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Field Work Below Zero

By Austin Homkes

Field Biologist

Voyageurs Wolf Project

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    Each year, as the heat and humidity of a northern Minnesota summer gives way to a too-brief but beautiful autumn, we turn our attention towards the winter field season. During the winter field season, we trade mosquito bites for frostbite and bug nets for snowmobile helmets. Winter in the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem (GVE) is an entirely different world for us and the wolves.

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We generally receive our first snow in early to mid-October. Shortly thereafter, the protected bays of the GVE’s large lakes begin to freeze. The beavers surface one last time in their ponds before they are entombed below the ice for five dark months in their lodges–five months when they are safe from wolves. By December, all the ponds and lakes in our study area are frozen over and the wolves’ territories expand to include the ponds and lakes they could only swim across before.

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During this ‘freeze up’ period, our fieldwork largely pauses because travel over thin ice is impossible, providing us with a much-needed break from a rigorous 7-month summer field season. While we catch our breath, the ice thickens as the snow deepens and the woods go silent with the deep cold that comes with a Northwoods winter. The GVE’s location just south of the central plains of Canada funnels Arctic air down into the region, giving the area its nickname – The Icebox of the Nation. Temperatures drop as low as -40°F and are routinely below 0°F throughout late December to early March.

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Out in the field traveling on a dam along a frozen beaver pond in the GVE. By the tracks left behind in the snow, it seems like other wildlife also found this spot to be an ideal crossing! Picture by Ottie Brueshaber.

Despite the chilling challenges, we hit the ground running for winter field work by the start of the New Year. The first order of business is to check our nearly 350 remote trail cameras spread out across the GVE. We last checked our cameras at the end of our summer season in late October. As fall transitions to winter, our cameras capture valuable

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One of our trail cameras deployed along a snowmobile trail set to capture wolf packs traveling during the winter season. Picture by Maeve Rogers.

data, such as how many pups survived to the beginning of winter, if subordinate pack members dispersed from their natal packs, and how many wolves are in each pack at the start of winter.

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Managing body temperature is the name of the game when we do winter field work. When the temperatures hover around zero and the wind blows, simply pressing a few buttons on a remote camera or installing cold batteries is all it takes to feel a cold sting in your fingertips. Without any sort of heated shelter for miles, heated snowmobile handlebars, handwarmers, and a robust pair of mittens are all we have to keep our cold hands from becoming numb hands.

Conversely, and perhaps ironically, when tracking GPS collared wolves to locate kill sites, we are doing our best to not become too warm. When the snow is deep in the thick Northwoods forest, trudging any distance gets the heart beating quickly and it doesn’t take long before we overheat, even in the coldest conditions. Getting too warm creates sweat and sweat and subzero temperatures are a recipe for an unpleasant–if not dangerous–situation.

​When we work hard in cold temperatures, the best way we’ve found to stay warm, while not getting too warm, is to wear several layers of clothing, and to remove layers as we warm up. As we hike to potential kill sites, we shed layers one by one, staying warm while doing our best not to sweat. Once we stop at a site where wolves have spent time, we quickly layer back up until we move on. We’ve learned from experience that if we are complacent in performing this wardrobe shuffle and get sweaty, damp clothing quickly turns into a cold sink for our body heat once we’ve stopped moving.

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We leave for the field each day with all the tools we need to endure what winter field work throws at us. One day we might snowmobile on and off groomed trails to check on our many trail cameras, replacing memory cards and batteries if needed. This might involve getting the snowmobile stuck in deep snow and digging it out, or sawing through a log that has fallen over a backcountry trail. The next day we might snowshoe or ski far off-trail to investigate several sites where our GPS collared wolves and their packmates may have made a kill. Sometimes we find several kills in a day, other days we hike all day to find several spots wolves simply rested. Dynamic snow conditions and weather keep us adapting throughout the day.

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 A long trek on the skis lead to a dear kill by the Bug Creek pack. Like every kill we’ve found this winter, the pack consumed virtually everything in a very short period. Picture by Tom Gable.

One additional challenge the winter creates for us when we do field work in the bitter cold is that the food and water we bring out into the field freezes solid. Staying hydrated when it is cold is a challenge to begin with–you simply don’t feel thirsty when you’re trying to stay warm all day. Nonetheless, we are careful to drink water throughout a day in the field. However, if we don’t plan ahead, a bottle of water will quickly freeze solid in a backpack in subzero temperatures. Similarly, most soft foods will freeze into a jaw breaking brick by lunch time. Thus, we are sure to heat our water to almost boiling before leaving for a day of field work, keeping any food near the bottle of water in our packs or otherwise insulating or heating food before we leave for the day.  

 

Once we’ve snowshoed or skied to where wolves have spent time, the snow tells the story of what occurred there. If a pack of wolves only bedded in an area, we find tracks leading to several pits in the snow where the wolves curled up. If the pack killed a deer, we find many trails in the snow that converge at a central focal point, like the spokes of a wheel, revealing the carnage of a recent kill. By the time we arrive at most kills, all that is left to find is an area of blood-soaked snow, bits of deer fur, and leg bones cracked open to get at the fatty marrow inside. If we are lucky, we find the deer’s lower jaw, used to age the deer, or an intact leg bone, from which we extract marrow to understand the body condition of the deer when it died.

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Left: Picture of a kill site from the Bug Creek pack in January.

Right: A picture of a few bed sites and scats from the Bug Creek pack. The wolves traveled about a mile away after the kill and bedded down for a very long time to digest their food.

The winter field season matches challenging conditions with spectacular beauty and valuable insights into the cryptic lives of the wolves of the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem. The extremes of the weather and landscape shape the dynamics of wolves and prey, and the ways in which wolves and their prey live and die are as fascinating as they are mysterious. With many aspects of the winter ecology of wolves yet to be understood, we eagerly embrace the elements, with cold hands and feet, in hope that the secretive ways of wolves in winter unfolds before for us. 

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Wolves from the  ___________ pack crossing over a frozen beaver dam on the peninsula in Voyageurs National Park. Picture captured by one of our trail cameras.

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