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Why nine wolves were killed in Price County
Plus: foraging classes fill up, leave the leaves, and one rider on all 44 state trails
Forrest Koslowski
October 08, 2026
Wiscampsin Weekly brought to you by:
Mornin’ to the crew at Rock Creek Disabled Outdoors. For 28 years, the nonprofit has put on a free deer hunt in Willard for hunters with disabilities, with guides, all-terrain wheelchairs, meals and nearly 7,700 acres to hunt. With three days still to go, this year’s 27 hunters had already taken 34 deer. That’s 34 more than our deer camp managed last year.
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This week’s weekly:
🍄 Hunting and foraging classes are filling up fast
🍂 Your October garden list: leave the leaves, lose the worms
🚲️ One rider, 44 state trails, one month
🐺 STORY OF THE WEEK: Why nine wolves were killed in Price County
🍄 Hunting and foraging classes are filling up fast LINK
More people want to learn to hunt, fish and forage their own food, and the classes can’t keep up. A Kansas workshop on trapping and cooking squirrels drew more than 60 people. One on raccoons served “racquitos,” which are raccoon taquitos. Uncle Paul would like the recipe.
Kansas now runs a Wild Foods Academy. Ten students spend a year learning to hunt, fish and forage, then each teaches at least two workshops a year back home. Think master gardeners, but for wild food.
Want to try it here? The DNR lists Learn to Hunt and Learn to Fish classes on its events calendar.
🍂 Your October garden list: leave the leaves, lose the worms LINK
Frost is close. Milwaukee Magazine’s garden columnist has the first frost date at Oct. 16. Before then, trash anything with powdery mildew instead of composting it, mulch your beds, and clean and oil your tools.
Leave the leaves. They feed the soil and shelter more than 50 kinds of caterpillars and other bugs through winter, which means bird food come spring. Finally, science is on the side of not raking.
Check your compost for jumping worms, an invasive species banned in Wisconsin that wrecks the nutrients in a pile. The DNR says to seal them in a bag and throw them in the trash.
🚲️ One rider, 44 state trails, one month LINK
Sarah Widder is biking every state trail in Wisconsin this month, all 44 of them. She started Oct. 1 on the Red Cedar State Trail and is blogging each day.
The point is to get people talking about how Wisconsin pays for its trails, including Knowles-Nelson, the state land program that lapsed in June. She hopes renewing it becomes a bipartisan priority.
You can ride along for a few miles. The finish party is Oct. 22, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., at Lucette Brewing in Menomonie. Forty-four trails and it ends at a brewery. That’s how you plan a route.
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🐺 STORY OF THE WEEK: Why nine wolves were killed in Price County LINK
Federal trappers killed nine wolves in Price County in late August and early September. It’s the first time officials have done that in Wisconsin since a 2022 court ruling put wolves back under federal protection. So what happened?
The short version. A pack near the town of Flambeau stopped being afraid of people, and nothing the DNR tried changed that.
What the wolves were doing. Federal investigators verified six incidents between July 2025 and this August. A security camera caught a collared wolf 6 to 8 feet from a house on two nights. Another wolf walked into a clearing 20 yards from a man who was mowing. A young one watched from 45 feet away as a man put out bear bait.
Why that’s a problem. Wolves generally keep their distance and pose little threat. Nobody was hurt here, and Wisconsin has no documented wolf attack on a person in modern history. But the DNR says wolves that get used to people can turn aggressive, and this pack was getting bolder, not shyer.
What they tried first. Lights. Noise. More people around. Removing anything that might be drawing the wolves in. The DNR says the pack reacted less each time.
Why not just move them? The DNR says it looked at that. There were nine wolves, there wasn’t suitable habitat to put them in, and moving a pack risks trouble with the packs already living there.
Who decided. The federal Wildlife Services program verified the incidents and did the trapping. The DNR made the call, in contact with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. With about 1,162 wolves in the state, the DNR says losing nine won’t have a lasting effect on the population.
The apology. Nobody told the tribes until it was over. The Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, which represents 11 tribes with treaty rights across the northern third of Wisconsin, objected this week. To Ojibwe people, the wolf is a brother. The commission says the tribes should have been consulted and that relocation should have come first. DNR Secretary Karen Hyun said she is “deeply sorry” for the lack of communication and committed to working more closely with the tribes. The DNR is working to hand over the wolves’ remains, and the tribes plan to give them a proper burial.
We’ll keep following this one.
WISCAMPSIN WEEKLY POLL
Last Week's Trivia Check
We asked what porcupines are actually after when they chew your camp gear down to toothpicks. You guys know your critters! A solid 61% of you knew they are just looking for a salty snack, while about a quarter of the room figured they were looking for bitter tannins to help their digestion.
The Correct Answer: Sodium from dried human sweat
The Takeaway: Because porcupines eat a strict vegetarian diet of leaves and woody bark, they are constantly starved for sodium. Dried human sweat is packed with salt, turning wooden tool handles, sweaty leather gloves, canoe gunwales, and even road-salted truck tires into irresistible salt licks.
This Week's Trivia
October is prime time for Sandhill Crane migration across Wisconsin. Whether you are watching thousands stage in the central marshes or catching huge flocks drifting over your backyard, you will almost always hear them before you see them. That prehistoric, rattling bugle can easily carry for over two miles, even when the birds are just tiny specks high up in the clouds.
How can a Sandhill Crane make a call that carries so far across the landscape?Give it your best gut check: |
Well, how'd we do this week? |
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