the things you did cover a lot of them in, in your description of the encounter, something that I think people probably gathered, but this was, so late August or September, it was, you weren't hunting and I remembered that this was not hunting season, you were exercising the dogs, but you were on a wild landscape. Technically, you could have been hunting, there's not really necessarily birds you could, you could hunt in this location, but you could have been hunting nearby. It was a wild landscape. You were exercising the dogs, basically. Yeah, correct. Yeah. Yeah. It's a rough girl's cover there. Yeah. It was not for season, but it'll be absolutely a general area. I would be hunting rough girls. Yeah. All right. And then I recall, you said about 120 yards, kind of like after some, some duration, you heard the barking, like, do you have an estimation as to how far Elo was from you? He was kind of over hill. You couldn't see him, you know, as far as like, where he best gas, where you think the encounter took place. Yeah. He generally never goes past 200. And, you know, when the rough girls would, he's like a 50 yard dog, but, you know, I've taken him to North Dakota, the prairies, so he's learned to stretch out in that open landscape. And basically, we were preparing for a trip out west. So, you know, not unusual for him to touch the 200 yard mark, but generally doesn't go over the net. So I would say between 180 and 200 yards, which is like the outer limit of his natural range. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And he was not wearing a bell had had the GPS collar on him, but no bell. And again, this was kind of an open landscape. You weren't, you weren't running a bell at that time. So having never done an episode like this, I'm not totally sure how I'm going to ultimately put all this stuff together. But I have to like, this is the third of these segments that I've recorded now. And all three of them have involved dogs barking. And, and this is something I've talked about with the other guests that it's, it's pretty common. Most, well, I should say everybody that we've interviewed on this segment, myself included is when you're pointing dogs are out hunting, a bark is pretty unusual. They're usually just focused on the task at hand looking for birds and barking is not usually a part of what they're doing. So like the, there's one little takeaway that keeps rising to the top of all these encounters is that any sort of vocalization, and everyone has said it so far that they acknowledge that that is unusual. And it does catch your attention because it's out of the norm. But it's not a, it's not something like you said where you're, you're immediately thinking worst case scenario and sprinting towards the dogs. But it's just something that caught your attention. Correct. And yeah, just if I think if I think if we interacted with wolves, I did with dogs four or five times a year, they're like, Oh, the barking. Yep, that's probably a wolf interaction. Right. So infrequent that the sudden and then the barking so infrequent, like it's just not a direct connection. You know, something's got the dog acting a little differently. And yeah, it's not an automatic leap to barking. But I from here on out, it'll be interesting. If if I hear a bark, I'll probably be like, Oh boy, you know, that could be wolves. Yeah. Well, and I got to be honest, after having done all three of these and having that be a theme of each one of these encounters, like if we fast forward a couple weeks and I'm out in the woods hunting grouse, as I will be, if I hear my dogs bark, I'm going to be paying some serious attention to that, I think. Yep, me too. Yeah. All right. So in hindsight, do you think there's anything that could have been done to mitigate or avoid this encounter altogether? Stay at home. No, I don't think so. I think they're frankly overdue. I mean, and I don't say, I just the time I spend in the woods with dogs, I don't think I would have done anything differently. I don't think I could do anything differently. Like, you know, the whole rule of thumb out, maybe they're out there so far, you know, they're disconnected to you and you haven't seen the dog in a half hour, I mean, you know, I think bear dogs running, you know, away in a certain direction for a long period of time. That's, you know, bird dogs are circling back and, you know, Elwood checks in. So if he's out at 200, he's back in a minute. I mean, he's not out there for a long period of time. So honestly, no, I mean, in the bell and does the bell help or not? I, you know, during the bird season, I run up with bells. You know, again, I've heard folks, bells didn't really make a difference one way or the other. So, no, I wouldn't really do anything differently. I think just accepting there's a low level risk of an interaction and God forbid a potential mortality. And I don't, you know, best practices for mitigating, minimizing. I think it's just being aware and like, yeah, dog barking get there, have good control of the dog. Hopefully the dog is afraid of an interaction and get out there as soon as possible. But no, I don't really think I haven't done really anything different. Well, things I have, you know, paid attention to even when you and I have hunted in the past is really fresh tracks. Yep. Yep. You know, I kind of back out. But but that's a challenge to Nick. You know, like if there's not snow on the ground, right, it's hard to know how fresh are these the tracks in the sand. I see tracks every day of the week. I'm in the woods three to four days a week with dogs without dogs for work. Wolf sign is just all over. There's no big gaps in the landscape where I work where, oh, this is not wolf country. I'm going to go to the non wolf country area to hunt. That doesn't exist where I live. So I think when the snow hits the ground, it can be like, holy cow, there are a lot of wolves. I don't just bottle wolves, but there's wolves that put a lot of sign on the ground because they cover a lot of roads and that's how they travel. So yeah, trying to pull out when they see fresh sign and, you know, when they when it offers it up. But most of the year, I the sign is hard to determine how fresh it really is. Yeah, you know, I talk a lot on this podcast a lot about how much I love hunting when there's no snow on the ground. I guess one one other reason is because I can just be ignorant to the ones that just try to do their. Yes, I've always taken it back. I'm like, Oh my gosh, now I'm more nervous. You know, it's there's tracks in the snow, but those tracks are yeah, the wolves didn't come and go. I mean, I know they move in and out of here it is and there's they're not everywhere at the same time. But yeah, no, there's no hit the ground is sort of you definitely see a visual. Yeah, you know, the I that you reminded me of and yeah, I think you were thinking about it that the day that you and I were hunting three three years ago or so and we went way back in the woods and down in that river valley and we got in the bottom where it was that was snow covered ground and everything was pretty cold and crisp. But down in that river valley, it was soft and and there was a bunch of fresh wolf tracks in there. And we kind of, you know, we could have we had a decision on if we wanted to continue or just kind of loop up and out. We didn't just backtrack and go straight back to the truck, but we just kind of pulled out of that valley because we saw an increase them on a sign. I remember that. Yeah. So I think, you know, we're doing that, but does that help or not? I don't know. Yeah, like I said, most of the hunting season, you don't even have those indicators to show fresh rain or not. Right. At that point, you're just kind of you're just making a decision on that particular day that you think maybe is is bettering your chances of not having an encounter. And there's nothing wrong with that, really. All right. So you kind of you kind of answered this, but has has this encounter changed the way you hunt or even the way you think and feel about taking your bird dogs into the woods? I think you kind of summed it up in that last question. Nope. Nope. I live in wolf country. I accept it. And I'm all ears for, you know, sort of learning how we can be safe with our dogs. I mean, I accept the risk. I try and keep the dogs in, you know, connecting to the dogs. I've always been that way. So no, I would say I have really changed anything at all. Yeah. All right. Then do you have any additional thoughts or insights you'd like to share with listeners about wolf encounters? And I suppose this would be as good a point as any to interject the encounter you had without your dog last week. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's interesting how I live in a wolf country. I rarely ever see him. I've been a forester here in Bayfield County for 20 little over 20 years. I've seen a handful of wolves. And I was amazed. I don't see more right the sign at the and I'm in the woods all the time by myself, not making a lot of noise, but I will say I'm not hunting gains. So I'm always, you know, just I'm working. So in terms of hunting for veer, if you're still hunting, you know, something like that, you're sneaking up trying to be cautious. But at work, I'm just, you know, people always ask me, Hey, you must see the coolest things at work. I'm like, I'm not really, I'm working. So then I make a lot of noise. I'm not playing the wind, I'm painting trees, I'm making that kind of noise. So, you know, all the animals are just getting way ahead of me. And I rarely see anything as exciting as people think I might see when I'm in the woods. But occasionally, there, there are things that occur. And it was very surprising. It was cruising timber last week. And I thought I was just writing out my paper and looking what a certain direction. And I heard something behind me, which could have been a squirrel, could have been a bird, you know, I just didn't know nothing, no alarm bells. I hear that stuff in the woods all the time. I just, okay, it's getting closer and just, okay, just a chipmunk or something. I turn around here's a wolf standing there, 30 feet looking at me. And as soon as I turn around, look at the wolf, the wolf like, Oh geez, you saw me and then just, you know, the other direction. And just like that's over. You know, I mean, it's just like, I could, why doesn't that happen every other day? I'm in wolf country. I mean, I've been in this particular area for probably 15 days over the last month working in, you know, today's the day that whatever that wolf was there and was curious and, you know, all the variables that kept them around that kind of sneak in to investigate further. That was the day it happened. I mean, I wasn't that afraid. I mean, I had interactions with bears and whatnot over the years, right? You know, the wolf took off and I, hey, get out of here and off he went. I just kept on working. I wasn't like, Oh boy, this is wolf country. I'm gonna head on. It was like, I just went to the next plot and kept on rolling. But I have a lot of experience and I'm comfortable and I feel like those are really outliers. But yeah, it was very unusual to have a wolf that close specifically coming in to investigate me. So yeah, it's part of living in wolf country. And I think these are low, low, low occurrences, but we have more and more people in the woods. Right. So you're hearing more and more of these stories. So they do occur. I mean, it's this, I think part of living where we live, it's they're out there and it happens. Yeah. I mean, you run the numbers. Again, you being a forester in the woods, a ton, much more than most people and the amount of times you've actually seen wolves is so low that again, it's a low occurrence rate, like you said, but you know, the scary thing, I guess, if you wanted to say that, as you know, as we we had another interview on this on this episode, just it just only takes one really bad, really bad contact. But it's the idea behind doing this is just talking to people that have had encounters and and what can we learn from them? If anything, or at least how do we how do we think and feel about them? So I appreciate that. Yeah, no, this year. And I know we you and I and others have been talking about this. So I'm glad you're covering the topic because it's it's out there. And it's just part of being in wolf country. I when I moved in started here 20 years ago, I saw the pack map of where wolf occupancy was in Bayfield County. And it was mostly full with packs. And so as the population has grown statewide, it hasn't necessarily grown in Bayfield County. We've been pretty much high quality wolf habitat for quite a while. So, you know, average pack size of four to five. And I know the local tribes, they they trap and I interacted them on where they're seeing wolves and, you know, some of the cool behavior they have and how they move across the landscape based on certain times of the year. So I got a lot of respect for wolves. I like seeing them on the landscape. But I also want to, you know, make sure I'm safe and dog safe. And we, you know, kind of operate together. And I think it's good. We're good. We're talking about this. To just kind of, you know, see what we can glean from, you know, just living in a wolf country and having our dogs out there, keeping them safe. Yeah, absolutely. And and I do get asked a fair bit from people that that live outside of this area and are maybe considering doing a great lakes, grouse on to they ask about wolf encounters and and just how to really, you know, the question that gets asked is how do I avoid it? And it's like you pointed out and everybody's point like there's just there's nowhere it's it's all wolf country. There's no where you can there you can go really around here that is going to be devoid of wolves or anything. So it's just something you've got to be prepared and and aware about. Yep. What about bears? I know you mentioned that I was kind of curious. Like, you know, that's that's one thing that, you know, we've got black bears around here. Have you ever had any, uh, real hairy encounters with bears? I imagine, you know, those are the ones you don't really want to surprise them or start a little bit of this cubs and stuff. I've had some, it's again, well, tons of bear in Bayfield County. I mean, they're, I'd swear they're behind every tree, except for I haven't. I've seen maybe one this whole season. So I, again, I rarely see them there. I think I make a lot of noise and they get out there. But sometimes you'll, you know, startle one or sneak up on one and burly or they're moving through your way. But it's, I've had a number of interactions with me and my dogs. Nothing where I got to climb a tree or run away, but I have had my my Nelson, one of my wife, the first one I've ever had. I came over a hill and he's like pointing a huge sow at the base of a huge white pine like nose to nose and two o'clock cubs are up a tree and it's wide open spring and I'm, you know, 100 yards away and I'm like, I'm just, you know, am I just going to witness this sort of event here in front of me and I'm just calling the dog and fortunately the dogs have always been like, okay, I'm going to listen. For a stubbornness, somebody's dogs have been, but like when I need them to come, they seem to always come and he just took turn around and came right back and that just the hair on the back of that sow was just up and down. She was all fired up and she just stood there as, as Sig Tripper Nelson turned on and came back and I was like, wow, that could have gone a different way. I'm very fortunate and I've had other interactions where I've had a dog in the woods and all of a sudden I see a bear in the distance, call the dog back and the bear kind of just circles around and catches wind and then sort of runs off and I kind of stumble on me. The bear just sort of head and do the woods come over rise. The bear just walks basically right at me or I've had I've had one of my dogs get in between me and some cubs and then the sow is on the other side and they're sort of all kind of mixed up and it's like, so in terms of risk in putting my dogs in situations like that and myself, you know, hey, I have the dog at work must be great and it is and but you know, your kind of these risks do exist and you just have to acknowledge it and try and, you know, keep them close and keep an eye on them. But, you know, the dogs are having fun, not having fun. And once in a while, we have some of these interactions with bears or wolves and, you know, it's everything's been okay. But, you know, someday it may not be and I'm going to just be like, hey, I can't be too surprised that things go sideways, but fortunately they haven't. But yeah, I've had kind of mixed mixed in interactions with with bears and I do carry bear spray. Okay, work. Okay. And, you know, I've never had to use it never had to pull it out, but I it's, you know, I don't carry a firearm. We can't carry a network. I don't, you know, for how often we interact with things that work like that. I know some people like, I can't believe you don't carry a firearm. I'm like, well, I'm in the woods every day all the time. I don't feel the need that that's what I initially need to have personally. But so I do carry a bear spray, which, you know, it could be a false sense of security or just sort of a last ditch thing. And right, just in case, you know, something happens. So I do carry that and give me a little peace of mind. Yeah. And I was like, maybe the first 10 years of my employment where I was just like, well, boy, what am I getting into? What am I going to interact with? I need to, I want to cherry something more than a paint gun. Southern Wisconsin boy lost in the woods. What am I big, eight north woods? You hear the stories, you know, but it's, it's always anti climatic. People always ask, well, you must see the coolest things or have these great stories. And yeah, every four or five years, I'll have an interesting story. I think that people are like, wow, interacting with a bear or a wolf. But most time it's fairly fairly tame. Most days you're just looking at the bark on trees. Yeah. Very anti climatic. Yeah. I mean, which is great. I mean, I just walk in the woods. I don't I'm not necessarily looking for a lot of big game interaction. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you keep up the great work, my friend, you're you're doing God's work, in my opinion. And I appreciate it. Appreciate it. Yeah. I feel lucky to do what I do. So I'm enjoying it. All right. Good deal, Mike. Well, unless you have anything, any final thoughts to share on the topic? No, I appreciate the time and I appreciate doing this podcast. All right. Sounds good, buddy. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Birdshot Podcast. Thanks for sharing a bit about your encounter and appreciate it. Yeah. Happy to share it. [Music] Ted, thank you for joining us on the Birdshot Podcast once again. Ari today, man. I'm doing pretty well. My work day is pretty much wrapped up and I'm just segwaying into home life here in a little bit, but you've been trying to set up a time. So happy to carve out a little bit of time here to catch up with you. Well, we appreciate you making the time for us on this little bit of a unique episode. You're likely going to be the final interview for this and we're going to jump right into our questions and we're talking wolves today. So we know your name, but tell us a little bit about yourself and just give us a brief intro of you and how it relates to the outdoors. Sure, Ted, some are like you said. We've had quite a few conversations in the past behind the other. You know, I'm my background, but for the listeners, maybe that haven't heard it. Working Northern Wisconsin as a surveyor, mostly relating to natural resources type work and work for the Forest Service here. So the Schwamiget-Nicole National Forests, 1.7 million acres across Northern Wisconsin, do all the boundary surveying work for that land base. Prior to that, though, I've lived and worked in Northern Wisconsin for better than 20 years now, running bird dogs in the meantime and just generally spending a lot of time outdoors. So that's the quick and dirty of it. You bet. All right, let's get into it and tell me when and where did this incident take place. It would have been two hunting seasons ago. So it would have been the fall of 2021. It was already two years ago now. I would have guessed last year. Nope, it wasn't last fall. It was the fall prior and it occurred in Northern Wisconsin, a little bit away from home, but not too terribly far on a place property that I'd been on and hunted. Many times in the past, including taking casual walk and I'll explain a little bit of context there. If you want, I can just jump into it. Well, yeah, that's bring up an interesting point and a good question to ask would have been what familiarity do you have with the property? Was it a new place? Was it a place you go to all the time as you kind of pointed out? And I think the other segments did describe it. It was sort of included in the conversation, but I find that interesting as I've done all four of these segments now. So yeah, nice to know that it's a or interesting to note that it's a place you've been to many times before rather than some new place. But yeah, at that point, let's describe the encounter as best you can recall and how did you respond throughout? Sure. And I, you know, in this era of podcasts and social media and stuff, of course, there's always this hesitation to get specific on spots. But in this scenario, I think it really matters. So I'm not afraid to be specific, especially as it relates to wolves, because if I'm talking about a spot where I had a wolf encounter, not thinking people are going to want to go there. So this encounter took place on a public piece of property within walking distance of a former residence where I used to live. Okay. So one of the reasons we bought the property when we did was because of its adjacency to this piece of land and a block of public. We don't live there any longer, but it was a spot I'm very familiar with. And so and actually I'll back up even further, give it more context. Prior to buying this property, it came up for sale. And I did a drive buy of it had never hunted in this area. But seeing the property for sale, I did a drive buy after work in the fall one day and had my older German short hair with in the truck. Within walking distance of where this house is, I parked at the spot, never been there before, dropped her and took a walk and, you know, a 45-minute walk and shut too gross. So that was the very first time ever on this piece of property. Nice walk. Yeah. Yeah. I was pumped. You know, and of course the media was like, oh, yeah, we need to buy this. We got to buy this. And it was an auction. It was a foreclosure. It was an auction. And kind of segue two months forward when the auction actually happened. When we got the house, I was very excited about being able to walk out of my back door with a dog or a puppy. And we did, that's right when I got Tika, who, uh, the short hair who was involved with this wolf encounter. After we bought that house, we got Tika partly because we had more space and we had a great place to have a puppy. And so from the house, I could walk out the back door called Kitty Corner through our property, hit the town road, walked down the town road, maybe a couple hundred yards and be into this piece of public. So if you can picture how many times do you think I walked this? It's a loop trail. It's a snowmobile trail in open hardwoods. Uh, 160 acre piece that connects up to a larger piece. I walked that trail with my kids, with my old dog with a puppy. Uh, I don't know, dozens of times over the course of those following years of living there, you know, easily 20, 30 times. I don't know. Yeah. So just very, very familiar with the property. Um, and also familiar with the fact that there are wolves, you would see sign out there pretty much everywhere. Yeah, not specifically in that area, but just in our area in general. Yeah. There's a couple corridors, you know, a couple of the woods roads that you just see more wolf sign than other places. You know, so you're never, you know, kind of segueing into the wolf related conversation. I'm not naive in the fact that anywhere you go, you're in wolf country, you know, like, so it was not part of my decision making to be like, I'm going to avoid this area because I see a lot of wolf sign. It's like, oh, yeah, there's wolf sign. Well, that's because there's wolves around pretty much everywhere. So, um, so that's, that's a little backstory about familiarity with the property. Yeah, it's interesting to this, to this encounter. Yeah. So fast forward two years ago, it was October third or fourth. I can't remember exactly which day. Super hot day. And as I've shared with you in the past, but I kind of have a goal of trying to hunt every day in October. It's on the mission board. Yeah, just as a personal personal goal or personal target so that I ensure I'm not missing small opportunities to get out even for like a half hour hunt because I always think to myself, I'm going to try and hunt every day in October. Well, if I fail at that target and I still hunt 25 days in October, even for an hour on about 10 of those days, the time heads up and you just get more opportunities for your dog. Yeah, yep. So I'd hunted the first few days and it was super hot and it was kind of a just a light breeze, super hot. And I thought, you know, I've got an hour window here or two to get a hunt in, but it was in the afternoon. I didn't hunt in the morning, which would have been smarter to try and get my hunt in and super hot. And I thought, oh my god, am I going to go out? And it was literally 85 degrees or something like that. Low low 80s in October, which is hot for October. Yeah. Yeah, the leaves are still on for the most part. You know, they're starting to turn all the there's yellows in the woods, but mostly green yet. There's a little bit of color along the edges, but you know, leaf leaves are still full on. And I thought about where I'm going to go and I thought, you know what, I'm just going to take Tika over to that loop trail. It's big wide open hardwood. It's a big hardwood ridge with big oak trees on it. And this is just a little nugget for some mirror listeners to think I'm a girl's hunting, but early in the season when leaves are full on, there's an acorn pattern that happens some places, not everywhere. But man, I find a lot of birds in the acorns that time of year. And underneath the big oak trees, there tends to be less understory competition for, you know, shooting. So you get some benefits there. It's a little less claustrophobic. You get some shade from up above. There's, yeah, we've talked about that before. Right. And you're not beating the brush in a young clear cut or along the thick edge or something where, you know, you're going to find more birds, but the shooting opportunities are limited. So it's a hot day. I'm already sweaty, just thinking about going. The dog is, you know, the dog needs to run. So I said, okay, I'm just going to run over there. We're going to walk this loop, make a short hunt of it. Most of it is really high and dry, but on the swing back, it drops into about 30 year old aspen. Older than typical, but it's still wide open. And then the trail loops right back to where I start, but you're not going back over your own tracks at any point. You're kind of making a big loop, which I always prefer that instead of an out and back. So I'm thinking, okay, we're going to go on an acorn pattern hunt, try and catch a bird or catch, you know, see if we can get a couple bird contacts underneath these big oaks if they're loaded up on acorns. Something another aside, but sometimes when you catch birds like that, too, I think they hold a little tighter. If they got a big bullet full of acorns, too, I don't think they like, you know, they're not as apt to jump up and fly when they're feeling full like that. So sometimes you can get right on top of them and get some good shooting. Anyway, yeah, I have to, you got me thinking gross now. I love it. This is like a little bonus for this wolf episode, but I, so I've thought about that, too. And I mean, I think the full crop thing definitely makes sense. I've, they do, I think, are maybe a little bit more hesitant, but I wonder, too, like, I sometimes I get the feeling when you, when you go out in those, in those different, little say, different kinds of covers, you know, not the young aspen, the mature stuff, a little bit more wide open. It just, I do feel like a lot of times you get these points where it's like the bird is right there and you walk in and you hold them. I just wonder if they, they almost get caught off guard a little bit and some of that more open, open terrain, or they're just more hesitant. I don't know, but I, I would agree with that because I, as you pointed out, you might, you might get less contacts in something like that, but the ones you do get are oftentimes higher quality, which is interesting. Yeah. Yeah, you might be right on that, you know, like, I think as hunters, we tend to get this idea in our head of like, we think we know exactly why a bird held tight and didn't fly, but full crop or not. Fast moving dog versus a slow moving dog, maybe a, maybe a fast moving dog catches that bird in the open and they haven't run away yet. And then they just hunker down, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff to think about in man, that's, oh, Nick, we're just getting started on. We're just getting started on fall as it is a little teaser. This is gonna be right before grass over. So it's okay. So that, that's the line of thinking of why I wanted to go there. Love it. And I knew, and I, like I said, it was hot, sweaty. I literally was wearing like athletic shorts. You know, I was wearing no chaps. No chaps. No chaps. Because it was wide open. So I'm wearing, you know, like, I'm wearing calf high, you know, socks with like a hiking boot, you know, like a hunting boot, shorts, shorts, and a t-shirt, like a quick dry type t-shirt with, you know, a normal strap vest over that, you know, typically grouse hunting, you know, you're wearing jeans and the whole, you know, long sleeve shirt, whatever. Yeah. This is, I'm just setting the stage. I love it. It's that hot. And it's like three in the afternoon, because that's when I had hot, hottest part of the day. Heat. No, nowhere on the radar as I am, I'm thinking about wolves, you know. Right. So we get there, I drop the dog, and my typical setup in any kind of heavy cover is I've always got the tracking or, you know, like the garment tracking and training TT collars, got a couple of minis and a couple normal size ones. And then I'll, I'll snake a bell onto the collar that has the, you know, the tracking collar. So for me, I like it that the bell sticks up near the antenna instead of dangling down under the dog's chin. I find that it clacks a little less, you know, it's when it's dangling down below, like, I want to know when the dog is moving, but I don't necessarily need my ears to be ringing after hunting. And so I find that a lightweight bell on the top of the dog's head. You know, anyway, that's the setup. So I've got a bell on the dog and I'm tracking, you know, with a garment remote, but on this hunt, you know, I'm not thinking I'm going to need to control the dog at all. It's just habit. That's how we hunt most every time. So, so we start on our walk. And I'm just kind of power walking this loop. And if you can picture the afternoon sun in October, with mostly green and yellows in the woods, a few big, huge oak trees. When I say oak trees, I'm talking like huge red oak, you know, 20 inch diameter with huge crowns, beauties. And it's open and it's a nice walk. Not really much of a breeze, I'm sweating. So the walk starts going south and east away from the sun. So the sun is kind of coming over back. And then I loop, gain an elevation, go through the oak ridge, and unfortunately did not really have a bird contact at all. But again, I was just kind of wanting to get out for a short hunt. Wasn't putting too much emphasis on leaving the trail to go find birdie pockets. I was just walking trail, which is not typical. Normally I wouldn't walk the trail. Anyway, so the trail goes hooks and is going north at the deepest part of the property. And now the trail turns and is coming back straight west back toward the truck. So I'm about halfway through the walk, it's three quarters of the way. And I've got a little under a little over a third of a mile, maybe back to the truck. I have gone through the highest ground, you know, like a pretty, you know, substantial elevation change gone up, maybe 40, 50, 60 feet higher on this ridge. Now I've come downhill and now I'm in that 20 to 30 year old aspen, and I'm going west. And so now, as I go west, your visual changes everywhere. I pay attention to some of this stuff. If I can avoid it, I don't like walking straight into the sun, just because everything is backlit. And a flushing bird to me is harder to shoot that way than it is when the sun is at your bag. No, the sun lights up a bird, but you know, you can't choose. If you take a walk at some point, the conditions aren't going to be perfect. So anyway, all this stuff is irrelevant at this point. I'm just giving you a heck of a lot of detail. It's interesting. I appreciate it. So now, so now I'm on the, now I'm on the straight portion of trail that goes straight west back to the truck. And it's young ass, you know, 20 year old aspen. So kind of open aspen, not very heavy understory at all, but right above me to the my left is the, is the two big hills that I just came off of. Through the aspen, I can see the crowns of those trees, and I can see the trunks of several of them. And the way the sun is coming, the sun is casting through those trees, creating shadows. But there's pockets of bright sunshine between the crowns or between the trunks of those trees. So like 70, 80 yards in the distance when you look off, it's filtered a little bit because of some understory, but I can still see the big trees up on the ridge. But I'm in the aspen. So we've just barely get started going back this way. And something catches my eye to my left. And I'm not staring at the dog at this time, but I had heard her bell just recently. Oh, to my left. To your left. Yeah. To my left, which would be the south and uphill. So I just saw something move through one of those sunlight openings in the distance. And I would guess maybe 60, 70 yards straight to my left. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flicker of motion movement through there. And the movement was going from behind me toward the front. So to my left, the movement was going from east to west, which would be toward the direction I'm going. And then in that same split second, I hear the dog bell again. And the dog bell is very clearly further ahead. And I would say Tika was probably only 50 or 60 yards from me, but I could not see her. So my brain quickly registered the fact that I had seen movement over here, but that was not the dog. You know what I'm saying by that? So Tika is quartering to the front, which, you know, is what I want my dog to be doing anyway. So she's in front of me at a roughly 45 degree angle. I hear her bell. I have just seen this movement to my left. It immediately occurs to me that that was not the dog. So my next thought was, I'll maybe it was a deer. And immediately right after that thought was, why would a deer be running toward the dog? You know, so the motion that I had seen, I didn't even, it wasn't even clear to me that it was an animal, you know, a four-legged animal. Right. But the movement I saw was big enough that I knew it wasn't a bird, and I knew it wasn't small, you know, it wasn't a raccoon. It was something big. And it went toward the dog, you know, like the direction you had pegged. Yeah. Right. So I've got the trail straight in front of me. The motion was 90 degrees to my left and the dog is at a 45 to my front and to the left. Okay. And my immediate instinct was not a deer. Why would the deer run toward the dog? Yeah. Yep. That'd be unusual. Yep. Nothing beyond that. So I continue to walk and I'm kind of looking that way. And Tika's bell is now tracking toward the trail. Like, I feel like she's going to pop out on the trail in front of me. Again, I'm not stressing at all at this point. I just was kind of looking that way. Like, what was that? Just the picture painted in your mind via the bell and your other observations. Yeah. Yeah. Now, I would say that was 60, 70 yards to my left. Tika is 60, 70 yards in front of me, quartering to the trail. So in theory, she's getting a little closer to me. Just then, as I already established that she's moving toward the trail, just then I would say half the distance between where she was and where I saw the movement. I look and I clearly see broadside moving toward the dog or moving toward the front of me, a wolf, right? Immediately. Like, I had seen the movement and then there was maybe a 40, 40, 50 yard gap where I didn't see it, but I was looking that way. And then I had a sight picture there for some reason, you know, a break in the trees or whatever, where I see very clearly it's a wolf and was able to establish also with that view I had that I had a big black collar on. I mean, I just saw it playing this day. Like, how far away from you was it? I'd say about 60 yards. Okay. So kind of, all of this, all of the distance stuff we've been talking about. So at first, I would say the wolf replaced the exact spot that Tika was when I first saw the wolf's movement. Yeah. Okay. So like, the wolf is moving, quartering to my front. And when I, when I see it, it's moving broadside, you know, not toward me. If it's moving toward my front, my first response was to call Tika. And so I just see all her name just with a one syllable. I'm just like Tika. And typically for her, that means she usually stops and she'll put her head up. So I yell, Tika. And then I yell, come like with a pause. So I yell, Tika, I'm not sure if she stopped or not, but I yell, Tika come. And I literally can see her running toward me. Now I lose, you know, I had, I had lost sight of the wolf. I only saw it going through a window. So now of course, you know, my energy level, the adrenaline, right is like, yeah, going, going up. And I know Tika is just off the trail. And this is a fairly open trail, not a lot of underbrush. I see Tika and she's coming at me on a straight line because I had called her. And now she's about 45 yards from me. And she's coming straight at me. And I have kind of a window of where she came from, meaning like there's a few trees on either side of her, like a tunnel, you know, with nothing behind, like no other heavy cover. So that's why I could see her coming in that exact same window where I'm looking at her. And she is just loping towards me. She's she had no clue what's going on. She is loping towards me. In that same exact window, I see the wolf come into that up here into that lane. And the wolf is turning to come in right in line behind Tika. And coming and coming straight at me, both of them. And Tika is oblivious. I'm now, you know, whatever you want to call it, fight or flight reaction, whatever is kicking in. And let me preface this by saying nowhere in my psyche or in my approach to hunting or in thinking about wolves, nowhere in my opinion of what it means to hunt in the mix of wolves. Do I ever think that I want to shoot a wolf? Okay, I just want to preface that by saying the wolves, wolves are around every time I go hunting. I know there's an opportunity you're going to have an encounter. Never do I think to myself, if I have an encounter with a wolf, I'm going to shoot the wolf. Like, that's never been part of my own personal approach, I guess, in thinking about possible scenarios. But now this is happening, right? So you can think about scenarios all you want. But when it happens, it's interesting what time you have to react with your operating on a different mental space. Right. And keep in mind too, like, you know, it's like to have success growe something is you have to have quick reactions, right? If you're going to be successful at killing grouse on the wing. And that improves over time and the more hunting you do. And so, like that split second thought to shoot or not shoot, that's something that happens commonly growe something right at the sound of a flush. If you don't react as soon as that flush happens, your opportunity is gone. So I'm in full reaction mode at this point. I'm no longer thinking, oh, was that a deer? At this point, it's my dogs coming toward me. And it's very clear this wolf is closing on the dog. And I can still see it in my mind that what I saw was Tika kind of bouncing, you know, she's kind of bouncing like she's not running toward me. She's like, she's making eye contact with me like, why are you calling me? Yeah, like, what am I, what do you want me to do? And so at that point, she's going pretty slow, you know. And when I would say about the wolves behavior, the wolf's behavior, when I saw it broadside at 56 yards, its head was up and it was alert, its ears were up and forward. And it was kind of loping in a tall fashion, like, almost like it was trying to see over the brush to see. When I visually saw it turn and come on the same line as Tika, and now they're coming right at me, the wolf's demeanor and body language was very intent and low. And coming on a straight line. So it went from upright and interested and curious looking maybe, if that's all you saw, to focused intent to close on this dog as fast as possible. Now, whether or not the wolf was actually, you know, looking to kill the dog or whatever, but you know, this is the kind of stuff you don't usually get to see, right, when you think about having a, having a run-in with a wolf, but yeah, I saw it happen, you know, yeah, I just want to jump in here. So I'm gathering that, I think I know the answer to this, but I just want to kind of paint it out in that when you first saw the wolf, again, broadside sort of casually, not casually, but curious interested in, in moving towards the dog, I'm gathering that it doesn't sound like the wolf saw you, like he didn't stop and look at you, he didn't see you, it seems like the wolf's behavior is that he's, he doesn't have you on his mind, he's, he's interested in the dog and didn't see you, right? Yeah, definitely. And of, and I'm not saying he didn't know I was there because he could have been hanging out on that ridge the whole time, whatever. Right, right. But yes, no, the focus was not on me, the focus was on the dog. And I can see this happening to get lits. I want to, I kind of took a side track there to talk about my, my mindset as it relates to wolves, right? Even now, like seeing this wolf closing on the dog, my body and my, my reaction was to get the gun up, right? My reaction was to, I needed to quell that situation. I needed to do something to make sure my dog, you know, lived to see the next day, I guess, is, is where I'm going with that. However, also in that same exact motion, I realized with how it was happening, the dog is coming at me, the wolf's directly behind the dog, you're not going to, you know, like to think I'm going to shoot a wolf over the shoulder of my dog with a shotgun at 30 yards, like it was, it wasn't even an option. It wasn't even an option that I thought about shooting. At that moment, she recognized us, she's almost on the trail, she turns about a 90 degrees, and I would say the wolf was maybe seven or eight yards behind her, she's like closing fast. And she changed direction and turned to be directly in front of me on the trail, only about 25 yards from me. The wolf kind of stayed on its line and actually came closer to me than what she was. So she changed direction, the wolf stayed on its line, so now the wolf is kind of between me and her, but not out in the open. I take the gun and I put in the air, you know, I don't know, eight, 10 feet over the dog and the wolf, boom, I shoot, not to shoot the wolf, but to just try and quell the situation, right, antique, like then throws the brakes on on the trail and she just stands there and stares at me like, what the hell are you shooting at? You know, like, yeah, she's looking around, she's waiting to see my reaction to be like, where did you shoot? Did you shoot at a bird? Where's the bird? Yeah. Yeah. The wolves didn't even react to the shot. Instead, he just cruises at that moment, cruises across the trail, like never slowed down, didn't change its speed. Body language changed a little bit. The body language changed when Tika changed direction. Body language didn't change when I shot. That's interesting. So I shoot in the air, the wolf kind of goes right behind Tika at this point, even though, you know, I wish I could draw it out for you. But anyway, like, like, okay, you're just going to say what I was going to ask. Okay, sorry. The wolf passes within yards of her. So weird. I would say, I would say six or seven feet from Tika. Wow. And to this day, Tika, I don't up till then didn't even know the wolf was there. Just like oblivious to its presence. Yeah. Yep. So I shoot in the air, the wolf continues on its path. And now it's to my right, or, you know, going to my right across the trail, also kind of open aspen. And then it, I think at that point, I remember Tika kind of looking over and seeing it, and then just not even caring. And then she just looked right back at me like, what do you want me to do? The wolf now is still kind of trotting. And I think I shot in the air and I also yelled, I yelled, get out of here. Yeah, yeah. Like, hey, get out of here. Right after a shot. And the wolf crosses the trail kind of angles away from me, but then kind of nonchalantly, if you can picture it, you know, going from a fast run to a trot, or like a canter, you know, like a half bounce almost. The wolf looks back over its shoulder, over its left shoulder and stops, it stands there. And it's now maybe 50 yards away. And it's just standing there for a second. And then it turns and keeps going on that line and just trots away, which is also, which is also back toward, you know, I've got to go that way toward the trot. So, so there's a whole bunch of detail there. Maybe more detail than most of the stories you got, mostly because the encounter was such that I could see all this happen. Yeah, you know, 90% of the encounters and, you know, statistics. I don't know what it is. I'm just grabbing that out of air. But probably the vast majority of encounters happen where you don't even know what's going on. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Or you hear something happening or your dog comes back and his body language is telling you something just happened, but you don't really know what happened. Yeah. I saw, I saw what happened. That's so interesting. So, all right, in the time between Tika turning. So, in my mind, I've got Tika and Wolf coming straight at me as you described it, Tika veers off. And in the time between Tika veering off and you shooting, I'm like, did the Wolf look at you? Did he see you beyond Tika? Was there any, was there a moment where, like, he locked eyes with you until after you shot and he sauntered off or whatever? No. And even then, when he, when he did look back over his shoulder, he was, you know, I didn't feel like he was looking at me. Okay. Interesting. He was just looking back our direction. No, there was all, what I saw of him was he was looking at the dog and he was, you know, he or she, I guess, sure, closing on the dog. There's no doubt about it. You know, I mean, we've seen when you see a bird dog making game, you know, it runs across the prairie looking one way, but as soon as it catches wind of a bird and it's real in that sentence, the body language changes and the head doesn't move. That's something you watch the fastest sprinters in the world. When they run, their head doesn't move. This wolf was sauntering. When it was closing on her, it was fixed, eyes fixed on its target or whatever you want to say or whatever it's interested in checking out. And maybe I'm still oblivious. I still, I'm hesitating to use the word that Wolf was going to attack the dog. Right. But I mean, it was very obvious that it could have right there. I mean, if it wanted to, it could have. Right. If I was, if I wasn't involved. So, well, it's so interesting to, because like, yeah, like, you will never know what would have happened head you not been there and intervened. But then to have the wolf sort of, you know, after you shoot, then he, he alters course and moves by Tika at six or seven feet. You know, at that, you know, that's closing distance. If the wolf still wanted that in, again, you've already been involved, you shot the gun. So who knows? But that I just find that so interesting that it's, it's similar to Mike's segment of the show. He described a wolf running alongside his dog and a, not as close as that, but a close distance where it's just like, man, if they wanted to do something they could, but they're not, and it's all just speculation from here. But I just find that so interesting. Yeah, I think for me, the difference in this scenario versus like, Mike's scenario or, I don't know, some trying to chank up, you know, pick out whatever video you want. You've seen a wolves playing or, you know, being social with each other in a curious fashion, like trotting with an upright head and upright ears, you know, like, almost like curious. And then in nature, you just kind of wonder like if there's three or four wolves like that that are, you know, a group and they're say hunting deer or something. Is that how, is that how it starts where when they kill a deer, you know, it's like, oh, one wolf is tracking this deer or getting it to run and the other two or three are like curious and like upright, curious fashion and kind of running alongside, kind of waiting for their opportunity. I don't want to get in the weeds here and speculating of like how wolves do. Right, right. But what I'm, what I saw was an intense focus from the wolf on the dog. Yeah, so figure for what it's worth. But you know, I mean, you're talking about an animal that kills stuff for a living and, and a bird dog that's 50, 60 pound bird dog that's totally oblivious. I think if they wanted something to happen, it would happen pretty quickly. I'm usually, you know? Yep. Yep. Okay. So, yeah, that's, I really appreciate all of the detail there. Yeah, that's a, that's a, I mean, it's just a, it's a neat story. It's one of the, one of these things that happens to us when we're out in these wild places and spaces and just interesting and fortunately for you, it didn't, didn't go sideways. So I had mentioned to you before we hit record here that there had been a pattern occurring in these other, in these other encounters and I was waiting for it in yours, but I think given how this played out, I think there's a, and I'm not like, I haven't told you what it is yet, but in this case, there's an obvious thing that happened that could have been a factor on why this didn't occur. And so the pattern was that in all three of the other segments, the dogs barked, the dogs vocalized, which we've talked about at each, at each time it came up in these segments, we kind of talked about how when our pointing dogs are hunting and they bark, it's kind of unusual and it sort of catches our attention because it's not something that they commonly do. And you can, you can, you can comment a little bit on Tika if she barks on rabbits or anything like that. It's, it's one of these things where it's not super rare, but it's rare enough that it kind of catches our attention. And in all three of those other encounters, it did occur. But in this case, what I'm, what I would say that maybe affected that is that Tika didn't, didn't know the wolf was there until you basically intervened and kind of maybe altered how it played out. So we'll never really know if that, if that would happen, but I just found that interesting too. Yeah. And I, that, yeah, that is interesting. She certainly was oblivious, had no clue, you know? Yeah. Just, just with her body language. Hearing other stories where dogs are out of sight and vocalizing, especially in a somewhat distressed way or like, I don't want to use the term scared, but like, you know, if you hear a dog bark when someone pulls in the yard, that's different than, yes. Hey, I, hey, I, I see something that I'm, I'm not sure what it is, or I'm scared, dad, you know, like, yeah, a higher pitch, maybe a different pattern of, you know, vocalizing, you know, like a want, you know, people know their dogs, and they know when they hear a sound that isn't normal. Yeah, especially a bird, a bird dog that never barks. Why the hell's it barking in the woods? Yeah, yeah. Tika does, you know, when she's, you know, when she's the most vocal is when we stop, when we stop, we're in the middle of a hunt and stop. Tika says, what the hell are we doing? Let's get going, guys. She starts barking. If you're hunting with more than one person and you say, okay, we're going to meet at this trail intersection after making this walk. And we pull up on that trail intersection and we're ahead of somebody or something. My God, she is just, she doesn't like it. I mean, in your face, you know, like if you sit down, heaven, heaven forbid, you take a rest, you know? Yeah. And she'll, she just comes right in your face, like barking, not aggressively, but just like whining, barking, they'll be like, come on, come on, come on, let's go. And she'll like fake run to be like, yeah, let's go this way. Let's go down the trail. Come on. Get off your butt. So no, not no barking, but yeah, that's interesting that that's the pattern in. And I would say just offhand other encounters I've heard of over the years that that was similar to, especially in a scenario where the actual encounter wasn't observed, right? Like that's how that's how the hunter knew something just happened. Exactly. What just happened? And then maybe, and maybe a half hour later, you see wolf tracks in the snow right where you just were, you know? And I think, I think that kind of thing is maybe a little more common. Yeah. I think it's pretty rare to see the whole works go down, you know? Yep. And I know you've got an interview that you did with an unfortunate situation where a guy did lose a dog and, you know, would be interested to hear his take or watch he heard and stuff like that or what he didn't hear, but yeah. Well, listeners will have likely already heard that and you'll have to tune in to find out Ted. Yeah. So that's the breakdown of the encounter. And, you know, we walk back to the truck. Nothing. Did you feel her back or anything or keep her close or? You know what? I can't remember. And it was obviously on your mind, but yeah. And I mean, it's a wide open trail. And I think I did at first, like, as we started walking, I just kind of kept looking at direction and saw no sight of the wolf. And I mean, we weren't that far from the truck. And so I didn't exactly run out of the woods. I just kind of walked and I'm like, well, and I thought to myself too, I'm like, well, if she goes that direction, I'll reel her in. Yeah. And I think we just walked out to the truck. Never had a point. No bird encounters my, my idea quote, I'm doing air quotes, my big idea of like where I'm going to steal a point on a bird on an 85 degree day didn't work out, you know? Yeah. And there's really no way of knowing what percentage of the sweat was a result of 85 degrees or the encounter itself. Yeah. I think that's why you mentioned that like hindsight, right? I mean, it's easy for like, right now telling you the story. And that's how I'm able to get into that much detail because I thought about it really hard. Like, what the hell just happened? What the hell just happened? And, and I did follow it up. So I called, I got home, I called, I know a few people that work with the DNR as friends through the grapevine that know the right people to talk to or whatever. So I text a buddy of mine, I said, who would I call about this just to make a report or whatever, or at least if there's a situation going on where there's a problem wolf or something that this gets on the radar. So, and I didn't feel that worked up over it. You know, while I was happening, obviously a lot of adrenaline, but I never felt, I didn't feel, I never felt angry. Yeah. I never, I never felt scared. I never felt anything other than lucky that nothing happened. And I still am not angry about it, you know, like in hindsight. Yeah. It's, it's just what happened, it's, that's what happened. Mike and I have hunted together a long time and there's been a lot of conversations over the years of like the amount of time you spend in the woods. If you're in the woods 60, 70 days, a fall, you can't tell me you haven't been around a wolf, you know. And so it's just a matter of what kind of encounter you're going to have. And the more time you spend out there, eventually you're going to have something happen. Right. So to have it happen that way, I actually felt kind of, like I said, I felt lucky, like that I was able to help the dog. Yeah. Cause, cause the opposite scenario leaves you feeling pretty helpless, you know. Exactly. Yeah. All right. Well, you, you hit on a lot of this stuff and, and we've, we've gotten into a lot of detail. I just want to make sure we sort of tidy up some of these uniform questions here. So, I gathered, dog was wearing a bell. We know that dog, dog was wearing a GPS tracker. You had a pretty good handle on distances and stuffs because of having a visual. I never looked at the remote, you know, it was all kind of right there in front of you. So, and, and we're saying 60, 70 yards, those are the, that's about kind of where this took place, you know, you saw the movement, then the wolf and the dog and the wolf together. So we kind of lay all that out. In hindsight, do you think there's anything that could have been done to mitigate and or avoid the encounter altogether? I don't think so. One of the things I learned by reporting it was some of these wolves that have collars on them, well, they've been trapped, right? And if they've been trapped, they either got trapped as part of just trying to get collars on wolves or they've been trapped because they were, there was a problem somewhere and they got trapped and put a collar on them and then released somewhere else or something along those lines, right? So in hindsight, I think the only thing maybe to think about for myself and to share with other people is like being aware of high wolf numbers or rendezvous sites, which is more of a problem in the summertime and early season than it is as you get in the fall because of young wolves is just, if there had been a predation incident where, let's say, a bear hound or another bird dog got harassed by a wolf, if there was a way to know that in real time, like if I could go on the DNR's wolf tracking app that shows like the ranges of these packs and potential rendezvous sites, if there was a way to know, oh yeah, there's been a problem wolf in this area and a bird hunter had a dog get followed by a wolf a week ago. If I had that info, well, then maybe I wouldn't choose to hunt there. It's probably not likely I'm going to go on there and check that kind of thing every day, but that was something I wanted to follow up on afterwards with the DNR folks is like, okay, well, nothing happened. And so in talking to the predation folks with APHIS or the federal trappers, that's the guy I ended up talking to about this encounter, he said, okay, do you want to report this? And one of the questions was, I gave him the whole rundown just like we just talked, he was very interested in where this was because of the collared wolf. Because I do believe they know where there's problem wolves if they have collars on them, if they've had incidents in the past, say a wolf, you know, killed a pet dog in backyard or a wolf, you know, ate some geese or chickens or something like that, which in this scenario, that was shared with me that they did have a wolf that killed somebody's chickens about eight miles away. Not that long before my age yet. And so that was what the APHIS gentleman that I talked to, who was really good on the phone, by the way, DNR folks that I talked to were very interested in my encounter. Nothing but positive comments to say about how they responded to my call. However, what was interesting to me is that I said, okay, so nothing happened to me or my dog. The question that was posed to me was, did you feel like you were in danger? And I said, no, I didn't feel in danger. And maybe that was due to my familiarity with the situation, you know, like wolves in general. Like, I'm, I know they're out there. I never felt in danger. Right. Had I answered yes to that question, then it would have kicked it into okay, if you felt in danger, now we're going to, it's going to go into this category and we'll, we'll list it as an encounter, not necessarily an attack, but an encounter of sorts, and it'll show up on a system somewhere. That's interesting, obviously, because as you're, as you're basically pointing out, that same encounter could have happened to somebody else and they could have easily said, yes, I felt in danger. But exactly. And that's what I shared with them. I said, well, I'll do to my familiarity with the area, whatever, no, I didn't feel in danger. I mean, I'm 200 yards from my truck right now. And then, and then one of the other questions was, was there an injury to the dog? Like, or did you feel like your dog was in danger? And of course, I'm like, well, yeah, yeah, obviously, yes. However, there was no injury to the dog. So it's not an attack. Okay, so it doesn't get recorded as an attack. And I don't want to miss speak either. If I'm misconstruing the, you know, the EFS or federal trapping guys that take care of work with the DNR on these types of situations, I don't want to misconstrue like what the categories are, how this actually ends up being reported. I felt fine about the phone calls, but it was just interesting to me that if I call in about this, how is this information going to get to someone else? So that's like the follow up thing, or what would be done different would be like, well, there was information out there about these types of scenarios or a potential scenario. Whether or not it's verified to be true or not, if someone calls about, hey, I was out walking my dog and we had a wolf follow us basically on the road. Yeah, it seems like that'd be something I would want to know. Yeah, I had not thought about that really kind of that reporting system. I knew that there is there is some information on the website about predations and I was going to ask you how familiar because admittedly, I haven't looked at that in a couple of years what they have on there, but that's an interesting idea if there was a sort of an open door comment box or reporting thing where you could just report any kind of encounter. I don't want to frame that communication to be like, it's not a negative thing about what the DNR is doing or what how these situations are handled. It's more of a forward thinking to be like, okay, how can we help? How can we help bird dog folks or, you know, bear hound folks that are looking for a new area to go put, you know, a new bear bait or something. If we know there's problem areas, maybe we can, and it's a fine line because, you know, there's maybe there's people interested to know where there's wolves for other reasons, you know, or maybe we, it's a fine line between sharing information, I guess. Right. And then you and I would have to say that we were out looking for blueberries or something, you know, not grouse hunting, but we report the location. Yeah, exactly. But no, I gather that's what you were, and you know, you can, I can, not that we need to justify or explain everything, but I can, you know, whoever you were talking to was asking specific questions because they've got to keep a data set and they have certain qualifying things that they need to, how they need to categorize. So just an interesting observation about, about how you reported it and what was perhaps, and again, if, as you said, if anybody has more information or wants to add to this conversation, this episode in particular, please email that stuff to me. Nick at birch@podcast.com. I would happily share that in a, in a follow up episode. Yeah, the, the interesting thing was I did my initial inquiry to the DNR biologist. They put me in touch with the APHIS and said, okay, or actually the APHIS guy called me. And then after that, I did have two DNR, two different DNR folks, biologists reach out to me to ask about the encounter. So from the, from the standpoint of, you know, like, feeling like who are the people out here working on wool stuff, like I saw, like, I, I mean, I thought, I was pretty impressed that, you know, people followed up, followed up and, you know, it may not show up on the, on a GIS thing that we can look at somewhere to be like, Oh, here was a, a near mess, you know, yeah, maybe, maybe it, maybe it could in the future. But you want the second part of your question about changing the way you hunt is like, no, I, I haven't changed the thing. And, you know, I think I've been in scenarios with other people that while out hunting where, you know, you see a heck of a lot of wolf sign and maybe you say, Hey, let's, let's cut our HUD short and go somewhere else. Yeah. Is maybe the only thing. I don't think that's any different than my approach prior. Yeah. It's just maybe, maybe sharing that with other people that I'm hunting with that maybe aren't as comfortable, you know, like, I'm even maybe a conversation prior to hunting to be like, Hey, just, you know, I hunted this road and it's, I've seen a lot of wolf sign on this road. But if you see wolf sign that looks fresh or, you know, something happens, let's, let's just pull up and go somewhere else. Yep. Other thoughts or insights. I think I kind of hammered away that on the information sharing would be great, I think. Yep. Well, you've certainly added to the conversation here on the show. And I appreciate you taking the time to do so. And again, appreciate all the detail and kind of what you recall. That was exactly what we were hoping to do is just have some have some bird hunters come on and share their encounters, what happened and what they recall and how they responded. So appreciate it, buddy. Yeah, no problem. I think though one of the when I was thinking about this conversation, I think that one of the things I really wanted to leave with people is like the idea of carrying a sidearm or, or the idea of, oh, yeah, I if I see a wolf, you know, on my bird dogs, like, this is what I'm going to do. Either either in a, you know, avoidance way or in a proactive way of thinking like, if a wolf's attacking my dog, I'm going to shoot it, you know, I'll leave this with you is that I reiterated it earlier and depending on how you edit the conversation could get long, but I did not during that encounter, there wasn't there wasn't a point in time where I thought I need to shoot this wolf. However, at an animal instinct level of like this bird dog is my kid, right? Had the scenario played out differently where the attack did happen and I'm not saying I would have waited for the wolf to actually grab ahold of this dog. Never in my mind have I thought I want to shoot a wolf that's going to be around my dog, but I would have had the opportunity presented itself if things had unfolded differently. I would have done that and I would have bared the consequences, turned myself in, et cetera, and said, hey, this just happened and dealt with it. Yeah. Because the, you know, the next level is, you know, if you can't do anything about it, now we're talking about a different scenario, which I know one of the other collars had, so right for one of the other interviews he had had. So for what that's worse, that decision-making process, you're talking about minute seconds to think you're going to reach for a side arm, not realistic, not even close. Yeah. You know, just for whatever that's worth. Yep. Yep. I appreciate that. All right, Nick. Okay, buddy. Well, unless you have any other things to add, I once again, we appreciate you chime in on this episode and we will look forward to your return to the birdshot podcast perhaps in the near future. I don't know, do you have any big plans? You know, like a couple weeks? I don't know. Perhaps a hunting trip with a few guys. Maybe our pass will cross. All right, I look forward to it. Okay, buddy. Thanks for the time tonight. Yeah. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the birdshot podcast presented by Onax Hunt, final rise and up-and-gun company. Don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and share. And if you really love the show and want to contribute above and beyond what you already do by listening, you can sign up at patreon.com/birdshot. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode of the birdshot podcast. Onax Hunt is the number one hunting GPS app. Join millions of other hunters who trust Onax Hunt to find more game, discover new access, and hunt smarter. 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With a complete lineup of accessories and newly released performance field apparel, final rise has the gear you need to help you get the most out of every mile and every flush. Final rise gear is built for the uplands. Get yours today at finalrise.com. Hey what's going on everybody? It's Bob from Woundux Gun Dog Chronicles podcast. I hope you just enjoyed the episode you just listened to and if you did, I think you'll enjoy hopping on hours. We've got professional retriever trainers and upland bird dog trainers from across the country and world sharing their tips and tricks and great stories to help you and your dog get ready for the season. We'll see you there.
