Yooper Wolves

 The hour or two I spent on the Two Hearted River was tantalizing, not satiating. The Lake Superior don't have the steelhead reputation that the other lakes do, but this river's reputation proceeds itself through the writings of Hemingway. I confess, though I have read The Old Man and The Sea and Big Two Hearted River, if Hemingway had never fished the Two Hearted and written about it I'm not sure it would have changed my opinion of it for the worse at all. I mostly mention it because that's how others know of it. The Two Hearted is a low gradient, winding, tannic river whose predominant year round salmonid is the native brook trout. The lake run rainbows reportedly average about six pounds here, though my first hand experience cannot corroborate that claim as I saw no evidence of any such fish in my time there, aside from a very small number of other anglers fishing for them. Spoons seemed to be the method of choice up there, which is a departure from the float-based or bottom bouncing approach I've seen in most other places I'd fished on the Great Lakes. There were also far fewer people here. By leaps and bounds, in fact. I made for five in total on a few hundred yards of water. This certainly owes to the remoteness of the location as much as anything. Michigan's Upper Peninsula is a sparsely populated place that reminds me of Northern Maine superficially. Resource extraction is the primary industries up here. Logging and mining lead the tables. Iron and copper both come from ground here. Later in the trip we'd meet a rock shop owner on the lower peninsula who's family were Yoopers, and she talked about inheriting large pieces of float copper that were found on her family's farm. Indirectly, it was the extraction industry the got me there. On November 10th, 1975, the jewel of the Great Lakes big iron boats, the Edmund Fitzgerald, sank during a monstrous storm. Losing big boats was not a particularly rare occurrence on the lakes up until that point, but none had quite the impact on popular culture that the Fitz did, and her end was a wakeup call that essentially ended a long string of lost vessels and crew. This November 10th was the 50th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and that was why we were on the Upper Peninsula, and how I ended up stripping streamers in the languid, black runs at the very end of the Two Hearted River.

The river almost parallels the shore of Superior at it's lower end, though it would be hard to call sucha  winding path parallel to anything. The very last leg almost is straight before it juts sharply north and into the lake. Before that, though, her course is a very winding one, through the stark landscape of dunes; all sand with scattered pines, many dead. The weather on November 10th 2025 was much, much better than the weather on the same date in 1975, but a stiff breeze out of the northeast made standing facing the lake a fairly unpleasant experience. It was easy enough to avoid that, thankfully, tucking in behind the dunes. Tolerable though it may have been, and as much water as I was able to cover without impedance, no chrome flashes lit up the darkly stained water. No grabs met my slowly pulled swings either. Hours spent casting were limited, though, and perhaps a future visit will go differently. There are other animals to encounter on the Upper Peninsula, though. One is certainly rarer, but less out of place than the introduced rainbows. 

Across much of the Eastern half of country, wolves are a thing of the past. They eat our cattle and sometimes us, so settlers pushed them back hard. Though rumored sightings circle, the claimed last wolf in Connecticut was killed by Isreal Putnam in the town of Pomfret. Wolves held their grasp in Michigan longer. It wouldn't be until the 1910 that wolves would be beaten down from the Lower Peninsula. Even when they were gone there, the declining UP population was faced with bounties that remained instated until 1965¹. Though granted full protection not long after, it would take Wisconsin's population rebounding for animals to filter back onto the UP and repopulated. They've grown in number since, exceeding 762 in 2024 according to Michigan DNR. Isle Royale has the most significant density, but wolves are seen in other wild parts of the peninsula. 

As I've written about before, I adore large animals, predatory animals, and dangerous animals. Though I had no delusions of getting a chance to actually lay eyes on a wild wolf- they are very good at not being seen when they don't want to be -maybe, just maybe, I might be able to hear one. 

Being some sort of strange freak, I've spent countless hours standing in the woods in the dark listening to the sounds of wildlife. From endangered frogs to owls to coyotes, to even cryptids, I've put a lot of time in "with my ears on". A cackling pack of coyotes, barking fox, or overhead barred owl alarm call stopped fazing me years ago. Hours of annotated and carefully sorted sound recordings going back to when I was just 14 of woodland noise lace multiple hard drives. To say my comfort level in the dark is high would be an understatement. That, and my cursory understanding of topography, predator habits, seasonal prey movements, and modern satellite imagery gave me the confidence to go see if I might hear the wild wolves howl. I picked a spot where a wetland river corridor abutted rolling hills with hardwoods and patchy logging cuts. It was well out of town and closer to an area with reported sightings than some other decent looking habitat. Three of us- my partner Emily, our friend Ian, and myself -split from the group at our little cabin, hopped in the rental van, and went on a little adventure. 

The woods in southern New England don't feel wild at night. It's impossible to get away from anthropogenic noise or sound, so you always know you're near dense settlement and civilization. There's always a plane going by overhead and low enough to hear. Even in the most remote place in Connecticut, on a dry night you'll hear someone's broken muffler in the distance. Light from towns illuminates the bottom of the cloud deck and reflects everywhere. The only time you can really get away from that is during a heavy snow storm. But there, down a long dirt road and away from town, the Upper Peninsula had that feel... that silence. The air wasn't moving. We heard no car, no plane. Any crunch or scrape of gravel from our feet was deafening.  Those who appreciate such desolation seem automatically inclined to speak only in hushed tones. And that we did, remarking in amazement at just how silent it really was. I just hoped, maybe, that silence would be broken by a sound that has sent shivers down the backs of our species for millennia. 

It was almost funny how long it didn't take. The three of us were all whispering when something low and distant caught my attention and I made an abrupt "Shhh, SHHH!". Ian and Emily went silent, and we all heard them. They were far away, but it was hard for me to mistake what we were hearing. Those were not coyotes. There were only a few  voices. No yips and barks, just long, low, mournful howls. I stood in awe for just a moment before being overtaken by the urge to get closer. "Let's go, we can get closer to them", I urged, and we hopped back in the van. The howls had come from our north, so we followed the road that direction, up into the hardwood forest. We stopped again, and after a little while, heard another- this time apparently individual -caller. It seemed just as far off as the first howls. Once again, we hopped in the van and drove north. This time, our wolves wouldn't talk again. Instead, a single truck, tooling around the dirt roads on a joy ride, interrupted the silence and darkness. It made me realize just how load and obvious our vehicle certainly was, and how unlikely it was that we'd be able to gain ground on animals that had a vested interest in not being seen. We decided to call it a night, the echo of those distant howls still reverberating in my head, another voice that would surely call me back to this place some day down the road. 

¹ James H Hammill,  2013. "Wolf Recovery in Michigan" https://wolf.org/wolf-recovery-in-michigan/

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