Blogger by Cessna (photo by Phil Miller)

We have hit March, yet little suggests that we are not still in deep winter. One’s mind can escape by either heading farther north or slinking south. This is in the way of passenger pigeons- you ignore the date and aim for the forage. So this week’s blog will tell of a trip I made a year ago, almost to the week, to northern Wisconsin to see gray wolves from an airplane. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) allows writers to join their pilots as they make wolf surveys. The north woods seemed pretty birdless on that trip but we did have a few flocks of crossbills and there were of course ravens.

 Siren, Wisconsin is in Burnett County, about 25 miles west of Spooner. It has one of three airports in the state where the WDNR maintains hangars for its teams of pilots and fleet of aircraft. I arrived about 8:30 in the morning and my pilot was waiting. Phil Miller has been with WDNR since 1993, and before that flew relief missions into Mozambique and Sudan for three years, when civil war prevented goods from moving on the ground. (Phil said one thing the pilots learned quickly was not to circle in one place long enough for guerilla forces to get a bead on the planes.)

Phil said that current weather conditions would aid our efforts at seeing wolves. We had a high cloud cover that eliminated shadows that might have concealed wolves on a sunny day. Not so good was the melt that had occurred a few days before that marred the snowy ground with dark patches of vegetation that might resemble wolves from the air.

Our goal was to cover portions of Bayfield and Douglas Counties, as we searched for 14 or 15 packs, each with one radio collared animal. Each wing of the Cessna 180 had a set of antennae. “When I hear a signal, I will circle to determine from what direction it is loudest,” explained Miller. We ascended to a traveling height of 1,000 feet and moved at a speed of about 120 miles per hour. The earth below us was an almost monochromatic mosaic of marsh, upright skeletons of leafless hardwoods, dark almost sinister tracts of conifers, and the smooth hard circles and ribbons of frozen water.

In fairly short order, Miller picked up our first wolf signal, from animal #564. He determined it was in a dense area of hardwoods and that we weren’t likely to see it. But we had much greater success with wolf #602 and her pack of 5. Miller spied four wolves hunkered under some pines. On the second pass, I saw one wolf running. A third pass revealed another animal slowly walking.

The next wolf we picked up was #634, a female which weighed 75 pounds when she was collared in June of 2008. Phil saw the animal curled up in the snow, but on his second pass he thought it might be a deer. Fortunately, on our third try the wolf stood up and removed all doubt. It had conspicuous white markings on its face.

While following the signal of #520 we crossed the border into Minnesota. On the crystalline surface of a beaver pond we saw the highlight of an already remarkable day. A large blotch of crimson marked the spot where a deer had been killed. Nearby, another smaller mass of color denoted its evisceration. Two bloody drag marks led to what was left of the carcass, guarded by two wolves that busied themselves chasing away a flock of scavenging ravens. (Phil took a shot of this which I am including; the other two aerial shots were by other pilots on other days. I was particulalry amazed by the picture of the black bear hibernating in the bald eagle nest. You would think it would be drafty!)

A wolf chasing ravens from its kill (photo by Phil Miller, courtesy of WDNR)

Gray wolf (photo courtesy WDNR).

Black bear hibernating in bald eagle nest (photo courtesy of WDNR)