[8] _David W. Kuehn, Personal correspondence to L. D. Mech, 1970._
When radiotagged wolves were located, notes were kept on the type of activity they were engaged in; the results are summarized in figure 17. In a total of 171 observations made between 9:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m., the wolves were resting 62 percent of the time, traveling 28 percent and feeding 10 percent. They tended to travel more before 11:00 a.m. and after 3:00 p.m., although resting still composed at least 45 percent of the activity during every hour (fig. 18).
[Illustration: _Figure 17.--Percentage of time spent by radiotagged wolves in various types of activity throughout the day, from December through April._]
[Illustration: _Figure 18.--Generally the wolves rested during most of the day. (Photo courtesy of L. D. Mech.)_]
These results generally agree with the statement by Mech (1966a) that wolves on nearby Isle Royale tend to rest about 11:00 a.m. and begin traveling again about 4:00 p.m. However, it does appear that the Minnesota wolves spend much more of the day resting than do the Isle Royale animals. The difference may be caused by the difference in pack sizes studied. The Isle Royale pack of 15 to 16 may have had to travel more to find enough food to feed all its members than did the lone wolves and pack of five in the present study.
Wolf movement is greatly hindered by deep, soft snow, so during winter travel, wolves frequently use areas where they sink into the snow the least. In our study area, frozen waterways are used extensively where possible, just as reported by Stenlund (1955). Where few lakes or rivers exist, wolves follow railroad beds and logging roads, often soon after a plow or other vehicle has driven on them. In cutting cross country through deep snow, wolves travel single file and tend to stick to windblown ridges and to trails of deer and moose. Wolves that have ranges small enough to cover in a few days form a network of their own trails, which they can maintain merely by traveling regularly over them. Packs on Isle Royale depended a great deal on such a system of trails (Mech 1966a), and so did Pack No. 1059 in our study area.
Wolf packs can travel up to 45 miles in a day but it is usually larger packs that do so (Stenlund 1955, Burkholder 1959, Mech 1966a, Pimlott _et al._ 1969). In our study area we sometimes saw evidence of long moves by large packs along strings of lakes and waterways. However, most of our movement data pertain to lone wolves and a pack of five. The daily travel of these animals was usually much less than that reported for large packs.