Typical of rural and small-town Wisconsin residents, Chase Melton loves fishing and hunting waterfowl and whitetail deer, and he’s used to seeing wolves in his state’s great outdoors.
“I’ve never have had any trouble with them,” he told Cowboy State Daily.
So he was completely unprepared for what happened last weekend. He and two other duck hunters were surrounded by a pack of wolves in northern Wisconsin, and he had to shoot and kill one in self-defense.
“When it first happened, I thought, ‘Oh my God, what did I just do? I just killed a wolf!’” said Melton, 19, who lives in Sugar Camp, Wisconsin.
Unlike in Wyoming, wolves remain federally protected in Wisconsin and can’t be hunted. Killing a wolf illegally can come with heavy penalties, including possible felony charges.
It’s legal to shoot one in self-defense, but at least until recently, wolf aggression toward humans was so rare, Melton’s case is practically unprecedented.
Still, he’s confident that his case, which was still being investigated Friday, will be deemed self-defense.
His account of events and the evidence should make that clear, he said.
“I’m 19 years old, I’m going to school to be a lineman,” Melton said. “I’ve got my life figured out, I’m not going to throw it away by going up there and shooting a wolf just to do it.”
Wolf Trouble In Wisconsin
There’s increasing talk of wolves getting bolder in Wisconsin, Melton said.
Nearby Woodruff, Wisconsin, has a year-round population of roughly 2,000 people, but it’s a huge draw for tourists.
Wolves have been coming into town there and some scary stories are coming out of Woodruff, Melton said.
“One lady in Woodruff had a wolf run up and snatch her dog right from under her feet,” he said.
‘Chase, Look Behind You’
Melton attends lineman’s school in Green Bay. Two boys from there, ages 13 and 14, asked if he would take them duck hunting, and he was happy to.
“I picked them up around 3:15 a.m. (on Sept. 21),” he said.
By about 6:30 a.m., they’d made the drive to an area near St. Germain, Wisconsin, and found what looked to be a great spot for a duck blind.
“We threw our duck decoys out, sat down on a downed tree and built our blind around that,” Melton said.
They settled in and waited for ducks to start coming in. Something else came in instead.
“One of the kids, the 14-year-old, said, ‘Hey Chase, look to your left, there’s a deer coming down to you,’” he said.
“So I stood up and looked and said, ‘That ain’t no deer,’” he added.
It was wolf about 40-50 yards away. It looked small and scrawny, but it was also unusually bold.
Melton started clapping his hands, breaking sticks and stomping in an attempt to scare the wolf away.
“It looked right at us and came right at us,” he said.
“Then the other kid, the 13-year-old said, ‘Chase, look behind you,’” he said. “There was a wolf at no more than 5 yards. To be honest with you, I could have grabbed it with my hands.
“Then I focused my eyes back on the other one that was coming at us.”
That wolf had closed to about 10 yards, and was still coming fast, showing no sign of letting up.
“I pulled my shotgun up and I shot,” Melton said. “That’s not what I wanted to do, not what I wanted those kids to witness.”
The shotgun blast hit the wolf in the face, and it fell over and started thrashing, likely from death throes.
“The wolf that had been right next to us disappeared,” Melton said. “Then a wolf — I’m not sure if it was that wolf that had been next to us — came out of the woods and grabbed the one I had shot by the neck and started dragging it.
“He dragged it maybe 10 yards, and the whole time all the wolves were yipping like crazy.”
After the wolf let go of its dying companion, the fatally shot wolf continued thrashing for a while until it ended up in the water, Melton said.
He never imagined that he’d have to shoot a wolf — let alone be the target of a whole pack of them — but thinks it’s what he had to do to protect himself and the youngsters.
“Personally, thinking about it now, I can’t think of anything I could have done differently,” he said.
They’d Been Surrounded
After the wolves near them fled, Melton said he noticed “five to seven wolves come running out of the woods, about 250 yards away.”
Those wolves passed within 80 yards of another group of duck hunters, and Melton went to speak with those hunters.
One of them was an experienced hunting guide. He told Melton that the wolves that had come running out of the woods were probably an entirely different pack than the ones that had been practically on top of Melton’s blind.
The guide also said that he’d been watching though binoculars, and at one point Melton and the young boys had been surrounded by four or five wolves.
Melton said the wolf he shot was so small and scrawny, he wondered at first if it was a coyote.
But the animal’s long legs indicated it was a wolf, which the guide and game wardens later confirmed.
The wolves they saw that day appeared to be in poor shape, Melton added.
He’s not sure why, but an “easy winter” in 2023-2024 might have had something to do with it.
A lack of snow on the ground “made it a lot easier for the deer to run away from the wolves,” he said. “The wolves might be coming down to the water to eat snails, ducks and geese.”
Wolf Attacks Rare
Wolf attacks on humans are rare, but not unheard of.
In November 2023, an elk hunter in Oregon shot and killed a wolf that he claimed was coming right at him, despite him waving his arms and shouting at it.
Officials deemed the shooting a rare legitimate case of self-defense and the hunter wasn’t penalized, even though wolves remain a protected species in Oregon.
And on Aug. 19, a wolf bit two people “in their lower extremities” on a highway in Alaksa, according to a report from the Alaska State Troopers.
The people had gotten out of their car while they were waiting for a pilot vehicle at a construction zone on the Dalton Highway when they were attacked.
“Even though these individuals were not feeding the wolf, it was observed to be exhibiting behavior indicative of having been fed by other motorists,” according to the troopers’ report.
After biting the people, the wolf fled back into the timber and couldn’t be found.
Problems Escalating?
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has received reports of wolves in settled areas. There’s some concern about those situations ending badly, DNR Large Carnivore Specialist Randy Johnson told Cowboy State Daily.
He confirmed that Melton’s case remains under investigation.
DRN is trying to mitigate potential conflicts between wolves and people, Johnson said.
“There has never been a human killed or injured by wild wolves in Wisconsin in modern times,” he said. “Although, wolves have not caused physical injury to anyone in the state, concerns for human safety are reported and addressed annually.
“These cases are typically reports of wolves in close proximity to human occupied dwellings or workplaces during daylight. They usually are not displaying actual aggressive behavior, but may be somewhat comfortable around human activity and there is the potential for it to escalate.”
There’s been no evidence of any “true predatory attacks on humans” in Wisconsin, Johnson said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
