Patty Loew:
In May 2007 we took you behind the scenes of "In Wisconsin" to show you what it takes to capture footage of elusive timber wolves commonly called the gray wolf. The task is next to impossible. Videographer Frank Boll worked on this project for four years. This week we offer you the award-winning report that features the amazingly tenacious and sometimes humorous efforts to capture these rare images at the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Juneau County.
Jo Garrett:
We were working on another story when we saw this. This rather large hole. Molly Mell of the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge explained what we were looking at.
Molly Mell:
We're looking at a wolf den. It's a couple years old. It wasn't used this past year but it was used in previous years. It probably had been a badger hole or some such thing before and the wolves came in and enlarged it.
Jo Garrett:
The wolves, wow. A wolf den. Okay, a former den, but still, cool. Hey, we thought, let's do a story on wolves in Wisconsin. And so began a great adventure. A quest four years in duration by our videographer Frank Boll to capture footage of Wisconsin's wolves. Necedah became a second home. He spent days of his off time in this blind or up a tree.
Frank Boll:
I'm going to try to put the camera on here again and see if it will now clear the tree so I can pan it back and forth.
Jo Garrett:
This is a wildlife sanctuary. This is where most photographers get their footage of wolves. Boll didn't want that.
Frank Boll:
It would be picturesque if a wolf came out of there.
Jo Garrett:
He wanted to capture the wolves in their natural habitat which required a lot of tree time.
Frank Boll:
Every time I come up here I spend eight to ten hours a day doing this. This is the sensor that is the heart of the system. It's basically a little computer that sits on the tree and it shoots out an infrared beam.
Jo Garrett:
He had to rig up this complex system of remote camera, light and infrared sensing apparatus that discerns an animal's presence by motion and temperature.
Frank Boll:
It records it as an event and there are two outputs to the sensor. One goes to the light, this cord right here turns the light on and the other cord goes to the camera and turns the camera on at the same time.
Jo Garrett:
Just lights, camera, throw in a dead deer, cue the wolves and action. Well, not exactly. Just so you understand, Boll is no novice to nature photography. He's been looking through a lens at animals for decades from moose in Alaska to lions in Africa. He's followed crane hunters in Pakistan and shimmied into a rain forest canopy to capture an avian wonderland in Costa Rica. But nothing, not bull snakes, not bears, not bats, nothing has been as hard to capture as wolves. Adrian Wydevan, a wolf specialist for Wisconsin's department of natural resources.
Adrian Wydevan:
They're such shy, secretive animals. Your chance of seeing them would be remote. They travel at night.
Jo Garrett:
This is the understatement of the century. The project began with much promise with Boll testing his camera equipment in his backyard.
Frank Boll:
You have to do a lot of tests. I got two outside cats and they live in a lawn shed. I set it up at their entrance. Watched what they were doing and I would see what the camera was doing at different temperatures.
Jo Garrett:
First cats, then wild critters, easy, right? No.
Frank Boll:
That was all eagles. They came in during the day and used up all the tape.
Jo Garrett:
Time for plan B.
Frank Boll:
That's when we changed to night only. The eagles aren't active and the wolves are mostly nocturnal.
Jo Garrett:
Oh, the night life. So began an accumulation of animal footage from this wolf project that we came to call “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” Lots of animals. But no wolves. Boll would eventually employ a total of three of his own remote cameras around the state. Day and night and baited, checked and monitored by animal fans. A wildlife technician for the Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission. From the Necedah national wildlife refuge. And Ron Schultz for the DNR. This combo of cameras captured just a few wonderful but short wolf moments. And some amazing shots of other animals. Here is a black bear family. Two turkey vultures strut, wings outstretched. Three turkeys, all toms, saunter. Here is a bobcat burying food morsels. A gray fox, seldom seen. It looks more feline than canine. This coyote had a tough time of it. Boll and others tried a variety of ways to entice in wolves from dead deer, scented lures, a rotting beaver and in this case a buried turkey carcass. Buried and to the coyote's dismay, chained down. But the animals gave as good as they got. This is what a black bear weighing in at around 200 pounds can do to a camera. It's not pretty. It wasn't just the big guys. This flying squirrel weighing between four and seven ounces developed an interest in plastic cords and with one bite shut down production. Boll used his remote camera system very successfully on other stories that evolved out of his wolf quest. Like this report we produced on the pine marten. Though he tried the remote cameras on different sites, on a blind, in the air, on the ground, the wolves seldom showed and never stayed for long. Their senses were too sharp. This one hears the camera even though it's muffled by casing. This one looks up and sees not the infrared light, but a slight glow of the light fixture itself and he's gone. Until one snowy Saturday this January, after four years of effort, a visitor. For four minutes the wolf trotted across a frozen lake and then away from the camera. Amazingly, this visual cornucopia continued the next day.
Frank Boll:
I was sitting in the blind looking out the north window. I looked back to the west over here and I see two wolves come across the frozen lake and they actually started to come towards me. they came within 200 yards, I would suspect and the lead wolf stopped and looked at the blind. All of a sudden he took off running straight to the north and he looked over his shoulder as he's running. That's a giveaway they've seen you and they won't get any closer.
Jo Garrett:
Once again, the wolves’ keen senses prevailed and their intelligence.
Frank Boll:
Sometimes I think they even notice that the blind is there because I'm sitting on top of a hill. Not a lot of cover around. They know the country so well, their territory, that I believe they know when there is something different there. It would be sort of akin to coming home and finding another sofa in your living room.
Jo Garrett:
Four years and finally a total of more than 14 minutes of footage. The wolves turn tail and the wolf quest came to a close.
Patty Loew:
That report won first place in the video journalism category from the Milwaukee Press Club. You can watch Frank and Joann's entire five-part wolf series on our website. The address is wpt.org/inwisconsin.
