Endurance battle: Wolf attempts a solo moose hunt in north Ontario
It’s not always the size of the dog in the fight, but brawn certainly played a part during this battle between a moose and a wolf. The unbelievable predation attempt was filmed in the wilds of northern Ontario in Canada recently, and it’s about as tense as they come.
According to drone pilot and YouTuber Dan Nystedt, who caught this amazing encounter on film near his camp on the outskirts of Sault Ste. Marie, the wolf’s sudden appearance was a surprise.
“I captured this footage by happenstance while shooting some scenics,” he wrote on YouTube. “I was excited by the moose sighting, but as I was about to leave, [the] unexpected happened.”
Attempting a kill of this nature is a high-risk move for any wolf: in some cases, it can take the efforts of multiple pack members just to bring down an elk – and moose outweigh their smaller ungulate kin by as much as 800 pounds (over 350kg). For this reason, calves are taken much more frequently than adult moose, though ambitious hunts like this one are not unheard of.
If you watch the closing seconds of Nystedt’s footage closely, you’ll notice that a second wolf eventually crosses paths with the moose’s attacker. It’s very likely that this animal is the missing piece of this predation puzzle, but we can interpret its presence in different ways. On the one hand, it’s possible that our “lone wolf” wasn’t really alone after all: if other pack members were lurking nearby, they may have been “testing” the moose long before Nystedt started filming. This might explain why the hoofed quarry was in the water, facing the treeline, at the start of the video.
The second possibility is that the solo hunter was backtracking the efforts of another – larger – pack. In his book, “Wolves on the Hunt”, wolf behaviour specialist Dr Dave Mech discusses several wolf-on-moose predations that involved a similar tactic. He explains that single wolves someᴛι̇ɱes follow in the footsteps of other packs in the hope of picking off their leftovers. Even if a hunt is ulᴛι̇ɱately forfeited, a large pack can leave potential prey injured and exhausted – and that means easier pickings for any predator who attempts a second round.
“It’s not unusual,” Mech told us. “In fact, single wolves occasionally kill not only moose but also bison and muskoxen.”