I’m headed out tomorrow morning to one of my favorite places on the planet, the Hudson Bay in Manitoba, Canada, with Churchill Wild, to (hopefully) photograph polar bears, Arctic foxes, and other wildlife. “Hopefully,” because with wildlife (like life in general) there are no guarantees. I’m lucky in that this is my fourth trip with Churchill Wild, and I’ve had some amazing experiences on my previous trips. On my first visit, we had an absolutely epic wolf trip, with a very close encounter with a pack of wolves, which you can read about here.
I visited again in February and also got very lucky, witnessing a wolverine and pack of wolves right outside our lodge. (Wolverines are rare to see; there are not that many of them and they exist in low densities, not forming packs like wolves do.) It started early one morning, when one of our guides looked outside and said, “There’s a wolverine in that tree.” Which explains why he is a guide, and I am not (photo one; I circled it because if you think “Where’s Waldo?” is hard, try finding a wolverine in a dense evergreen in the dark!). We quickly gathered our gear and headed out hoping it was still there, which it was, but it was now in a different tree. It was descending, trying to run away from the four wolves that were about 100 yards ways.
He quickly got treed again (tree number three) by the wolves. The wolves are not visible in these photos because of all the brush underneath the trees and because there was a slight drop-off right behind them. He looks down hoping to make his escape but no luck and quickly climbs tree number four.
Out of tree number four he goes, and (wait for it) he is now in tree number five. As you can see from the photos below, this was a rather skinny tree. It made for some great photos, but I can’t imagine it was very comfortable for the wolverine. Although it definitely was *a lot* more comfortable than tangling with four wolves: two eating a carcass, one sleeping, and another one out of sight in the trees to the left of the sleeping wolf.
He stays in tree number five for a while, looking in different directions, checking the location of the wolves frequently to see if it was safe to finally make his escape. He even looked directly at us, as if to say, “Can you please help? Distract them so I can get away!”
The fourth wolf makes his appearance; we hadn’t known he was there until he walked out of the woods. The other two were still gnawing on the carcass.
You can probably guess what happens next; the wolverine gets out of tree number five, the wolves see him, and he quickly climbs tree number six, which is where we left him. In the first photo below, you can see the wolf looking up the tree at the wolverine. The wolf then stretched and walked away. At this point we’d been photographing the wolverine for more than three hours, so we headed out looking for other wildlife. He did finally make it safely out of the tree, so a happy ending for him!
