Hunts On Outfitting Podcast

Inside BlueSky Outfitting: Remote Lodges, Waterfowl, And Wolf Management Across Alberta And The Northwest Territories

• Kenneth Marr • Season 2 • Episode 96

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Think you’ve hunted remote? Try flying 90 minutes past the last road into a world where the only planes you see are coming for you, the ice is six feet thick, and the silence makes your ears ring. We sat down with Kevin from Blue Sky Outfitting to unpack what it takes to guide both baited timber wolf hunts in Alberta and spot-and-stalk Arctic wolf hunts on the tundra, plus the grit behind running a fly-in lodge network that’s hundreds of air kilometers from the nearest town.

We trace Kevin’s path from dry-field waterfowl in the Peace River region to a full-time year-round operation pursuing moose, whitetail, black bear, wolves, muskox, and world-class lake trout. He explains how to choose and run a wolf bait the right way—reading sign, building daylight confidence, and avoiding the tiny noises that send wolves nocturnal. We get real on pack behavior, color phases, and why any wolf is a trophy when success demands hours of stillness and a mind that won’t wander. Then we head north of treeline where baiting is illegal and strategy pivots to glassing caribou, following tracks off the ice roads to the diamond mines, and taking quick shots from 50 to 250 yards when opportunity cracks open.

This conversation also leans into predator management without the drama. Wolves are built to kill; grizzlies hit calves hard; herds ebb and flow. Balance matters more than myths, and smart hunting is part of that balance. Kevin shares the cold-weather truths most folks learn the hard way—why oversized boots keep you from frostbite, how spare goggles save a day, and which calibers anchor wolves without ruining a mount. Along the way, he paints a picture of the barrenlands—pristine beaches with no footprints, caribou drifting across blue tundra, and wolverines tunneling under carcasses while wolves lounge nearby.

If you’re curious about ethical wolf hunting, extreme remoteness, or how to plan a serious northern adventure, this one delivers practical insight and honest stories from the field. Subscribe, share with a hunting buddy, and leave a quick review to help others find the show. Then tell us: would you take the baited sit or chase the ice-road stalk?

Check us out on Facebook Hunts On Outfitting, or myself Ken Marr. Reach out and Tell your hunting buddies about the podcast if you like it, Thanks!

SPEAKER_00:

All right, everybody, guys, gals, hunters and hunters. Thanks for tuning in to this week's podcast. We're fired up and happy to have you here as always. Welcome, welcome back. Um, this week on the podcast, I'm pretty excited. We're going to be talking to Kevin of Blue Sky Outfitting. Kevin's going to be talking to us about their operation as a whole. Which they're hunting in Alberta, they're hunting in Northwest territories, they're hunting for ducks, geese, they're hunting for uh big white-tailed deer and moose, but specifically they hunt timber wolves and arctic wolves in both areas, and he's gonna be talking to us about that. I mean, you've got to think of coyotes. They've got nothing on these wolves. It's really interesting. They've got a big operation, they've been in business for well over 20 years. And uh well, I don't want to say anymore. I'll let Kevin do that. So I think that's fun quite interesting and enjoy. And I've also got a quick story for you guys about one of my favorite uh dog food places. So that a uh two weekends ago with a friend of mine at his hunting camp. We had the Beagles Friends and Rabbits. The Beagles look really good. I said it's uh it's a combination of three things lots of exercise, love and affection, and of course, and dog food. And he used to have a dog. And then um that one passed on. He's getting a new dog, he's getting a puppy by now. And uh he's like noteshook must be expensive. I said what do you think is expensive? He's like, well, the stuff that I used to get was over$100 a bag. So the stuff of the dog food that he got. Uh it's$55 a bag. You couldn't believe it. I said it's good quality stuff, and I can't believe it that the dog food brands are selling it for as much as they are. That's you know, I don't think it's quite the same. Great with all natural ingredients locally sourced. And they cut up the middle name. You buy it from a reseller, not these great big box stores, you type in your address online on their website. They're gonna show you in North America who sells it near you, you contact them, good to go. But all right, let's talk to Kevin and uh find out more about hunting. Oh, and if you're looking to get a hold of us to maybe come on the podcast or suggest somebody for it or just reach out to me, you can email me at hunt on outfitting at gmail.com or you can find us on Facebook, HuntsOnOutfitting, or find myself on there, Kevin Mara. Feel free to reach out. Some of you guys have been. It's been great talking with you from all over. So uh yeah, Kevin, thanks uh thanks for getting back to me. You know, after seeing on Facebook and stuff your posts on the wolf hunting, and I was like, boy, that looks interesting, and I know it's uh kind of getting the hot time of year for it. Uh but before we get started, um could you tell us just a little bit about yourself and then you know we'll kind of get into uh I know you guys have a big operation that you guys uh that you've been at for uh since 2000, is it?

SPEAKER_03:

Yes, since 2000. We've had we started Blue Sky Ofitting in McClendon, Alberta, which is in the heart of the Peace River region in the year 2000. So this is our 25th year of business. Wow. Next year we'll be our 26th for Alberta. And we've owned a uh fishing hunting resort in the Northwest Territories since 2012. So we've been 14 years in the in the Northwest Territories as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow. So that's uh that's fly-in only, too, is it in the Northwest?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah Yeah, it's that's correct. It's uh fly-in fishing lodge. You can't get any boats or anything near us. The closest community or airport is 400 air kilometers away. Wow. So we're we're way up there.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I gotta ask, how do you go about, I mean, how does someone go about finding uh uh a spot like that so remote?

SPEAKER_03:

We're just looking for a spot. We were looking for another business, and we wanted something that I didn't want any we wanted another fishing lodge, is what we wanted to buy just to have another augment the other business that we have in Alberta for time-wise. But we did not want to have a resort that was drivable to have other people on the water. We wanted to have the lake to ourselves. We did not want to have another lodge on the lake. We wanted to be the only people on the water, period. No communities, no other buildings, no other lodges or anything. So that eliminated a lot of lakes actually for us looking at them just because of those conditions. And then uh we just started looking for them and we found this this lodge up for sale. So we went and had a look at it, and it met everything that we wanted to have. It checked all the boxes, and so we bought it.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow, yeah. I mean, and and when people come out too, just knowing that what you just told me about how remote it is and everything, I mean, that that's the experience in and of itself, I'm sure, is just being most people have probably never been that remote in their entire life and never will be in their entire life, yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, yeah, correct. We're about uh it depending on which plane we use, we're about a 90-minute to a two-hour plane ride, like whole plane, yeah, to the lodge. And so, and then you're at the lodge for the for the week. So it's pretty like you said, we're very remote. Most people have never been that remote before. Uh most people they're kind of they're very happy to do it. Yeah, and then once the plane leaves, they realize, like, hey, we're we are way back here. There is nobody else. Yeah, this is it. Like, it's just it's just us here, and that's it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah, it's it's for some it would be maybe a comforting feeling, kind of neat. For others, uh, you know, people coming from the cities or the suburbs, it's probably a little intimidating.

SPEAKER_03:

It can be intimidating for people who are not used to being by themselves or not having a whole bunch of a whole bunch of people around them in that regard. So it is a bit unnerving for some people that way. But for the adventure person, the person that likes the outdoors, likes wilderness, wild spaces, that type of stuff, it is uh very, very cool to be at. It is amazing. Yeah, absolutely. There's nobody there. We don't see anything, it's just us.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you know, you you you wouldn't hear any traffic or trains or anything like that off the case.

SPEAKER_03:

No, there's no traffic or trains. We don't see planes. If we see a plane, they're coming to us. Yeah. It's just because there's we're so far out of the we're so far out of yellow knife that nobody travels up our way at all by aircraft. So if we do see an aircraft, they're usually coming to our place.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow, that's uh yeah, that's that's really neat. And then so your your Alberta operations. So did you guys first start uh with waterfowl? Is that what got you into the guiding business?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, that's what got us into the guiding business was waterfowl. We live in a town called McClellan, Alberta, in the heart of the peace country. We're actually our town is known for uh birds, we're bird capital Canada. Wow. So we host about a quarter million uh waterfowl birds in September and October on a daily basis. We always have new birds coming in and birds leaving you know to go south. So they're not always here at the same time. But we on any given day we have about a quarter million birds in the area. So it's tremendous waterfowl hunting in that regard for dry field hunting. So we did that for probably twenty, twenty-one years, twenty-two years. Did it for a long, long time.

SPEAKER_00:

And then uh and then you guys from there you branched off uh into the big game hunting?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, we branched off into the big game hunting. So we do moose, whitetail, wood bison, black bear, timber wolves in Alberta. And then in the Northwest Territories we do barren ground muskox, black bears, Arctic wolves, wolverine. Wow, and then lake trout fishing and arctic grailing, wildlife viewing, northern lights viewing, photography trips, canoe trips.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so uh you've got a really full plate, probably not a lot of downtime for you.

SPEAKER_03:

No. No. It's it's we are this is what we do. We're full-time, we're full-time outfitters. So between the Alberta operation and the Northwest Territory operation, this is all we do 12 months a year. We're not a part-time. There's a lot of outfitters in Canada that are part-time outfitters that have full-time jobs. Yeah. And they take holidays and they do this for as a gig for you know to make extra money, which is great. But we are one of the few ones that actually are full-time. This is all we do year round.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, no, that's great. You know, it's very blessed to be able to do that and just kind of every day's uh, you know, you're out in the woods and and out on the water and just um it must be great.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, it is great. It's truly amazing to get this to do this as a as a job or as a profession or as a business. It's really cool. It's good for the family. My family gets to see lots of sites that a lot of people don't get to see. My grandchildren, they've been to the my grandson's eleven years old this year, and he's been to the lodge eight times already. He spent he's been there eight times and he spent six summers at the lodge.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow. Yeah. What a great way to grow up.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, what a great way to grow up as a young child to see wildlife in nature and fishing from the shore. And it's just it's really cool. It's a really cool experience for the grandkids.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yeah, just seeing the you know the beauties of what Canada has to offer.

SPEAKER_03:

Has to offer, yeah. In a very remote area. And it teaches them to be self-reliant. You know, if something breaks, you gotta fix it.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

If you don't fix it and you need to have somebody come in, it's it's a ten thousand dollar plane to have a plane come in if you're if you need to fix something.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

So you need to be able to fix it yourself. Yes. With what you have on hand.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah. A lot of Mickey Mouse and uh self-reliance.

SPEAKER_03:

It's just self-reliance. You need uh you need to have tools on on on site, you need to have parts on site, and you need to know how to do everything that's from A to Z all the way through.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. Um, so blue sky outfitting. I've I've got a an idea, but how did you guys come up with uh with the name?

SPEAKER_03:

With blue sky outfitting, actually, my wife was going to college in in Everton, taking a business course there, and uh one of the core one of the courses that they were doing was on marketing. And one of the marketing courses was on why would you call a name ABC? Why do you call it Nike? Why do you call it Adidas? Why do you call it Cabellus? And so at that time they had to work into groups and do group projects. And so I suggested to my wife that we had just started this business up and we didn't have a name for it. Why don't we have your group or your class take this as a project and and figure a name out for our company and what would be best for the company as a company name and why it would be best. And so that she took that to the teacher and the teacher thought that was a great idea. So instead of doing a bunch of individual projects, they did a whole class project with our business a hundred percent. And so they come down to three names. Blue Sky Outfitting was one of them. And so we chose the Blue Sky Outfitting. And I can't remember the exact reasons offhand because it's been 25 plus years, 26 years since we named it. But that's how it was named. It was named at the uh Grant Me Food in College in Emmetton with my wife in a business course.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, Kevin, when I asked that question, I was not expecting that answer, so that's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, that's how it was named. So it wasn't us for say saying we're gonna call it Blue Sky or we're gonna call it ABC. It's like somebody else as a group of students in a business class decided that this would be the best based on these merits all the way through. For and that was for the internet, that was for Google searches, that was for all kinds of metrics that they put into it.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

That's really neat. No, I wasn't expecting that answer. That's uh yeah, that's very cool. Um, so you guys hunt for a lot of different animals. The muskox, you know, some time too would like to learn more about because that sounds really neat. Um, but for this podcast here, I'm really interested in talking about the wolves. So you guys do Arctic wolves uh in the Northwest, right? And then you guys do the Timberwolves in Alberta.

SPEAKER_03:

Yes, that's correct. I was gonna say we do the timber wolves in Alberta, that's a baited hunt. Yep. And then we do the wolf hunting in the Northwest Territories. So we can hunt timber wolves and Arctic wolves up there because our area is so big. So our unit that we hunt in that we're allocated to hunt in in the Northwest Territory is called Unit R and Unit U. And between those two units, it's bigger than 37 states per size-wise. Wow.

unknown:

Wow.

SPEAKER_03:

So that's the that's the size of it. So when you put it in compared comparison to Alberta, we have 40% of the land mass in Alberta in our in our zone.

SPEAKER_00:

That's incredible. Wow.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, so so as there's lots of areas, tremendous amount of areas we'll never see. Yeah. Just because it's so it's so wild in wilderness that the only way you see it is by float planes or by you know wheel planes, because there is no roads. There, there's no roads at all up here. So everywhere you go, the only way you get there is by plane. The only way you have materials come in is by by float plane or by a bush plane. That is the only way anything comes in at all or goes out.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow, that's uh that's amazing. You know, and it's really awesome, uh, I find anyways, and amazing to hear uh that there is that much untouched wilderness left. Because I mean you see the urban sprawl and this and that, you're wondering like, boy, is there much wild you know land left? But hearing that, that's that's really great to hear that there still is such vast amounts of land left.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, you leave you leave Yellowland flying to Elmer Lake Lodge, to our lodge there.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

And within 15 minutes of flying, there's no more buildings or 10 minutes of flying. There's no buildings, there's no more houses, there's no more roads. You're past the outer area of Yellow Length. And so for the next hour and a half, hour and forty, fifty minutes, depending on the flight, which plane you're flying in, whether it be a single otter, a twin otter, or a caravan, it you see absolutely nothing. There is nothing all the way up. It's just emptiness. And so you leave the boreal forest and you transition through going through the boreal forest into the tundra. And then it's just all all tundra all the way to you get to Elmer.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's uh that's really neat. So um so with the wolves, I guess we could start in Alberta with those wolves there. Could you tell us a little bit about this the timber wolf species itself, you know, the size and like the weight of them, the height?

SPEAKER_03:

Most of the wolves, most of the wolves, I don't know really what they are for height wise. They're just a wolf in that regard, to be honest.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Most of the wolves aren't much more than 110, 120 pounds.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay.

SPEAKER_03:

If a wolf is eaten it it yeah, they look bigger, but they're not really that much bigger. If a wolf is eaten a deer or a moose, you know, and had a big feud, it's got a full tummy of protein in it, then he might add twenty or thirty pounds because of his gut. Okay. But his actual weight is not that, it's just he's got a real full gut. So most of our wolves are hundred, hundred and ten pounds. 120 being a big wolf in that sense that we shoot that our clients shoot here. It's all a baited hunt over bait. So you sit over you sit in the blind from dark to dark and you need to be actively watching and looking because a wolf can come in and only be there for a minute or two, mm-hmm, or a wolf can come in and spend two or three hours there. But if you're not actively watching, then you can easily miss a wolf coming into the bait or skirting the edge of the bait, you know, where you can visually see it. So it's it's a it's a huge mental game, you know, to try and stay actively looking and watching for them on the baits.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Um is it how hard is it to uh I mean well, I guess how do you choose a spot to bait, first of all? How would that go?

SPEAKER_03:

Sign. We choose, I choose by sign. So we have areas that we have lots of tracks. I've lived here for 25 years, so we have a good idea where the wolves where the wolves are moving through. So we base it on where we have lots of sign, and then we just set up the baits where we have good shooting opportunities. Sometimes the baits are hit right away, sometimes the beats take a few weeks to hit, depending on the wolf cycling through. Once they find it, they'll hang around and come back more often than not, but not always. And uh and then sometimes they only come at nighttime. You need daytime activity, so they need to feel safe, secure. It needs to have enough cover or open enough that you can shoot, but enough cover close by that the wolves feel comfortable coming out in the open area that they travel through. So then they need to feel, you know, that they can travel and move in and out of it in uh in their mind easily and safely.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. Yeah, well I was kind of wondering if you'd compare it a little bit to setting up uh a black bear bait.

SPEAKER_03:

No, yes and no. Not really not really, no. The bears beat easier. The black bear baits easy Yeah, bears are way easier. You pick a spot for our and we do black bear hunting here, we do baited hunts here. I pick a spot where I want to put a hunter. There's lots of bears here in Alberta, in northern Alberta. I pick a spot, I need, um we're gonna put a spot here, we're gonna put a uh uh stand here or a ground line here, and we're gonna put a bear bait here. You put out your bait, you leave it, and usually within a week or two you've got your baits are hit, and within another week or two you have all kinds of activity on a regular basis.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

And and they'll come daytime and nighttime all the time. The bigger boars during the rut, they'll come later in the evening or first late in the morning sometimes. Like you can shoot them first thing in the morning, or a lot of times they're there after dark, after legal light. So and you need to be quiet with them. They know you're there, but you just need to be quiet with them.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah, no, I wasn't shooting.

SPEAKER_03:

Baiting a wolf is w baiting a wolf is a lot harder to be consistent than than a bear is. It's like night and day difference. Wolf is the hardest big game animal to kill in North America. And a lot of people kill a wolf as a byproduct of a hunt. So they do a moose hunt, a deer hunt, an elk hunt, a muscock hunt, whatever the hunt is, in an area that has wolves and they have a wolf license and they're out looking for their target animal, they see a wolf and they have an opportunity to shoot the wolf. If you're actually physically hunting wolves, that's your target species. It's a load, that's a uh a really, really hard animal, probably one of the hardest in North America to hunt consistently and be killing consistently compared to any other animal.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, I know um I mean the eastern coyotes here even trying to hunt them and call them and all that. I mean, they are just so smart and cunning and cautious. And I wolves, I mean, compared to coyotes, would they be just that, that, and so much more?

SPEAKER_03:

Yep, that's exactly right. And so they're a very, very hard predator. They're very they hear well, they see well, they smell well. Uh if they're not comfortable, they won't come in. I don't need to eat today, I can eat four days from now. I'm happy. I'll just you know, I get hungry all the time, and I'm co totally comfortable being hungry, so I can just sit here and watch the bait or watch whatever for you know. The next two or three days, I'm just happy. I don't need to be there. And if anything spooks, and then just they just leave. Yeah. So it's totally different than the deer hunting or the bear hunting in that regard. And um, they're an apex predator. They need to eat all the time. But if they're not comfortable where they're at, then they'll just go look elsewhere.

SPEAKER_00:

So do the wolves uh are they normally in packs, or like sometimes you see a pack, sometimes you see singles. What's the cause for that?

SPEAKER_03:

Normally, normally you see packs. Normally your packs might be, you know, you might be six, eight animals or something like that. It might be only four animals. Sometimes you get really large packs of 10, 12, or 15 animals or something like that. But a lot of times it's just it's a small pack, two, three, four, five animals, and then you'll have singles come in. And if you have a signal come into a bait or something like that, or you see a signal, quite often there's other animals there. You you're just not seeing them. They've come out in the open. And uh we had a guy shoot, we had a uh moose hunter shoot a w a wolf the other day with us. He shot a black wolf, just like a week ago or 10 days ago, whatever it was, just at the end of November. And uh and so he's sitting in this in his uh stand and waiting. A wolf comes out right underneath the right underneath the stand and uh it runs out like 30, 40 yards in front of it, he shoots it and uh lets us know. We go out and we pick him up, pick the wolf up. He's all excited, we're excited. And I'm like, Did you hear any other wolves? And he's like, No, this is the only one. So we turn around, went back into the bush to where the wolf came out, went in like a hundred yards or so, and there's wolf tracks all through there. So there were other wolves that were there. He was the first one out in the opening that the hunter saw, so he shot it. Excellent, awesome, got a nice beautiful black wolf. But if he'd have waited a few more minutes, that other the black wolf that came out might have left, got scared, whatever, or got too far out of range to shoot. But he also could have had maybe more wolves come in, but they might not have come in at the tree stand or his blind. They might have come in, you know, left or right of his blind, 100 yards or 300 yards, wherever, but there was more wolves right behind him in the stand. He just didn't see them, and that's very typical.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. Huh. Yeah, I was wondering that because sometimes you see on uh people's trail camps and stuff, it's a picture of one or it's a picture of, you know, the pack, but okay, yeah, that makes sense.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

So when you you know when you have any wolf's a great wolf, any wolf is a great wolf, uh is a trophy wolf in in my mind, that's how I view it. So you don't be don't be picking wolves or be picky. If you see a wolf and and you have an opportunity to shoot the wolf, then uh then do it as uh then just go ahead and shoot it. Don't worry about trying to say, okay, and I'm gonna start shopping for a wolf. No, take your first wolf, shoot your first wolf.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. Okay. Um so what you were saying about that that black one there. Are there uh do you like color phase wolves? I mean, how common is it to have an all-black wolf, or are they more almost?

SPEAKER_03:

They're not as common as uh our most common is salt and pepper, so like brown, white, brown and gray, just like an off-color, like a mixed multicolor. That's very typical. We see a few white ones in Alberta, but not a whole lot, and we see a few black ones, but not a whole lot. So salt and pepper is the most common color all the way through for Alberta. Um and we shoot a few black ones up in the Arctic as well. We do see some black ones in the Arctic, and and we see a lot of white, white ones in the Arctic as well.

SPEAKER_00:

And it's the same species.

SPEAKER_03:

It's uh well they're the same species. They're they're they're gray wolves, but it's a different subspecies, so they're the tundra wolves. So here they're here they're the timber wolves, and then the southern northwest territories in the boreal forest, yellow bank area, we'll say for an example, Forest Math area, all through that area, hay river, that's all that's all timber wolves. But when you get onto the tundra, they're tundra wolves. Okay. Still gray wolves, just a different subspecies.

SPEAKER_00:

So uh I don't know why it is, but people, I mean, you see them on t-shirts and things like that, and on uh decorations, the wolf. People have this wolf is like such a a great animal, and uh they are, but I mean, how important is it to manage these apex predators?

SPEAKER_03:

Man is man has interrupted every animal on the planet, every insect, every fish. So we manage all kinds of animals for all kinds of reasons. We need to manage predators as well. It's no different. We manage deer, we manage grasshoppers, we manage flies, we manage the air, we manage rain, we manage snow. We just need to manage predators. No different. We need predators on the landscape, it's part of the landscape, it's part of nature, it's part of God's way. We need animals there like predators, but we need to manage the predators. We don't want to kill every wolf and have them all waved off 100%, or every coyote, absolutely not, but we do need to manage them.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, well, how uh it I you hear I've I have friends in the states and all that talking about it where the wolves have gotten out of hand in some areas, and it it's it's devastating the damage that they've done to the deer and uh elk population.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, in a lot of areas in the states they never had wolves before. Well, they had wolves like a hundred years or two hundred years ago, and then the population is really growing. Uh urbanites have grown a lot, and so therefore the wolves are no longer in that landscape, and then somebody decides in the government that we should bring them back, and they bring them back. They don't have them, so they import them from other parts of the United States or Canada or Alberta. Yeah. And uh they put them there, and the animals that are there, whether it be deer, moose, elk, whatever it is, other kites, they're not used to seeing those on the landscape, and so they don't know what it is. So a prime example is like Yellowstone. They took Alberta wolves from Alberta and put them in Yellowstone. Those elk down there had never seen a wolf. And so they just stood there when these when these wolves come running up to them to kill them, they'd never seen a wolf before. So they just devastated the elk are there. But that's what fish and wildlife wanted in that regard. They wanted to reduce, reduce the elk population in a natural way and not have hunters in there, which is crazy. And so they brought predators in. The elk were not used to those predators, same as the bison there and the moose. And those wolves went to town and they killed all kinds of animals down there. Greatly reduced the younger population as an overall average, and uh, and now you have more feed, you have more grass, you have more trees, you have more shrubs, so the whole landscape is changing because of the predator-prey relationship.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_03:

Now those animals are scared of the wolves, they know what they are, the offspring know what they are, and so they're always nervous of them now. So you need a balance. You can't have the pendulum swing all the way one way or all the way the other way. We need to kind of be in the balance. We need to be like a like a like an ocean wave or a lake wave. We don't need huge, huge things. We just need little swings.

SPEAKER_00:

Steady.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, just steady all the way through. So we need to manage them like any other thing we manage that man's managed. So man has touched everything. Well, it doesn't matter what it is. We manage trees, we manage agriculture, we manage fruit, we manage everything. Predators are no different.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean the wolves, they seem like uh they're just such killing machines, would you agree?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, they are a killing machine, but that's how God designed them.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

That's it's just there's nothing wrong with that. That's just how God designed them. Their whole purpose, like us, we eat every day. If you don't eat, you die. It's no different. If you don't eat, you die. So you're either eating something or something's eaten you. Right. It's no different. Period. And so it doesn't matter whether it's a bear or or a wasp, you know, like or or ants, you know. Ants eat other ants all the time. It's like it's no different. It's just a different scale of it, different size of it. It's easier to see. More bleeding hearts in one one area than in the other area.

unknown:

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

It's all the same. It's it's all the same. Doesn't matter what you look like as an animal or a bug or a bird or a fish, it's it's all the same all the way through in that sense. It's just some people have sensitive, you know, made it, oh my god, the wolf is a special animal. Well, all animals are special. None of them are are different. They're all special. But you just need to manage them.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. I I see yeah, like I said, I just see the effects and the states and stuff of guys saying, yeah, just how uh devastating the wolves are. It's like yeah, it's good, uh really good to manage them, but they're just so uh sly and cunning that it's uh it it does seem difficult. So that's why they are such a coveted trophy, I guess you could say.

SPEAKER_03:

You know, in a lot of areas, you know, in Alberta we run 60-65% success rate on on shooting wolves that are baited hunts, and that's that's high. You know, some years we only run 50%. And it's because a lot of people have you have to sit all the time, hours and hours and hours with nothing showing up, and then all of a sudden something shows up. But at the same token, you might have you know the wolves on the trail camera all the way along. Somebody goes in there, they're making noise in the blind, they're sneezing, they're coughing, they're tapping, you know, they're nervous and they're tapp the floor all the time because they just they're tappers or anything could be like that. And so the wolves hear that. That's not a normal sound to that area because that's where they live, that's their bedroom. And so they just avoid it. Or they maybe they come at nighttime when it's dark and there's no those noises aren't there. So they are a very difficult big game animal to harvest. And anybody can, you know, anybody in Canada easily can go in any province or you know, any province, you can go and shoot a white-tailed deer in one day.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

It might not be a 180 buck, but you can go out and shoot a small buck or a doe any day in one day in anywhere in North in Canada. Easy. Now try and go and get try and go and get a wolf in one day. It's way difficult, way more difficult.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

They're not as many, they're not everywhere, they hide well, they're quiet. Unless they're talking, they're not making noise, you don't even know they're there. They're very quiet, so you have to be in their like you know, in their area all the time in order to figure them out. And so it's like bears, you know, like there's you can't hear a bear. You go into the bush and there's all kinds of bears in the bush, you don't see a lot. Put a bait out, and you'll have ten bears on the bait in a couple weeks. There's bears everywhere. Yeah. But and so they all need to be managed in that regard.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so and then in the Northwest Territories, too, so how how do those wolf hunts compare to the one in uh in Alberta?

SPEAKER_03:

In Alberta, we're baited hunts in the Northwest Territories. We hunt them by visually spotting stalking them. Uh, you can't bait in the Northwest Territories. It's illegal to bait. And so we hunt the ice roads. We use the they have a huge ice road system for the diamond mines. Okay. So we hunt the ice roads or we hunt at our lodges. We have five lodges, by the way. We don't just have one. We have five lodges. So then we'll stay at our lodges or different lodges, depending on what we have for wildlife in the area, and we'll hunt from the ice road or from the lodges. And the wolves on the tundra, they're caribou wolves. So their main target food year-round is caribou. And they need about 28 to 30 caribou to survive. They need about 35, 36 caribou a year to thrive. So a surviving wolf is a sick wolf. They're not having babies as much and not breeding as much. A thriving wolf at 35, 36 caribou, they're having lots of families. They're they're healthy, they're healthy animals as an animal itself. And so they can take a lot of, they can take a lot of caribou down. They eat they eat uh Arctic hair, they'll eat muscox, they'll eat a moose, you know, they'll eat the six-six, which is like an arctic ground squirrel, but their main food is is caribou. And so ten ten wolves will say we'll take 360, 370 caribou a year. Wow, that's a good thing. So they take a big lot. It is a lot, but one wolf needs, you know, to thrive needs 30, you know, so we'll say 35 caribou. Yeah. Yeah. One wolf to thrive, not to survive. You can survive. You can just be, I'm hungry a little bit all the time, but I'm okay, or I'm actually feeling really good. I'm I'm feeling my week today. I'm, you know, I want to play and run and jump and just enjoy my life because I'm thriving. So a thriving wolf needs that many. And they're a healthy wolf then, they're not a sick wolf. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So I mean, if the wolf population isn't uh again managed there, I mean, you definitely could put a herding on the caribou.

SPEAKER_03:

Definitely put a herding on the caribou, especially if the caribou numbers are down a little bit. The other ones that put a big herding on the caribou in in that regard are bears. They put a huge herd on caribou and muskok calves. It's like the grizzly bears up there and the black bears, they just the black bears in the southern part. Uh, but in the northern part, like where the caribou and the muskox are, grizzly bears, uh, they take out a huge amount of calves every springtime in the first six, eight weeks.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow, yeah. Yeah, they've got they've got teeth coming from all ends.

SPEAKER_03:

Yes, that's exactly right. And they're at the bottom end of the food chain. You know, everything above them eats them. And you know, like everything above them eats them. So wolverines are trying to eat them, foxes will eat them, they're not gonna kill them, but they're trying to eat them. Wolves are gonna eat them, bears are gonna eat them. So everything around them is trying to eat them, they're at the bottom of the food chain.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

So that's that food, but they need that food chain if for everything else to survive.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. So here's a question, then if they uh if you've got some wolves on a kill and they're eating it and a wolverine comes along, or vice versa, how how's the wolverine gonna fare? Because I I've heard they are just wild.

SPEAKER_03:

They're wild, so if they can get some meat and and and share it, and some wolves will share, some wolves won't. Some people, you know, it's just they're no different like people. Some guys easy going, yeah, there's lots of food, come eat. The next guy's like, no, I'm not sharing nothing with you. I don't care who you are. Everybody's got a personality as a person. Every wolf and every wolverine's got a personality. Everybody's different. They're all similar, but different. So you can I've seen wolves and wolverine eat off the same caribou piles and and tolerate each other within you know 20, 30 yards. And I've seen wolves chase the wolverine away from the from the caribou, and I've seen wolverine chase the wolves away. So it's every it's each one's its own personality. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So so the Wolverine will uh it will, you know, challenge them.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh yeah, definitely will challenge them. Yep, definitely will challenge them. And most of the wolves will sit and eat on top of the ice, like on top of the snow, they'll eat the caribou on top. Most wolverines will actually dig down in a snow bank or in a snow, like underneath the caribou, and they'll actually go underneath the caribou and they'll chew from the inside from on so the so you can have a caribou or a musk ox on the ice up there, dead, like an animal that's dead, or a gut pile or like a carcass pile from First Nations, and not see anything on it, but there is quite often there could be a wolf or a fox that is actually in a hole underneath it, eating it from underneath, and you don't see it unless you physically go and look for holes, go up and look for tracks to see if there's any fresh tracks. So they do that lots.

SPEAKER_00:

That's interesting, yeah. So uh how hard is it in the in out in the tundra when you guys are kind of spot and stalking the uh those Arctic wolves?

SPEAKER_03:

It can be hard, it can be it can be long scoodoo rides some days, some days it's not as bad. Every day is different. But uh we're running 100% opportunity on the Arctic wolves up there as far as getting a shot on them. You need to be able to shoot relatively quickly and you need to be able to shoot you know two or three hundred yards. Some shots are only 50 yards, but you know, anywhere from 100 to 250 yards. Um anywhere you have caribou as a rule, you have wolves. So the wolves will be right with the caribou. They'll be on the outside edge. So if you got 100 caribou on a lake or on a rocky, on a rocky hill or you know, a side of a hill or whatever, if you start glassing around the around the caribou, quite often you'll find wolves laying down somewhere resting. If you circle the caribou and look at and look for wolf tracks and don't see wolf tracks, then you just drive away from the caribou where they've come from, and the wolves will be following those caribou tracks at some point. You might go a mile, you might go five, you might go ten, you might go twenty miles before you run into wolves. But the wolves will be following the caribou because that's what they eat. That's their food.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_03:

So they have a symbiotic relationship all the time. Wherever there's caribou, there's wolves. Wherever there's wolves, you'll find caribou.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so they're yeah, they're always uh they're always near the restaurant.

SPEAKER_03:

They're always they're always near the restaurant, they're always together. Yep. They're always they're always in the same area. And we've seen lots of wolves lots of times just bed right down in a caribou herd, and the caribou aren't bothered by the wolves there because the wolves aren't hungry.

SPEAKER_02:

Really?

SPEAKER_03:

So they're not, they just they feed around them within a hundred yards or eighty yards, and they're not nervous at all. They they don't look nervous, they don't act nervous. And then all of a sudden one of the wolves will jump up and it's like, okay, I'm hungry. And he'll chase and a whole bunch of caribou will run, and he'll grab one caribou, or a bunch of wolves will grab a caribou, and they'll stop and they get the caribou down and kill it, and the rest of caribou just stop. They just continue feeding, go on their days. It's like, okay, I'm good.

SPEAKER_01:

That's just Mother Nature. Yeah. Wow.

SPEAKER_03:

That's because they live with them all the time. They don't live with them just like one month a year. This is a year-round thing for them. This is their life cycle, their whole life cycle is this way.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow. That's uh yeah, that's that's a different kind of relationship, but uh it makes sense, yeah. But it's wow.

SPEAKER_03:

You know, like in the summertime, we see lots of caribou up at the lodge while we're fishing or hunting muskox. And so if we see one spot, it's like one of my guys or me or whoever, uh even at the lodge, we see caribou at the lodge all the time. So if we see a group of caribou come by like 80, 90 caribou in one area, go over one ridge or you know, go along a bank or whatever, across the meadow. It's like if you watch that in the next 24 hours, just sit there. If you were to stay at that spot and just watch that general area, you will see wolves within, usually within 24 hours. Because the caribou move through, the wolves will be behind them.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_03:

But they might not be right on them, they might be, you know, they might be a mile, they might be five miles, they might be ten miles, they might be hungry, they might not be hungry, they might have already killed a caribou that day. Uh the day you know, we see a hundred caribou and the caribou are feeding, they look happy, but a mile behind them somewhere in a in a drawer or in a rocky area, they got a dead caribou that they killed that they're eating it. So they're not hungry right now because they're eating it. And so, but in a day or two, that group of wolves is gonna need another caribou to eat. And so as a group, and so they'll just start continuing following those caribou. So you'll see them within usually sometimes 48 hours, but quite often 24 hours, you'll see you'll see a wolf.

SPEAKER_00:

Just yeah, just they're always together. Yep. Yeah, it's interesting. Um so so someone books a hunt with you, and uh, and then they ask, what are you recommending for guns, ammunition? What are some other things that they would bring?

SPEAKER_03:

Uh for for the guns wise, I tell everybody uh we can use a two two three, but I like a two forty three, six point five, a two seventy, uh three or eight, uh anything along. That caliber. Most of our shots are under 250 yards, 200 yards. Some are closer, some are a little further away, but most times they're not. Winter clothing, you need really good winter you need really good winter clothing gear. The biggest thing is to make sure your boots, most guys who aren't used to winter hunting, you need to make sure your boots have lots of airspace in them so your feet aren't touching anything at all. Otherwise, you can get a frost, you can get a frost spot on your foot, you can get frostbite because if your outside of your foot is touching the rubber on the outside of your boot, then that cold spot will go right through and you can get frostbite on it quite easy. And so you need good gear, you need warm gear, and you need multiple layers.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

You need extra, you know, extra gloves and extra extra tubes and extra baklavas, and you need a couple pairs of snowmobile goggles because they'll frost up easy on you, so you need to be able to switch goggles out.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I'm sure some people uh yeah, I never thought of the boot thing. Um I've been in pretty cold weather, but uh yeah, that's uh that's a good point.

SPEAKER_03:

I wear a size eight shoe. That's my shoe year-round. Yeah. And I have a size 11, I have size 11 and size 12 winter boots.

SPEAKER_00:

Really? Huh.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. And so my feet flop, they're horrible to walk in. They're not designed to walk a long distance. Yeah. It's not the most comfortable at all. But most winter expeditions, you're not walking very far as rural. And normally you're not walking miles and miles like we do in the fall time. And so so therefore it works well that way. But if you have airspace in your boots and so your feet aren't touching the outside edges, like on the bottom touches on your felts, but on the outside edges, as long as they're not touching the boots and you got airspace, then you'll most times your feet will always be warm. Your feet stay really warm. But as soon as you get a little bit of a tight boot at all, or you put an extra pair of socks on, my boots are a little tight, you're gonna have a cold spot. It might be your big toe, might be a little toe, might be the back of your heel or your ankle bone. You're gonna have a cold spot, guarantee it. And that cold spot's gonna be like the size of a dime, and it's just gonna come right through that little dime spot, and you're gonna have frostbite on that, or frost nip on that spot.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh wow, yeah, just something to be uh to be mindful of.

SPEAKER_03:

Yep. And we can be, you know, sometimes we can be out on the skidoo for four or five, six hours. Just it just depends. Sometimes we you know we only go a mile or two on the skidoos, and we can get wolves. Sometimes we go 40 miles. It's never the same. Every day is different. Similar but different.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. How well how tough are the wolves like shoot shooting them wise? I mean, because you're saying you can use a 223, but use a little bigger. I mean, can they can they really take quite a hit or no?

SPEAKER_03:

If you if you hit them where you're supposed to hit them, if you lung hit them, they don't go far at all. They're done right away. Okay. If you're marginally hit them or a bad shot, then yeah, like anyhow, they're gonna run, you know. And so use enough bullet, that's what tax dummers are for. Yeah. That's what they do. They fix things. Yeah. And so don't worry about the hole, because that's what they do. They fix it. That's their job. Right.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

And so you need to make sure that it's yeah, and we need to make sure that it's down. And so, you know, we shoot a lot of wolves with a 243 90 grain that works really, really well. Uh, it just explodes on the inside, and the wolves don't go anywhere. But you know, we've had guys shoot them with 375s, 338s, everything in it. Oh wow. I don't care what size of gun it is, I don't care what size of gun it is. I just want one that goes boom. Yeah. You need to be able to hit it, yeah, and the taxogramists will fix it.

SPEAKER_00:

That's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

And so you don't even know it's been you don't even know it's been shot in that sense.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

With a good taxogramist, and we have all kinds of good taxonomists all across Canada. So any good taxonomist can fix it up, and it doesn't matter whether it's a pelt or a hide or you know, for a throw rug, or if you're doing a live mount or a shoulder mount with your wolf, whatever you're doing, they can definitely fix it up.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. That's what they that's what they make the big bucks. That's what they're that's what they do.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. That's their that's their yeah, that's their job. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So yeah, um, well, I mean, this has been really interesting, Kevin, uh, talking to you about this and learning so much about it. Is there anything more with the wolves uh that you don't think we we covered?

SPEAKER_03:

No, I think that's about it. It's a it's a it's it's uh a very successful hunt. It's a lot of fun. It can be very cold, I'm not gonna deny it. Uh driving up the ice road is amazing because as we go up the ice road to where the diamond mines are. One of our lodges is only 10 kilometers from one of the diamond mines, so you can see the diamond mines from it. So it's pretty cool to be up there on that type of road and see that. And it's the same thing as flying, you know. Uh leaving Yellowknife, you can be 10, 12 hours to get up on the on the tundra. And there's other trucks up there that are hole in because that's what it's there for. So you have more, you have traffic on the road all the time. But there's a lot of places up there, and there's a lot of times that you don't see hardly any traffic. Uh we do ice fishing as well at nighttime, so uh you know you can be dark by six, seven at night, depending on when you're coming. And so we punch holes in the ice and have an ice hut up there and do lake trout fishing as well. Yeah, that's most of the ice is between sixty and seventy inches thick.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh wow, yeah. Yeah, so it's uh perfect for that. That'd be great. What what are you guys uh catching mainly? What's on those lakes?

SPEAKER_03:

Lake trout. Main and mainly lake trout, yeah. Yeah, yeah, mainly lake trout, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so uh what's the so blue sky outfitting, what's the best way to uh to get in contact with you, Kevin?

SPEAKER_03:

The best way to get in contact with me is is through the website blueskyoutfitting.com or Canadian WildlifeAdventures.com for our website in that sense. My cell number is 780-536-7290. And you can get a hold of us that way. We're on social media, we're on Facebook, Instagram.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you guys are interested in it. So you can always get on Facebook.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, so we have you know, we have lots of spots where people can reach out and get a hold of us if they want more information or looking at a hunt or fishing trip or a wildlife viewing trip, canoe trip, or whatever they're looking for.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

It's a pretty amazing place up there. It's spectacular. We're so far up north, it's absolutely it's the silence is de uh is deafening because it's it's so silent. Yeah. The fishing is um, you know, we're 1,700 square kilometers of water. We have 10,000 miles of shoreline, uh-huh. And we're the only larger boats or buildings on the water. There's nobody else there. It's never been commercially fished or aboriginally net fished because we're too far away. So yeah, economically it's not feasible.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah, it's it sounds sounds amazing, just breathtaking. Pristine wilderness.

SPEAKER_03:

It is pr it is pristine wilderness. Everywhere you go, it's just and there's lots of unnamed lakes and unnamed rivers all over the place up there. So we fish unnamed lakes and unnamed rivers on a regular basis.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow.

SPEAKER_03:

It's like you don't you you walk on a beach that doesn't have people tracks. So we have beaches that rival Tulum and Cancun all over the lake up there. You can all kinds of sandy, sandy beaches, just gorgeous beaches, and there's no people tracks. Yeah. You see caribou, moose, you see a few moose tracks, grizzly bear tracks, wolf tracks, wolverine tracks. That's all you see on them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, no, it it sounds yeah, it sounds great. Uh like I said, it's it's it's nice following you guys on Facebook and seeing the pictures and everything.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and your website's well done too, and if with people looking for more information, it's very easy to navigate through and and explains everything quite well.

SPEAKER_03:

Quite well, yeah. That's what we try for. Just give them enough, give them all kinds of information so they can make their own decision on it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

But we sure like having people up, we sure like showing people what we have up there, and and anybody that comes up, they're just they're just gobsmacked at how beautiful it is. Yeah, how silent it is, how big the fish is. It's just like every day gets better and better and better. That's how they view it. That's what they say all the time. It's like we didn't think you know we could get any better than what yesterday was, and here we are. It's like this is amazing. And then the next day is the same thing, and the next day is the same thing. There's just like just the perfect.

SPEAKER_00:

It's pretty cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. And in a part of Canada, you know, the barren lands is or the tundra is one third of Canada's landscape.

unknown:

Right.

SPEAKER_03:

And yet, like like 0.001% of the people have ever been there. You take Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories, it's 21, 22, 23,000 people. I bet you uh 95% have never been up on the tundra.

SPEAKER_01:

Really?

SPEAKER_03:

And the five per the four percent that have have gone up in the wintertime driving up the ice road. But in the in the summertime by a float plane, coming up on a float plane, nobody goes out.

SPEAKER_00:

They just uh yeah, they don't take advantage of that opportunity.

SPEAKER_03:

They don't take advantage of it. That you know, we have people come from all over the world to see. And it's just like and they say all the time, this is like you have no idea what you have here. This is so pristine, so beautiful, so natural. This is amazing. But the locals are like, Well, we live here, we don't need to go see that. Well, so you talk to somebody who's like, Yeah, I used to live in Yellowknife, I lived there for 10, 15 years, I worked in the government, blah, blah, blah. And they're like, Well, do you ever see the tundra in the summertime? No, I never went. It's uh hour plane, hour and a half plane ride away. Why didn't you go?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, well, you don't know what you have till you don't, I guess.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. But uh But yeah, the outside world knows what we have.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. And they're paying, you know, they're willing to pay and travel very from very far away to see it.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, yeah. That's exactly right. They're coming for experiences.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah. Well uh again, like I said, Kevin, yeah, thanks. This has been uh this has been really great and and interesting, and uh yeah, hopefully some more people will go up and and check you guys out.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, that would be awesome. Thank you very much for chatting with me. I really enjoyed the chat. And if you ever want to do this again, I would love to chat to you.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, no, I do. Uh later in the winter I'd like to talk to you about uh about your guys' muskox hunting.

SPEAKER_03:

Sure, you betcha. That sounds amazing. All right. We have really good muskock hunting.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah, I can't wait to hear about that. It sounds uh very unique animal.

SPEAKER_03:

Yes, that's exactly right.

SPEAKER_00:

So all right.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay, thank you very much. I truly appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, thank you. Thanks for your time. Yeah, no baby. Okay, so if you're still listening and you made it this far, uh rating a review on Apple and Spotify would be much appreciated from you.