(kind of serious) wolf hunting question

rafiki

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tl;dr do crying babies attract wolves?

story:
was talking with a buddy about our wives being "not thrilled" (to put it nicely) about multiple trips being planned for this fall. we both have kids and jokingly said we could bring the toddlers on a deer or elk hunt...
now, outside of 1,000 obvious reasons why that's a preposterous idea, imagining the inevitable crying/temper tantrums blowing out any game in the vicinity was among them.
HOWEVER, it did get me thinking about distress calls and how well an injured rabit etc works for varmint calling...does anyone have experience with kids in wolf territory? i would think a bunch of loud noises would scare everything away but could also see piquing a wolf's interest if they thought a tiny human was around.
to be absolutely clear...i'm not suggesting using a crying kid as a wolf call so let's flip the question around. in terms of safety, are you at more risk with predators (wolves) around if you're camping with little ones?
 
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I think you have posed a very valid question. The answer to your question is a maybe. A wolf could come to the sound of a crying baby, but would most likely be turned off by the human scent present. It may depend on how hungry the wolf is. Wolves have no problem attacking dogs so anything is possible, but IMO, highly unlikely it would get past the human scent to make contact.
 
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rafiki

rafiki

FNG
Joined
Feb 12, 2024
Messages
21
Location
America
I think you have posed a very valid question. The answer to your question is a maybe. A wolf could come to the sound of a crying baby, but would most likely be turned off by the human scent present. It may depend on how hungry the wolf is. Wolves have no problem attacking dogs so anything is possible, but IMO, highly unlikely it would get past the human scent to make contact.
that makes sense and i hadn't really considered the "why/how" (i.e. scent) of wolves avoiding humans. i appreciate the response. thank you!
 
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Using crying baby sounds with a real and live baby will scare the wolf away. Any veteran wolf knows that a human scent means a bright flash, a loud crack and a fellow wolf dead. To answer the first part of your question, I do NOT recommend using a live baby as a call for safety reasons. However, you could record your baby crying and play it from a speaker to attract wolves. Either way, you would need to find a way to mask your hunting party's scent. Using a blind could mask your scent and provide cover for your party. I have not been camping with little ones so I cannot answer the flipped side of the question.
 
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tl;dr do crying babies attract wolves?

story:
was talking with a buddy about our wives being "not thrilled" (to put it nicely) about multiple trips being planned for this fall. we both have kids and jokingly said we could bring the toddlers on a deer or elk hunt...
now, outside of 1,000 obvious reasons why that's a preposterous idea, imagining the inevitable crying/temper tantrums blowing out any game in the vicinity was among them.
HOWEVER, it did get me thinking about distress calls and how well an injured rabit etc works for varmint calling...does anyone have experience with kids in wolf territory? i would think a bunch of loud noises would scare everything away but could also see piquing a wolf's interest if they thought a tiny human was around.
to be absolutely clear...i'm not suggesting using a crying kid as a wolf call so let's flip the question around. in terms of safety, are you at more risk with predators (wolves) around if you're camping with little ones?
I feel like a wolf call should work pretty good on wolves once they are very predatorial for there area. Only thing is if there were other hunters a howl might piss them off if they thought itnwas a real wolf. Calf distress should work good too
 
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