With all the talk about restoring the natural balance and predator reintroduction, I just thought I would ask anyone if they have any first hand experience with a wolf kill. Yesterday, my neighbour showed me where a red deer had been killed in our woods and I cannot find any other explanation apart from that it was wolves.
Just to explain, I'm in the French Alps and wolves have been reported in the area. One of the things that holds me back from saying outright it was a wolf kill though, is that it took place 5 minutes' walk from my front door just off a path through the woods where there is a moderate amount of (human) activity during the summer and winter months. However, there is also a 50 foot barn not so far off, which houses around 60 sheep (and their lambs) all winter, which tbqh smells pretty pungent right now. We are at the end of a small valley with very steep (and wild) mountains on three sides and the open end has a gorge that pretty much cuts us off from the main town.
Unfortunately, not much of the actual deer was remaining when I got to it, but my neighbour told me that there was a piece of skin a foot square and many pieces of intestines at the site the day before yesterday as his dog had tried to eat some of it. It did look like a frenzy had taken place though; patches of blood allover the place, bits of excrement and there was a large impression in the snow that was lined with red deer fur. There were footprints of fox and dog and some larger dog paw shapes all around but nothing I could say was conclusively a wolf print (we get some big dogs wandering around here). There was one trail off up into the forest that had signs of blood on it (I am going to go and check it out today). It looked like many animals had visited the site to check it out and in fact ten days ago I came across the fresh hind leg of a deer (from the hip down) on the path 100m away from the kill site, which looked like it had been carried there by a fox (from the prints all around it) and literally was dropped just before I found it (because the ski pisteur had passed through only half an hour before and groomed the snow completely clean and the leg was on top of that snow).
Anyway, I did some research on the internet and apparently wolves kill their prey by either biting its rear end or ripping some skin off its side and pulling out its intestines so that the deer can still run, but bleeds to death along the trail and finally falls down so that the wolf can eat it. This would I say correspond with what happened here. I can't think of anything else that would have killed such a large deer in such a way apart from a lynx, which we also have here so the jury is still out.
I'm not sure whether I will ever get proof one way or the other but I think it is important to at least be kind of certain, as the sheep and lambs will be coming out of the barn in a few weeks and there will be all hell to pay if any of them are killed.
Just to explain, I'm in the French Alps and wolves have been reported in the area. One of the things that holds me back from saying outright it was a wolf kill though, is that it took place 5 minutes' walk from my front door just off a path through the woods where there is a moderate amount of (human) activity during the summer and winter months. However, there is also a 50 foot barn not so far off, which houses around 60 sheep (and their lambs) all winter, which tbqh smells pretty pungent right now. We are at the end of a small valley with very steep (and wild) mountains on three sides and the open end has a gorge that pretty much cuts us off from the main town.
Unfortunately, not much of the actual deer was remaining when I got to it, but my neighbour told me that there was a piece of skin a foot square and many pieces of intestines at the site the day before yesterday as his dog had tried to eat some of it. It did look like a frenzy had taken place though; patches of blood allover the place, bits of excrement and there was a large impression in the snow that was lined with red deer fur. There were footprints of fox and dog and some larger dog paw shapes all around but nothing I could say was conclusively a wolf print (we get some big dogs wandering around here). There was one trail off up into the forest that had signs of blood on it (I am going to go and check it out today). It looked like many animals had visited the site to check it out and in fact ten days ago I came across the fresh hind leg of a deer (from the hip down) on the path 100m away from the kill site, which looked like it had been carried there by a fox (from the prints all around it) and literally was dropped just before I found it (because the ski pisteur had passed through only half an hour before and groomed the snow completely clean and the leg was on top of that snow).
Anyway, I did some research on the internet and apparently wolves kill their prey by either biting its rear end or ripping some skin off its side and pulling out its intestines so that the deer can still run, but bleeds to death along the trail and finally falls down so that the wolf can eat it. This would I say correspond with what happened here. I can't think of anything else that would have killed such a large deer in such a way apart from a lynx, which we also have here so the jury is still out.
I'm not sure whether I will ever get proof one way or the other but I think it is important to at least be kind of certain, as the sheep and lambs will be coming out of the barn in a few weeks and there will be all hell to pay if any of them are killed.