of a mass of tall grass. It’s twitching. He was down. I leaped from my seated position with a shout of joy. Maybe a little too loud as my partner heard the shout from his perch.
Now standing, I could clearly
The author chose this 30-06 rifle for his wolf hunt, a new rifle that he picked up for deer hunting. Note the size of the wolf compared with the rifle.
see not a single animal had touched it all week. Closer inspection of the snow showed where two separate wolves actually went out of their way to walk around it.
Usually, this ditch had a few tracks
in it, but I wasn’t ready for what I saw. I left last Sunday with four inches of new snow on the ground and no fresh tracks. I understand that, like deer, just a few animals can make a lot of different tracks, but this was more sign than ev- erything we had ever seen put together. Needless to say, I was pumped! Most of the tracks looked very fresh, and I knew wolves were in the area … a lot of them. As I arrived at my stand location, I was a little too distracted by all the tracks, as I didn’t notice the drizzle turn to almost a light rain. A quick shot with the rangefinder showed the carcass at 412 yards to my left, and the main trail I saw them come out of last week was 190 yards to my right. The rifle was propped up and ready. As it got lighter out and the landscape revealed itself, I couldn’t help but get that feeling of extreme solitude. The scenery and the eerie fog made me feel that I was much farther from civilization than I really was. An hour and a half ticked by and I
was soaked to the bone as the rain had been relentless. I texted my hunting partner about the untouched carcass where he’s sitting about 600 yards down the ditch to my left. As I sat there I won- derered what the weather radar looked like and if this rain would lighten soon. I broke out my phone and as the radar
Page 24 Spring 2013
web site was loading I thought to my- self, “What would I do if a wolf showed while I was messing with the phone?” I figured I’d probably toss the phone into the snow bank.
The radar showed a small break in the weather a short distance out. Good, I thought. Maybe the wolves would start to move. As I was about to shut off the phone, I glanced to the left, then to the right down the ditch. Grey movement caught the corner of my eye to the right, far down the ditch. I didn’t even look to clearly see what it was. I already knew. In one quick motion the phone went flying as I predicted it would. I shoved the rifle to my shoulder. In the rush to get steady I forgot to flip up the clear scope cap on the objective lens. It was covered in rain but there was no time. My eyes focused through the partially blurred image and it definitely was a wolf walking straight to me. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears. I could see his outline, his pointy ears, his long legs. I found his chest, centered the cross hairs, held at the base of his neck, and slapped the trigger. A second later I heard the sweet- est sound, the unmistakable sound of a projectile meeting its mark, the report of the shot connecting.
I ran the bolt as fast as I could, settled the scope, and for an instant I panicked as he was gone. I quickly re- played what I heard and the last thing I saw before the shot, and I was positive I connected. I caught movement on the ground, a leg sticking out from the side
make out a body lying motionless. I waited for my partner to make it down to me before approaching the animal. While waiting, I recovered my phone from the ground at my feet. I hit the wolf with the rangefinder … 195 yards. The walk up to the animal was full of shouts and laughter. As we closed in the last few yards, we both were awe struck by its size. No ground shrinkage here. The wolf dropped in its tracks at the shot and was dead before it hit the ground. As we were on our knees examin- ing the animal, howling broke out to the southeast, very close by. With the rifle now back in hand, we listened as the pack sounded off four or five times, howling somewhere in the dense pines. We now realized the urgency to get the animal packed out before things got really interesting. I checked the DNR Web site on my phone. Only three more wolves could be harvested before the quota was reached. I marked my site tag and called and registered the ani- mal, per regulations. We snapped a few quick photos and found a large branch we fashioned to go between its legs and then began the long trek out. Back at the truck I hit the refresh on the phone. It went from showing three wolves left to be harvested to zero. So two other people registered as I did. I shot one of the last three, maybe the last wolf on the last day of the first season in decades. Talk about a buzzer beater! I made a phone call to tell the news to the landowner friend. He was so ec- static he grabbed all of his kids and his father and made the three-hour drive up to the property to see the animal. After a bunch more photos and some slaps on the back, we closed up camp and ended a chapter in my hunting career that I’ll never forget. Of all the critters that the good Lord has allowed me to chase on this earth, none has been so exhilarating, challenging and downright adrenaline pumping as this. I hope you enjoyed the story half as much as I enjoyed liv- ing it out.
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