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"I definitely still get a thrill," King said of the rare sightings. "It's still unique."
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Most times, though, he has to rely on tracks to tell where the wolves are wandering on the 43,700-acre refuge.
Jim Johnson Jr. has seen wolf tracks as well, on his rural Hixton property in northern Jackson County. Unlike King, he is not thrilled.
"I can't think of one person in the county," Johnson said, "who was in favor of the wolf coming back in the first place."
To Johnson, the gray wolf is a threat to livestock and pets, a competitor whose presence means there'll be fewer deer in Jackson County when hunting season rolls around.
If the wolf would stick to public lands, Johnson would be more tolerant. But the tracks on his property show the wolf isn't staying where it should be.
While Jackson County has no recorded wolf attacks on livestock, and only one injured dog, Johnson says it's only a matter of time before the complaints rise with the number of wolves.
"On private property, they're not wanted," said Johnson. "They're not going to kill the weak and the sick, they're going to kill what's easiest ... and we have no legal means to defend our property."
At its March 23 meeting, the state Natural Resources Board will consider removing the gray, or timber, wolf from the state's list of threatened species.
The state's wolf population has reached more than 335, well above the level set for de-listing when the wolf management plan was adopted in 1999, said Randle Jurewicz, a Department of Natural Resources biologist who oversees the plan. That population appears to have been sustained into this year, he said.
The move to delist the wolf has solid support. In a series of public forums the DNR held across the state late last year, 93 percent of the comments favored lifting the threatened status, said Jurewicz.
He and other wildlife officials see it as a positive step, a sign their efforts over the years have been rewarded by a quicker-than-expected return of a species declared extinct in the state only a half-century ago.
"It shows we've been successful in recovering the wolf population," said Adrian Wydeven, a mammal ecologist with the DNR's Bureau of Endangered Resources. "I see it as sort of a covenant with the state of Wisconsin .... This is what we said in the plan, and now we're going to follow through with it."
Wolf opponents find themselves in rare agreement with the DNR, saying the state's population has moved into numbers that warrant talking about limits rather than protection.
"We need to have a measure of control, something in place for when they reach that goal number," Johnson said.
But Jurewicz stressed the change in status won't mean a hunting season on wolves anytime soon. "We believe wolves would be very sensitive to hunting pressure," he said.
While the federal government did remove the gray wolf from the endangered species list last spring, it still has threatened status in the United States. Even if the state wanted to, it could not allow hunting or trapping while under federal protection.
What de-listing in Wisconsin would do is allow the DNR to more easily remove problem wolves, those known to be killing domestic animals, Jurewicz said.
Last year, the state paid damages for wolf predation on 20 cattle, 24 sheep, six dogs and one deer on a deer farm. When wolves were classified as endangered, a problem wolf could only be trapped and relocated, and often managed to return to its former territory.
Under the threatened status, problem wolves can be destroyed — the state euthanized 17 in 2003 — but only after two documented attacks. De-listing would mean a wolf could be killed after one incident.
"Sometimes they make mistakes, too, and they don't always eat what nature provides them to eat," Jurewicz said. "They think, ‘Gee, it's right there and it's slow and it's good to eat.'"
But Jurewicz noted that northern Wisconsin has hundreds of wolves and thousands of head of livestock, yet less than 50 confirmed acts of predation in 2003.
"Compared to what's out there, it's very little," Jurewicz said. "But I understand how people feel. They don't raise calves to feed wolves."
He is less sympathetic to claims the return of the wolf reduces the state's deer herd.
If every wolf in Wisconsin consumed 25 deer in a year — a very generous figure, Jurewicz said — the annual kill would be less than 8,500 deer. In contrast, more than 480,000 deer were taken by human hunters in 2003, and about 45,000 were fatally struck by vehicles.
Clearly, more Wisconsin deer meet their end on the bumper of a car than in the jaws of a wolf.
"There are some pretty significant issues when you talk about wolves in Wisconsin," Jurewicz said. "But when it comes to white-tailed deer, no, I can't go there. Timber wolves are not having an impact on whitetails."
About 40 to 50 wolves make their home in Wisconsin's central forest, which extends into Jackson, Monroe and Juneau counties. In 1999, one began roaming Fort McCoy in Monroe County, and by last year five adults were known to be living on fort land.
Last summer, a howling survey done by Tim Wilder, endangered species biologist at Fort McCoy, got a response from adults and pups — perhaps the first wolves born in the region in almost a century.
Despite the resident pack, hunters at Fort McCoy still managed to bag 962 deer in 2003, the third-largest harvest in 26 years on record.
The movement of wolves southward into Fort McCoy and Necedah National Wildlife Refuge has raised the question of just how much of Wisconsin might become wolf territory.
Southern Wisconsin is not thought to have suitable habitat for wolves, which prefer large tracts of conifer forest. It is unlikely even the Fort McCoy wolves would spread into, say, the Kickapoo Valley Reserve in Vernon County, even though much of that land is undeveloped and wooded, Wydeven said.
Then again, in January a wolf was struck by a car near Appleton, within sight of the Fox River Mall, and another was hit by a truck on Interstate 94 in Jefferson County just east of Madison. A Jackson County wolf also turned up dead in east central Indiana in June 2003.
All three were most likely young wolves driven out of their home territory and forced to go wandering for a new place to live. These "dispersing" wolves can range long distances, Wydeven said.
"We are seeing more of a mixture of forests and farmland (habitat) in some of these new packs," Wydeven said. "I think wolves are more adaptable than we've seen in the past ... but I don't think they'll be quite as adaptable as coyotes."
The state has room for perhaps 500 resident wolves, mostly in the north. If new generations of wolves do attempt to make their home near more populated areas, control measures might have to come into play to discourage them, Jurewicz said.
"I think it's tolerable (in northern Wisconsin) ... but not in southern Wisconsin," Jurewicz said.
Wydeven, who has 14 years in wolf research, agreed. He heralded the return of the wolf to Wisconsin's north woods. His favorite wolf story is of Whistler, a worn-tooth male perhaps a decade old, who after years of living outside a pack managed to find a mate and sire two litters of pups before he died. They became the foundation for the Rainbow Lake pack in Bayfield County.
"It was kind of neat, that old wolf died but his legacy lived on," he said.
Wydeven thinks the majority of the public also favors having the species back in the state. But the good feelings for the animal now pictured on the state's Endangered Species license plate might fade if the wolf begins to clash more with humans.
"We want to have the tools available so we don't get to the situation where there's a backlash," Wydeven said. "We don't want the population to grow so quickly it becomes a nuisance animal."
Betsy Bloom can be reached at (608) 791-8236 or bbloom@lacrossetribune.com.
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Source: Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
