Over the years, I’ve seen enough wildlife on snowmobile trails to know, never underestimate what could be waiting around corners. The last thing anyone wants is to hit an animal while on a trail, but it has happened. Obviously, injury to oneself being the worst, but what do you do if the animal you hit wasn’t killed, and your sled is not ridable?

Fortunately, this did not happen, but while friends were snowmobiling a month ago, they saw something on the trail ahead. As they got closer, they realized it was wolves. At this point they stopped and waited until the big bad wolves moved off the trail. At this point, to avoid the wolves they raced passed that spot.

During the winter, animals WILL use trails, be it snowmobile, biking or walking trails and with wolf numbers being over what the habitat can support and still growing, this is a problem. See page 7 on this site for what I believe is the true numbers as of last year. Don’t get me wrong, I’m fine with wolves being in the Northwoods, but their numbers have to be managed.

The federal government has delisted wolves before and because of lawsuits, wolves were put back on the endangered species list.
Well, here we go again. The DNR says the wolf population remains healthy. I say the wolf population is REAL HEALTH. Hopefully the new efforts to delist wolves works and the federal protection they are under, returns to individual state.

As of 2023, the Wisconsin DNR believes there were just over 1000 wolves in 283 packs in the state. My numbers I BELIEVE are more accurate and with Michigan’s upper peninsula being our neighbor those numbers are huge.

The Michigan DNR estimated there are over 750 wolves in 158 packs in the U.P. At least Michigan is using realistic numbers. In 2022 they estimated there was 631 wolves and in 2024 that number grew to 762. So, in three years there were 131 new wolves in the Upper Peninsula. If the U.P. has 762 wolves, how is it possible that Wisconsin has just over 1000?

In January 2012 wolves were delisted before being put back on the endangered species list in December of 2014. During those 3 years a hunting season was instituted to bring the wolves back to a manageable number that the DNR said the habitat could support. In the 3 years 528 were harvested.

Hunters will tell you a wolf can be more challenging to harvest than other game animals. That being said, in 2021 when they were delisted and a hunting season was established, and 218 wolves were harvested in 3 days. If it took three years to harvest 528 wolves and only 3 days to harvest 218 (18 over the limit) wouldn’t most say, there are a lot more wolves in Wisconsin than 1007?

Fingers crossed that this new effort to delist wolves happens. I’m sure the state won’t put realistic quotas on the number of wolves to be harvested, it might lower the number of wolves we see on are trails.