{"id":875606,"date":"2026-09-01T00:34:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T00:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/875606\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T00:34:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T00:34:14","slug":"wolves-stand-to-benefit-as-bear-hunting-begins-in-minnesota","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/875606\/","title":{"rendered":"Wolves stand to benefit as bear hunting begins in Minnesota"},"content":{"rendered":"

Minnesota hunters have set up bait piles in advance of bear-hunting season, which begins Tuesday, and wolves are capitalizing.<\/p>\n

The accompanying trail-cam footage shows a black bear chasing a wolf from a bait pile, and both animals feeding at the pile minutes later.<\/p>\n

\"Bear<\/p>\n

Bear and wolf feeding at bait pile.<\/p>\n

The Voyageurs Wolf Project<\/a>, which studies wolves in the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem, explained that Minnesota’s bear-hunting season is a “boon” for wolves in several respects.<\/p>\n

For starters, bait piles are filled with “nuts, candies, donuts and dried fruits” to attract bears to specific locations before the season begins. Wolves are also attracted to the piles.<\/p>\n

ALSO: Wyoming hunters loom as threat to Yellowstone’s oldest wolf pack<\/a><\/p>\n

But the actual hunting season is even more beneficial for wolves, which will feed on gut piles and carcass remains left by hunters.<\/p>\n

Even better for wolves are dead or wounded bears that hunters are unable to retrieve.<\/p>\n

From Voyageurs: “When bears are killed but not recovered, wolves win the lottery: a 100 to 300+ pound buffet just sitting in the woods, ready to be consumed.\u00a0For a 60- to 70-pound wolf at the leanest time of year, that is about as good as it gets.”<\/p>\n

Voyageurs added that wounded bears are tracked down by wolves, eventually, and that the hunting period from September into October is “almost the only time we have documented [wolf] predation on black bears.”<\/p>\n

Several Voyageurs followers left comments that were critical of bear baiting, despite the benefits for wolves.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on For The Win: Wolves stand to benefit as bear hunting begins in Minnesota<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Minnesota hunters have set up bait piles in advance of bear-hunting season, which begins Tuesday, and wolves are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":875607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,5387,128,338],"class_list":["post-875606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-minnesota","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=875606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/875607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}