#WIRE FENCE ROLL PATCH#

It seems an unlikely location for such a big cattle operation, surrounded by the Kabetogama State Forest and county forest land with Voyageurs National Park 7 miles north as the crow flies and the Superior National Forest just down the road. ItвЂ™s as if someone dropped a chunk of eastern Montana in the middle of the Minnesota north woods, with cows grazing on rolling, mostly treeless hills. About 30 years ago he bought the land and expanded a few hundred acres of cleared meadow to a massive 1,600 acres of grazing and crop land. Johnson has been working on this ranch in some way for nearly 60 years. Yet, every spring during calving season, more wolves came. They also bury any dead cattle quickly before wolves come in to feast. Johnson and his family have tried flagging, motion-activated sound-blaring devices, hard-kicking donkeys and even daily horseback patrols to keep wolves at bay. It has seemed at times during the ongoing debate over wolves that the two factions couldnвЂ™t exist side-by-side. JohnsonвЂ™s sprawling, 1,600-acre ranch with 450 head of cows and calves has been the poster child for the ongoing conflict between a charismatic endangered species and the rancher who tries to make a living raising cattle among them.

#WIRE FENCE ROLL PATCH#

But then federal trappers came and killed the wolves - as many as 16 in a single year, three already this year, and 86 wolves trapped and killed in this wild patch of northwestern St. They came to eat first, preying on some of JohnsonвЂ™s newborn calves each spring. ALONG SHEEP RANCH ROAD - They say good fences make good neighbors, and Wes Johnson is hoping more than 7 miles of good fence around his cattle ranch here will finally make good neighbors out of the booming local wolf population.ДЇor the past 20 years or so, this is where wolves have been coming to die, more than any place else in Minnesota.

Wire fence roll