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Late Spring, 2005 ✦ ✦ ✦ By this time, Jeff had acquired over 30 individual shots of the wolverine, using the same baited camera technique, and he was busily farming them out to whatever media outlets were interested in publishing them. Jason hadn’t been so lucky with his newer digital Cuddeback model. True, he’d managed to capture the image of a bald eagle gliding across a clear blue sky—but, unexpected and magni‹cent as that might seem, it was hardly the same thing as capturing a shot of Michigan’s only known wild wolverine. Once on the brink of extinction across the entire lower 48 states due to such factors as habitat loss and pesticides containing PCB and DDT, the bald eagle had seen a slow but steady resurgence ever since the enactment of the Endangered Species Act in 1973. Now they nest mostly in the Upper Peninsula and the northern half of the Lower Peninsula, with notable exceptions including an established nesting population in the Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge near Saginaw. With their wide foraging range, bald eagles can now be seen during the winter in almost every county of the state.1 So getting a picture of a bald eagle while scouting for a wolverine? Close but no cigar. Jason suspected the severe cold was causing the camera’s batteries to slow down or fail. He built an insulated box that could be screwed to a tree, with a hinged door and padlock. It was only a matter of time now, he felt, before the wolverine crossed his camera’s path as well. Capturing good images of animals in the wild is always a challenge for researchers. Jeff and Jason had been learning the hard way that it is often necessary to devise and change strategies on the ›y as the situation demands, almost like a game of wits between researcher and subject. The main challenge was making sure the equipment was in the right 77 spot at the right time. As often as they were successful, it was just as likely that the partial images they captured only revealed tantalizing hints of what they had missed. But all that was about to change. On April 3, Jason called with exciting news. He’d just come back from the research site where he’d collected some amazing images on the memory card of his trail camera. At 10:01 a.m. on April 1, the lens had recorded a picture of two red-tailed hawks perched on top of the venison pile. One minute later, at 10:02, the camera had captured the wolverine in midair, sprinting toward the venison pile. To Jeff and Jason, the scenario was obvious: they’d caught the wolverine in action, chasing a pair of feathered competitors off its food cache. A week later the pair met early and started their hike in, more excited than usual. Because of the hawk incident, they decided to approach the site very slowly and quietly, as if they were deer hunting, in hopes of actually seeing her. Jeff led the way with Jason close behind. Crossing the last 150 yards, they’d take three quiet steps, pause for about 10 seconds, then take another three steps. A southwest wind was blowing into their faces all the way in, a good sign. They knew the wolverine wouldn’t be able to catch their scent. Once at the site, they quietly started changing camera batteries and swapping out memory cards and ‹lm. Because he was still working with the clumsy old 35mm model, it took Jeff longer to ‹nish, so Jason was standing behind him, waiting. Just as Jeff was snapping the ‹lm into place, he heard him whisper, “Jeff, I hear footsteps.” He was pointing toward the southwest, but they could only see about 10 yards into the thick underbrush, with a few scattered holes where the visibility stretched no more than twice that distance. Both men remained frozen in place, listening. The sound of steps came again, maybe 50 yards off. “That’s a deer, I think,” whispered Jeff. Then suddenly, the slow, tentative steps exploded into the sound of cracking and crashing brush. Whatever it was, it was charging straight at them! Seconds later the wolverine burst into the clearing, mere yards from the men, obviously hell-bent on chasing off whatever was threatening its food cache. But as soon as it saw the two humans, it stopped in mid78 ✦ The Lone Wolverine [3.128...

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