Wolverines (Plural) Sighting, Goat Rocks Wilderness

[HOLDMYBEER]

I guess repeatability is key to all this. Anyone who wants to see what we saw, go for it. We may be hearing from some conservation specialists and WDFW who are monitoring the area farther north. Here are the specifics of where we were camped in relation to landmarks. It was a great perch with a vast view across the basin. We watched the elk and goats for hours.

 

  1 is our camp. 2 is the goat herd. 3 is the area of the wolverine contact.

 

 

This gives an idea of how separated things were. Movement from our camp back to Goat Lake seemed to take several hours, much of that of crawling on all fours. These photographs don't really illustrate the steepness of the terrain.

 

 

     The lake is in a bowel out of view. The wolverines were off to the right.

[BobbyO]

I wonder if one of them was this Guy ?

http://cascadescarnivoreproject.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/name-central-cascades-wolverine.html

You might want to contact these if you haven't already HMB, they seem to think there's only a single animal up there in the GRW.

[HOLDMYBEER]

Good find. That blog is 2010 but very relevant none the less. I have given them all my details.

[BobbyO]

Good man HMB..

Incredible to me that an animal of that size has such a big home range.

[HOLDMYBEER]

Incredible to me that an animal that size can kill a polar bear.

[Skookum Chuck]

Just like the Honey Badger.....He doesn't give a *#@*, he's hungry!

[PBeaton]

HOLDMYBEER,

 

Right on ! How cool is that ! 

 

Did grabbin' your camera cross your mind at the time...or after ?  Either or, glad to hear of your good fortune !

 

Pat...

[HOLDMYBEER]

The snow was pretty soft going up the day before. It rained and lightning all night leaving a hard crust on the snow coming down. My boots were the better for kicking steps but that meant I had to put my camera and binocs away for leading the way down. I fully expected to fall and I just didn't want to bang up the camera or binocs so I put them in the pack. Nephew had the luxury of walking in my tracks so he had his binocs out. I wished things had been different but those were the circumstances we had.

[PBeaton]

HOLDMYBEER,

 

Only reason I asked is because that's just the way life happens, bit fast at times. Like I said, good one ya, a cool moment to remember.

 

Pat...

[HOLDMYBEER]

Update, I have received inquiries from several wolverine conservation groups. They now have all the facts of our sighting. I thought we were amazingly lucky to see two animals at one time, but here is a link to a video story that was aired last week by a local network that really defines good luck:

 

http://www.opb.org/television/programs/ofg/segment/wolverines-found-in-oregon/

 

If I recall the facts of the video correctly, the biologist went through almost 1400 photos before she finally got her first portrait of a wolverine in Eagle Cap Wilderness in NE Oregon. Never before had anyone documented a wolverine in NE Oregon. She eventually discovered a second animal in the same photos.

 

[HOLDMYBEER]

Yet another program about wolverine: 

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/wolverine-chasing-the-phantom/full-episode/6078/

 

I had to chuckle. They said a wolverine sighting is only a couple of notches below a bigfoot sighting.  Great videography. Scientists have documented the animal's ability to climb 4,900 feet in 90 minutes!

 

Seems to me the wolverine would be a better indicator species of sasquatch home range than black bear.

[HOLDMYBEER]

 

I have underlined a few interesting details:

Species: Gulo gulo

Type: Weasel

Family: Mustelidae

Habitat: Arctic, subarctic, alpine, and boreal zones such as forests, grasslands, tundra, and rocky areas (e.g. inland cliffs, mountain peaks).

Range: Circumpolar: Canada, China, Estonia, Finland, Mongolia, Norway, Russian Federation, Sweden, and the United States.

Population Health: Decreasing, but classified under “Least Concern†according to the IUCN Red List due to its “wide distribution and remaining large populations.â€

Estimated Population Size: Due to low density and wide distribution, estimates are extremely difficult. Combining conclusions from various recent studies, the worldwide population likely ranges between 15,000 and 30,000 individuals.

Size: Resembling a small bear, the wolverine is 26 – 36 inches long, excluding its bushy, 5 – 10 inch tail; shoulder height is 14 – 17 inches, and weight is 20 – 66 pounds.

Diet: Deer, sheep, small bears, rodents, hares, and other small burrowing mammals. Large portion of diet also comes from scavenged meat from carcasses of large mammals such as caribou and elk.

Additional Facts:

• The wolverine’s binomial name, Gulo gulo, comes from the Latin word gulo meaning glutton. It’s a fitting name; the wolverine has a voracious appetite and is known to devour even the bones and teeth of the animals it finds or kills. The wolverine can accomplish this feat thanks to its razor sharp teeth and powerful mandibles.

• During the 19th century, wolverine populations nearly disappeared due to hunting and other human activities like deforestation and recreational use of their habitats. But over the last few decades, they have been staging a comeback—many scientists expect large populations living in Canada and the northern United States.

• While the wolverine is the largest species of the land-dwelling weasels, it is much smaller than many of the other mammals within its territory. However, its size belies its strength and remarkable fearlessness—there is at least one reported story of a 30 pound wolverine attempting to steal a kill from a 400 to 500 pound black bear!

• The wolverine’s sense of smell is uncanny—it can detect a carcass lying 20 feet under the snow, allowing it to find the remains of animals killed in avalanches.

• A solitary and nocturnal hunter, the wolverine spends most of the year by itself, roaming its enormous territory, which varies from 65 km in Montana, USA to over 600 km in Scandinavia.

• Wolverines were once thought to be entirely reclusive and anti-social, getting together only for the purpose of mating. However, new findings indicate that after infants are born, they stay with their mother for up to an entire year and the dad returns periodically to help raise the kits. It turns out wolverine dads like to show their offspring the ropes.

• Wolverines have an average life expectancy of 4 to 6 years, but some can reach up to 13. They come to sexual maturity around 2.5 years and mate during the spring and summer months with new litters of 1-2 infants, sometimes as many as 5, being born between February and April.

• Weighing only 30 pounds, the wolverine’s proportionally enormous paws act as snow shoes, allowing it to move quickly over snow covered areas. While this gives wolverines a huge advantage over their competitors, it also makes them highly vulnerable to climate change. Snow, in other words, is crucial for their survival.

• Wovlerine paws not only act as show shoes, but also double as claws, with the tip of each of its twenty toes curved and extremely sharp. Equipped with these hook-like extremities, the wolverine possesses what might be called natural crampons, which allow it to scale an ice fall or a sheer cliff with little difficulty.

• Not only do wolverines use snow to their advantage when hunting, they also build snow dens in which the kits are born and nursed. Because reproduction occurs during spring, this requires that snow cover persists well into February and March. Climate change, however, will likely bring spring temperatures earlier in certain areas, which poses another risk to the wolverine’s survival by further limiting its range.

• When female wolverines build their dens in late February, they dig as deep as 15 feet below the snow to protect their young from predators and the cold.

• Wolverines are perhaps best known for their attitude. They don’t hesitate to fight with wolves and other predators over a meal, and given the right snow conditions are even capable of taking down a moose—a feat wolverine specialist Doug Chadwick likens to “a house cat bringing down a deer.â€

• In 2009, a wolverine named M56 was captured near Grand Teton National Park. Scientists tracked M56 using radio equipment and were astonished by its journey—it traveled 550 solitary miles during April and May, over highways, mountain ranges, and across state lines. M56 became the first observed wolverine in Colorado since 1919.

• The wolverine has a great deal of spiritual significance for Native Americans. For some, it functions as a link to the spiritual world and is understood as both a trickster and a hero.

• Wolverines are known for having a very strong odor. They use their pungent smell in order to mark their territory and ensure that no rival wolverines invade their range.

• Because wolverines are both extremely territorial and highly sensitive to disturbance, the increasing popularity of winter backcountry recreation combined with new and more powerful snow machine technologies suggests that wolverine range will continue to diminish to due human activity.

• Wolverines are notoriously difficult to study in the wild, which is why so little has been known about them. Scientists are only just beginning to put together an accurate picture of this marvelous creature by combining a number of research methods such as radio-tracking, remote camera surveys, live traps, and DNA traps.
•  

 

 

[NathanFooter]

Being that this is one the subject I thought I would toss in a few bits here.

 

I have been told by the DNR that there are no wolverines in Michigan since the that ,, last one ,, down state died.

 

That statement is bunk, I have spoken with several old time hunters in the past couple years about this and they told me about a few sightings they have had as recently as 2010 near the Rifle River and somewhere up near Cadillac .  

 

I also spoke with kid who has hunted up around Houghton lake and he seen what he said looked like a half bear half weasel looking thing with a long blondish colored streak on each side of the back of the animal walking across a remote 2-track back in 2011.

 

This guy has hunted from the age of 12 he said and he told me he has never seen something like that out in the woods before.

[SWWASAS]

Awesome sighting. The wolverine is an excellent example of something to counter a scoffers argument. Rarely seen, next to no photographs taken in the wild, never find dead ones, and live in an overlapping remote habitat with bigfoot. But the same people that bash bigfoot probably are not aware of how rare wolverines are either.

[bipedalist]

OPB recently had a good wolverine show on that zeroed in on Alaska and Glacier Park.  They got game cam pics and actual video in daylight in the field of wolverines. 

 

Also, showed a guy raising a couple orphan wolverines.  What a mess they were.....lol.....the paternal structure of the wolverine training of multiple generations was quite eye opening. 

 

They are definitely something to be respected with a 500 square mile territory.  One recently moved 500 miles from Wyoming to be the first documented wolverine in Colorado according to the documentary (not sure when the research was done on that though).