Mark is my friend from up on the north shore , the wolves are doing very well up that way , hes the one holding the antlers
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If I had to actually spell the sound, I suppose it would be like that:
Oooough!... It is the sound this nine point buck <pictures attached> made after two wolves took it down directly across our bay around twilight last Saturday and started devouring it alive.
I had just gotten home and happened to walk around to the lake side of the house just moments after the wolves had disabled it on the ice. This became apparent, anyway, after I started hearing the silence fill with this awful repeated "moan" from the deer as the one black wolf gnawed at its hind
quarters-- the other, a gray, standing sentry nearby. I fetched Patty, along with a pair of binoculars, and we stood on the patio to watch. You could see the buck's head up... then down... then back up... as he bellowed. These death throes lasted about ten grusome minutes before the two wolves finally lit off down the far shore, for what I figured was to get the rest of the pack.
I immediately called my friend, Dale, to see if he wanted to come up from town and maybe go take possession of that deer-- but it was already getting pretty late, and we decided to take pity on the wolves anyway, since we can get an illegal deer pretty much any time we want and not really have to drag much farther than Patty's bird feeder.
Next day... as it started to get light, I could see through the kitchen window that the wolves had effectively taken care of business. You could barely make out a few remnants of the carcass remaining-- and a raft of ravens and a bald eagle soon decended to fuss over the scraps. (Pretty much all morning-- what a racket they made.)
Dale did come up a bit later and-- along with my neighbor, Seppo, and his son, Johann-- we trekked out across the ice with my hack saw and a camera.
Actually, not much more needs to be said apart from the pictures, except that we backtracked a ways into the woods to find that the deer had been spraying blood already before it hit the open ice, which is probably why he couldn't make it much further than about 15 yards before his tracks showed pronounced splaying and stumbling before he went down out there. You can see from the photos how far (and erratically!) the pack dragged it back toward shore from the spot of the kill, probably to avoid being seen so much in the open.
In solemn afterthought, Dale suggested that maybe we should have at least attempted to go out and sieze a hind quarter... but we did at least manage to get a nice nine point trophy rack in honor of two very capable wolves.
Mark
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