Wisconsin’s wolf season is coming to a short and bloody end as hunters exceeded the state quota of 119 wolves, killing 135 wolves by Wednesday morning at 8 am CST.

The hunt was scheduled to begin on February 22, 2021 and run through February 28, 2021. A judge ordered Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to hold the shortened hunt after gray wolves were stripped of federal protections in early January. The DNR set the kill limit at 200 animals, with 119 allocated to the state and the other 81 to Wisconsin’s Chippewa tribes as per treaty agreements. However, the Chippewa refuse to hunt wolves, leaving the working kill limit at 119. The kill limit was far exceeded.

The DNR has closed three of the six wolf hunting zones; the other three are open until 3 pm CST today. The kill quotas were exceeded in the three zones that are now closed and the quotas are expected to be exceeded in the remaining open zones.

The lives of Wisconsin’s wolf families have been forever altered and the impacts will be wide-ranging, overlapping into other states and wolf policy.

Update: As of 3 pm CST on February 25, 2021, hunters killed a total of 216 wolves.