Voyageurs Wolf Project, an organization focused on understanding the ecology of wolves in the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem, captured some pretty incredible footage of a wolf pack chasing after a bull moose in Minnesota’s Voyageurs National Park. Unfortunately their camera glitched out pretty hard while filming, but it’s still very cool footage.
The footage managed to kick back on right as a few wolves came in behind the main group. The wolves were not successful in the hunt, with three pack members, including the breeding male, moved back past the camera 6 minutes after the initial chase footage. Additionally a team with Voyageurs Wolf Project followed the tracks into a large beaver meadow they could tell the wolves gave up on their chase.
Wolves in the Voyageurs area are very rarely successful in hunting moose. In fact, in the 12 years of studying predation behavior of wolves in the area, Voyageurs Wolf Project has only found 3 moose killed, and 2 of them were calves. In teh same time period, 2,314 kills of deer and beavers have been recorded.
There’s a few reasons why this is the case. For one, the population of moose in the area is pretty low while other prey is pretty abundant. Even if the wolves did attempt to hunt moose, the hunting success rate for such a case is pretty low, with moose defenses being highly effective against wolves.
