From the Field:
Negative temps, positive IDs
By Maggie Baham
'From the field' articles chronicle the adventures, difficulties, and hard-earned insights that come with doing fieldwork in the remote and wild Northwoods.
Minnesota winters are no joke. I grew up in Virginia, crossing my fingers for snow days in the winter. Snow was the highlight of the season, and I would do just about anything to be out in it. Virginia winters, however, are mild compared to Minnesota’s. For my first winter season with the Voyageurs Wolf Project, I was told to prepare for feet of snow and temperatures constantly dipping below zero degrees.
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The first day of the 2025 winter season was no exception. Snow and ice decorated the trees, and a turquoise sky peeked through the blanket of clouds. The negative temperatures forced me to burrow into my jacket, but nothing could deter me. I was surrounded by a world adorned in snow, and the sighting I had at the beginning of my day had set me in a good mood.
The sun peaking through trees adorned with snow and ice on a cold winters day out in the field.
Photo credit: Maggie Baham
Just half an hour earlier, I turned off the highway onto a forest road, and immediately slammed on the brakes. A figure perched in the middle of the road. The spotted tan pelt gave the creature away, and as it hightailed out of sight, I caught a glimpse of its bobbed tail. I sat dumbfounded at the bobcat. I’ve seen a variety of wildlife during my fieldwork here, but never a bobcat! Felids are a rarer sight than canids in the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem. If that sighting wasn’t a good omen for the day, I didn’t know what was.​​
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A snapshot from a trail camera of a bobcat playing along a snowy trail in the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem.
With the bobcat sighting still fresh in my mind, I started my work and made my way to my first location of the day. I was tracking Wolf P6T, a yearling female from the Bug Creek Pack. A glance at my GPS showed P6T’s location from a couple of days ago just off the trail I was hiking down. The woods seemed pretty open, which should have made bushwhacking easier than summer when thick vegetation crowds the forest. One step into the woods changed my mind. My boots sunk into the snow over my ankles. A few more steps and the snow reached my shins. Every step through the snow was a struggle.
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Finally, I broke out from the trees onto a ridge where P6T had spent a few hours just days earlier. The sun peeked out from the clouds, and I savored the warmth as I caught my breath. As I got my bearings, a dark spot against the snow caught my eye. Patches of brown deer hair were spread across the ridge in front of me, along with a couple of bone shards—P6T consumed a deer here, or at least a part of one.
Wolf P6T from the Bug Creek Pack saunters by a trail camera in March 2024.
But now the question was if P6T and the Bug Creek Pack had killed this deer on the ridge, or if they had scavenged a deer that had died of natural causes. I started searching the area more thoroughly, brushing snow away to see if any clues were buried under it. If I found blood or stomach contents— the tell-tale signs of a wolf kill in winter— I would be able to confirm this was a kill. My search on the ridge yielded little beyond the hair and bone shards though.
I checked my GPS again. This ridge was not the first place P6T spent time when she visited this area. Past field seasons taught me that the first spot a wolf stops in a localized area is a good place to start piecing together what occurred there. When wolves kill a deer, they chase it down, and once the deer is taken down, the pack starts feeding on the fresh carcass right away. Because of that, the first place a GPS-collared wolf stops and spends time after a chase is usually where we find kills (if the wolves were successful in their hunt, of course).
Wolf P6T’s first location in this area was only a short bushwhack away. As I headed back into the forest, I kept my eyes peeled for anything out of the ordinary—wolf and deer tracks, disturbances in the snow, anything that looked off. After a few minutes, I reached the first spot Wolf P6T visited. I slowly circled through the area a couple of times, scanning for evidence as to what exactly happened here. Nothing caught my eye though.
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I was about to head back to the ridge when a splotch of bright red appeared not far away, just through the trees. Finally, I could confirm what had happened—Wolf P6T and the Bug Creek Pack killed a deer here!
A wolf track next to deer frozen deer blood in the snow (left) and Maggie Baham investigating the site of Wolf P6T and the rest of the Bug Creek Pack's deer kill.
The snow was stained red and brown from the blood and rumen contents of the deer. The entire area was blanketed in deer hair with bone shards scattered throughout. During my first two summers (2023 and 2024) on the project, kills of adult deer were a rare thing to find, and they didn’t look anything like this. In summer, deer kills blend into the environment much better because blood and stomach contents blend into the undergrowth and soil. Additionally, there is no snow to preserve all the activity that occurred at the site. Usually, you only have trampled and disturbed vegetation to go off of.
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In winter, on the other hand, everything is clear and stark against the bright snow. I could see the defined trail where the wolves had likely chased the deer. It was clear where the Bug Creek Pack had taken down the deer and consumed it, with blood smeared on the base of the tree and soaked into the snow. More tracks led away from the kill site, ending in beds where the wolves likely had gone to rest and digest after their successful hunt. I took my time deciphering the event, documenting and recording all of the evidence in excitement.
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The thrill of the morning events didn’t wear off for the rest of the day as I hiked to more spots P6T visited. I was finally settling into a good hiking pace with temperatures finally rising above the negatives. At each of these areas, I found bed sites, near perfect circles in the snow where the Bug Creek pack had rested.
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As the sun dropped toward the horizon, I headed to my last spot of the day. To get to it, I had to hike down a trail, followed by a short bushwhack around a frozen beaver pond. After a short walk, I reached this last location—another resting site beneath a conifer.
On the bushwhack out, though, I found a set of wolf tracks, likely from P6T or a pack member, that traced the shore of the beaver pond until they veered off onto the ice. Because it was early winter, I didn’t know if the beaver ponds were safe to walk on, and I didn’t feel like testing the ice. From the shore, my eyes followed the tracks to a mound in the middle of the pond, a beaver lodge!
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My breath condensed in the air as I laughed at the wolf’s antics. This wolf had no reservations about heading out onto the ice, especially if there was a particularly interesting scent to investigate. It had left near perfect paw prints, and I couldn’t help myself as I whipped out my phone to capture the scene.
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As I turned to head back to my car, I took in my day. The bobcat sighting, the deer kill, and spotting the tracks out to the beaver lodge had made for an eventful first day of the winter field season.
A picture of the wolf tracks that Maggie observed crossing the frozen beaver pond.
About the author:
MAGGIE BAHAM is a wolf predation and research technician in her third season with the Voyageurs Wolf Project. Maggie graduated from Allegheny College in 2023 where she studied Environmental Science and Sustainability, and cultivated her love of wildlife! Beyond her work with the VWP, she conducted camera trapping research on coyotes in Pennsylvania and worked as a bobcat trapping technician in Virginia.