I know I've done this before and I've seen a lot of other players do it, too: we have our characters build up food stores for 'winter.' And don't get me wrong, I can imagine why -- with our heavily grain based diet, it makes sense to us as humans. Plant products dominate our food pyramid, and plants ain't growin' much in winter.

But here's the thing -- the animals wolves prey upon rely on those same plants. As it gets harder for them to find food and they lose their strength to snow, they get weaker and easier to hunt as the winter season progresses. Wolves actually have a much harder time catching a decent meal when warm weather returns, and their prey's strength with it.*

Not that I think this is a major problem -- it makes it easier to relate to our characters, just as we assume they have full colour vision, human emotions & habits, etc. I just found it interesting that it's never been addressed before (that I'm aware of, anyway x_x) and I wonder if it would even be possible to apply this 'counterintuitive' thinking on a board-wide scale.

*Sources:
FAQ by International Wolf Center
Yellowstone by BBC Earth

I agree. Wolves normally prosper during the winter. But I do know that smaller carnivores do, in fact, have a harder time during the winter. Foxes often rely on food stores to get through the winter. Also, it is not unusual for wolves to make food stores. So, we could still have them do food stores, just not for the reason they were doing so earlier.

If we want "lean times", how about a plague. If we can get enough people to agree, there can be a plague going around the game population. This would create an immediate boon in hunting, but the number of game available would quickly drop causing the lean times and food stores to come in handy. The problem could then be fixed as the population grows in the spring. Also, if people want to kill their characters, this is the way to do. Starve to death.

Perhaps we can have something like ghost moose (if anyone actually knows what that is). Then again, this might not be the best idea.

P.S I'm not an expert, I just watch a ton of animal planet. So if I got anything wrong fact wise, don't yell at me. *Cowers in a corner*

Mm, I don't think we need any kind of disease/extraneous circumstance to precipitate a lean period -- it would occur naturally in summer when the prey regain their strength and get harder to catch. It's the same thing we've always played, except it occurs during the summer instead of winter. Likewise, they'd be more likely to make food stores during winter, not before it.

Waaay back in the day, a drought did cause something similar to what you suggested, though -- the prey failed and some wolves (including my own Adreon *tear*) went with them. :c

During the spring and summer, there are younger animals to hunt, too, though -- spring is babytiems, after all. Kidlets are easier to take down than an adult, albeit obviously not quite as filling. :3

Your one link says that surplus killings occur in winter rather than summer -- that doesn't necessitate that summer hunting is harder, just that wolves can come across a bunch of animals stuck in deep snow and wind up killing them all. I also can't view your second link, gives me a Netflix page.

In general, though, I think we probably play our canines as wayyyy too laid-back about food. In the wild, isn't it only 1 in every 10 hunts successful? In actuality, the vast majority of threads at 'Souls should probably revolve around hunting, or at least have heavy references to recent hunting. Unfortunately, people would probably consider that quite boring. X:

I'd never really considered this before, though, I think Salsola's thread prompts make some references to winter leanness, but I think they were relevant more toward stocking the stables with more food, making sure slaves are prepped for cold weather, etc. I'll check over them and probably make some edits.

It depends on who you talk to. I have more often heard 1 in 6 to 1 in 8 hunts depending on the pack size. Also, this refers to hunting large game such as deer, elk, and bison. In the summer, wolves often switch their diet to mice and other small rodents and an individual wolf can eat dozens of mice in one sitting. (Never Cry Wolf the book is my source).

The large animals will migrate during these times making it harder for wolves to hunt. At least, thats how it works in Alaska. I also found a scientific paper once that detailed the wolves diet during both summer and winter. I'll see if I can find that paper again.

Yeah, the Netflix documentary is where I got most of this information/heard it for the first time. I watched it a little while ago now, but I definitely recall them emphasising wolves have a comparatively harder time in the summer, and that winter is their time to shine. I just pulled the net/text based source as a secondary thing in case some people didn't have Netflix. >< (But if they doooo they should tots check out that documentary, the shots are gorgeous :3) Here is the Amazon page instead?

Anyway, I agree that our hunt threads definitely push the limits in general. Most of our wolves don't do endurance based hunts, but rely on sprinting/ambush-centric tactics, probably for the reasons you mentioned: it would get kinda lame playing out "we keep running!!!" for 5 rounds in a row in a hunting thread, only to have it conclude in "the bastard got away!" I assume a lot of hunts take place in secui form and we can therefore chalk up some of their higher success rates to that, since the halfling is faster/stronger than what North American prey animals evolved to deal with.

But you're right -- livestock/horses would still need winter stores, even if the wolves do not. XD

I always based it on how wolves in Norway have a harder time in winter because of the lack of plants. Prey will be starving and dying because of the lack of food, but more importantly they migrate southward. Pair that up with there being young ones around in spring/summer, and the wolves have a generally harder time getting enough food for everyone in winter. In winter mothers are still trying to feed their young ones, as well, and their death toll is afaik highest in winter due to lack of food :3

But the situation may vary geographically, I guess - it could also depend on what type of area they live in (what types of prey are around in general, what competition they have for prey) and the max/min temperature in the area, maybe? :3

I'm surprised there is any prey left in Souls due to the large number of wolves in such a tiny area. I don't know if there has been expeditions for them to get food elsewhere but there is a reason why humans breed domestic food, because if the population we're at right now began hunting down game there would be a lot more extinct animals.

Also I could imagine--partially educated guess--that prey would get scared off or learn not to live near such social areas for predators, wolves in the wild have to travel quite a bit to find food I imagine. Also the fact that most of us play, in a sense, werewolves and roleplay them out with humanistic natures I'd imagine they would have grown aware of how much easier is just to store meat and supplies instead of going day by day wondering when their next meal is going to be. Now this would be different for non-Luperci players of course but the large amount of Souls is Luperci populated. I'd imagine keeping poultry, cows, pigs etc. would be beneficial and having stores of food as well.

Edit -- Now there still would be the urge to hunt of course and back to the topic at hand, some geographic research would have to be done of the area Souls is located to really know what the prey population might be like during both Summer and Winter months. It could for sure vary area to area and with a population like this Winter may be slim pickings if the prey is migrating.

Editedit -- Souls should go through a prey population crisis!!! It would be incredibly educational and perhaps even quite plot driven and may speak to things humans are facing themselves right now.

heh I've actually been wanting to bring this up for awhile, because I also think we over dramatize the effect of cold too, and winter as a whole. Wolves and husky breeds would hardly need clothing to stay warm. Though I can understand something to cut down the wind when they are traveling, but otherwise a wolf could curl up in the snow and be warm as a bug in rug. They would be more uncomfortable in the summer heat than they would in the winter cold.

I just haven't been able to find the documentation to support my thoughts, as I think I've read it in my own books, yet I can't find it just trying to skim through them.

As far as hunting, winter is generally when wolves get the majority of their large kills, because well the prey is weaker and heavy snows give them an advantage because wolves can often run across the top of snow (not fresh obviously) while ungulates can't because of hoof size and weight distribution, they bust right through. Hence why wolves use deep snow as a strategy. Plus the shortage of food and cold weather takes its toll on the young, old and weak. So while it is the season of plenty for pack wolves, I think it would be much harder on loners who still have to hunt alone most generally and find smaller prey slimmer than winter.

Yea in the spring, there are babes to hunt, but you have to keep in mind that the herds are -far- more defensive at this time (herp, I've been taken down by a cow before because she thought I was too close to her calf, no fun, luckily my dog saved my arse) So while the babe is easy to snatch, you have to deal with a very pissed off mom, if not more of the herd.

However, I do think that Luperci would rely on a bit of a food storage since our characters do far more than their natural counter parts and not as much time would be dedicated to hunting, especially by all members. It would also lead to a more regular diet, rather than typical feast/famine that natural wolves go through. A massive blizzard (like last year) would also make hunting difficult until the weather cleared.

I saw that documentary too, Zero, and totally had this thought XD

It think it's also good to keep in mind that the wolves we play also consume far more energy than normal wolves.

Quote:Shifting takes a bit of energy no matter the time of the month or energy level of the individual. Luperci are not able to swap quickly back and forth between forms. If a Luperci shifts numerous times consecutively, s/he may faint from the amount of energy eaten up by the shifting process.

So that might explain why our wolves have developed more of a humanized idea of stockpiling, if only because they use more energy in shifting. They also get much larger in Secui/Optime forms, and would need extra meat to support themselves. Even though prey animals are easier to hunt, they likely also don't have enough to keep several adult Luperci fed for more than a day or two, depending on how much energy they expend during the day.

We don't really have calorie consumption noted, but I'd imagine that keeping up fat stores, shifting, and all the other things our wolves do along with hunting (which as mentioned, might be more difficult with so many wolves) could explain why our wolves horde things. I can imagine there being wild-prey shortages over time, especially now that many packs have domestic stock.

Hello HUGE post as I try to respond to everyone/cite references XD

[html]Migratory prey is an interesting point. I think herds in Yellowstone migrate to some extent, but the documentary still said those wolves have an easier time in winter. Looking at some maps, Norway's at about 60°N latitude, while Nova Scotia is only at 45°N (which is actually very comparable to Yellowstone's). Meanwhile, Nova Scotia would have a maritime climate (typically milder winters) than Yellowstone, which would have a continental climate. I know PA is a few degrees lower in latitude, but I'm pretty sure our deer stick around all winter. Idk.




As far as population is concerned, I don't think we're that bad. Each block on our map represents a whopping 100 mi². According to the same source I cited before:[/html]

Quote:Gray wolf territories in the lower 48 states may be less than 100 square miles while territories in Alaska and Canada can range from about 300 to 1,000 square miles or more.

While we're not technically in the lower 48, I think the larger territories they're talking about are in reference to northern Canada/the tundra or taiga. And even our smallest packs have at least three squares, or 300 square miles. While our larger packs are definitely bigger than most natural wolf packs, they also command a lot more territory than wolves at our latitude would typically require.

Either way, I agree it makes sense for our wolves to start moving towards agriculture at this stage in the game. Settled societies with regular food supplies = more room for specialisation, too

Interestingly, while doing some research on this subject, I came across another interesting fact:

Quote:It certainly seems reasonable that, at least to some extent, hunting in groups would increase hunting efficiency even if no cooperative strategy were used.  Multiple hunters, even if inept or inexperienced, would seem to yield greater sensing, chasing, restricting, attacking, and killing power than single hunters.

However, possibly offsetting this advantage is the fact that multiple hunters must also share the proceeds (Brown 1982).  This and numerous other theoretical and empirical considerations have led some workers to the conclusion that "cooperative hunting is more often a consequence of gregariousness than its evolutionary cause" (Packer and Ruttan 1988,189).

A good test of the hypothesis that larger groups of wolves are more efficient at hunting or killing prey is to determine amount of food obtained per wolf for packs of various sizes.  On Isle Royale during 1959-1961, the pack of about fifteen wolves mentioned above preyed on moose, but in 1961, when this pack split into two about half the time, the amount of food obtained was greater than during the previous 2 years, when the pack hunted as a unit (Mech 1996b).  Similarly, lone wolves in Minnesota killed more prey per wolf than a pack of five (Mech and Frenzel 1971a), and pairs killed more prey per wolf than packs (Fritts and Mech 1981; Ballard et al. 1987, 1997; Thurber and Peterson 1993; Hayes et al. 2000).

(Source)

So I'm not sure it's as hard on loners as once thought.

Still, I'd agree that mothers in the spring would be extra defensive. That cow thing sounds painful D:

Aaaand true, I hadn't considered the increased caloric needs of our shifters. Maybe that could account for the huge discrepancy between normal packs' territories and our packs'? Nonetheless, I'd think ours have compensated enough for the elevated energy needs by keeping ranges 2-4x bigger than 'normal.'

And don't get me wrong, I don't think anything's wrong with creating caches of food -- I'm just not sure now it's as critical to make them for winter, so much as in winter. :3

Also, this turned into an awesome discussion XD I love you all <3

Haha this is funny. And I get a kick out of it because I'm always like WTF are people talking about when they mention food shortage in the winter.

In fact, I actually had a thread where Zalen chided Kostya about his apparent lack of knowledge in this area.
Link

But I have to agree that Nova Scotia has a high population density of wolves and that prey would suffer because of it, so therefore, food storage would make more sense? Plus, a lot of the Luperci of Nova Scotia are also very humanized, so that can also explain it.

Anyway, I'm not really adding much more to this conversation. But here here! Nice to see it being discussed.

We seem to forget that a lot of smaller game tends to hybernate come winter as well...

With Luperci having a relatively human way of thinking, I don't think hybernation would make hunting harder for them; after all, they can easily dig out prey from their burrows mid-hybernation if absolutely nessicary; unlike normal wolves, Luperci have more means to find and dig them out.

...like shovels, nets, rope and being able to climb trees. >.> Stuff normal wolves don't have.

So though it's harder to find them, it's not that bad a difference.


As for the main conversation, xD I have to agree with people; shortages of food in the winter? Unlikely, but possible with the differences between Luperci and normal wolves. Overhunting will eventually become a problem during the winter as the herds will have moved on, considering the population in Souls. Storing up now is very much a good idea, though storing meat probably wouldn't be a once-per-winter thing; meat goes bad and luperci lack the technology to keep it from going bad (except for Anathema, as far as I know; they have a cold cellar in the caves, if I remember correctly) and I could be wrong about this, but that could prove to be another problem.

Hunting would continue throughout the winter months, but it would gradually get harder?

I dunno, I've lost track of what I was saying. xD Anyways, there's my two cents.
I honestly don't have any sources or anything, so just ignore me if I made no sense.

I really don't think winter is such a big deal for older packs who have some food stored away and have a good amount of members who are use to hunting for the group. Katie and I decided to do a hunting event for CdC because it's made up of mostly loners who are use to hunting for themselves, as well as the fact that it's a totally new pack but we both have discussed this idea before. Because our characters are more humanized I think we just play things off the way we feel about them XD Often we don't think about the thick winter coat, or how often our characters should be hunting. It would be interested to add something about this to the roleplay guide perhaps after some discussion?

It would be interesting to have something about this on the RP guide :3

I'd just like to point out, though, that Yellowstone isn't everywhere despite its position and temperatures being similar Yellowstone has a completely different set of species living there than f.ex. Norway. Where Yellowstone has a lot of volcanic activity, for example, Norway just has a lot of mountains. This changes a lot about what prey is available, and what they do in winter. Our prey tend to migrate far, as the mountains get too cold. Also the areas where our wolves are at are much closer to human population than Yellowstone is, which also affects how much prey is availble (though it means nothing in this context). I think it illustrates that it is quite local how it goes down in winter for wolves, depending on the geography, so we should be careful with our conclusions

I'm pointing out again, also, that pups are getting pretty big in winter time - the need for food may be somewhat greater then, as their consumption is much higher. Pregnant females don't consume as much as half-grown pups.

I'm not saying that wolves probably are starving in winter, but my guess is still that - depending on local variation - winter is somewhat harsher. In winter, you spend more energy moving and staying warm, as the body consumes more calories to maintain those systems, so that could be a factor as well. Lower temperatures equal more energy spent for moving around, and with our wolves' huge bodies...

Also, AniWaya also has meat and fish dried for storage, and that process only requires salt, so it is quite easily accessible for our wolves' technologial level.

Personally when it comes to stock piling I always kind of assumed that the wolves stock piled meat substances, dried, salted or smoked meat that might keep for longer. I had wondered about the prey all staying near the packs though...

Ooh, also a note about wolf species: for Dawali, who is a southern type wolf with a pitiful coat, winter up here is COLD. For a gray wolf not so much, they can handle anything. So species affects things quite a bit as well :3

I'm really not convinced we have an overpopulation problem. Yellowstone is about 3,500 sq mi rounding up*, and supports about 125-175 wolves*. Taking the lower end, that's 28 sq mi per wolf (or 0.036 wolves per sq mi, if you prefer). Using the ever fantabulous image analyser ImageJ, I see that the total habitable land area on the board is 19,437 sq mi. We currently have 184 PCs and 64 NPCs or 248 wolves, but to account for unofficial NPCs, I'll take it as an even 300 canines at any given time. That's still very nearly 65 sq mi per wolf (or 0.015 wolves per sq mi). So even if our wolves had twice the energy needs of an average wolf, we'd still be breaking even.

And again, that was being super conservative in my estimates. Taking the upper limit of wolves supported in Yellowstone, we see that a population density of 0.05 wolves per sq mi is feasible -- and that's over three times what we have. So even if our wolves required three times what an average wolf does, we'd still be okay.

Anyway, re: Noway, I'm not doubting that those guys have a rougher time. I just don't think the same applies to Nova Scotia, which has a maritime climate at sits nearly at sea level. I'm sure the geothermal energy heats up Yellowstone to some extent during winter, but it's also a mile above sea level at the lowest point. And I looked up a map for their range over the pond there -- they seem pretty isolated/like their habitat is broken up. :C One of the closest cities I saw to where they were was Lillehammer, so I compared average monthly minimum temperatures for Yellowstone, Halifax, and Lillehammer:

[html]Sources: 1, 2, 3[/html]

I was surprised to see that Norway's was actually warmer than Yellowstone -- something about the gulf stream, yada yada XD You're probably right about the mountainous terrain limiting the selection of prey animals available. And you're definitely right about non-cold weather natives having a rough time. Anselm had to commission special clothes for Alacrity; I'd imagine jackals would have it pretty rough, as well as wolf/coyote species from the southwest like you said.

Nevertheless, Nova Scotia is milder than both and at a low elevation. I don't think it's non-mountainous terrain would greatly limit prey availability. And even if you account for increased consumption by the luperci, our population density isn't that bad. I don't think there'd be any winter time famines barring extenuating circumstances (like a plague, etc.).

I'm not saying they're starving winter-time or that we're over-pupulated, but I'm saying that I don't doubt that it is harsher on the wolves, which does dictate f.ex. how much they might hunt when our luperci like to do other things as well Moving in snow is taxing, and wolves might not be able to travel far for hunting when our packs are so stationary as they are. Most animals in general have a harder time in winter, and competition between carnivores is heavier. Even if prey may be in surplus, the packs will be larger because of pups, hence each pack needs to kill more. Our packs are pretty large compared to what the average wolf pack is IRL, especially counting PNPC's and whatnot. So their food consumption need would be a lot larger winter-time than RL wolves have now.

(Also the temperatures there are wrong, the areas around Lillehammer and Hamar with wolves living in them easily gets below 0 Fahrenheit in winter time, because the cities lie a lot closer to water and much lower than the wolf ranges :3 That's irrelevant, though, but it puts the temperature ranges pretty close to Yellowstone)

One problem with our thoughts here, though, is that we have eliminated all other carnivores from 'Souls, almost, in that they're never mentioned nor hardly played. So if our wolves don't have any competition I've no doubt that feeding is potentially easy, but I think most of us assume that other carnivores are included in the RP world, even if we hardly reference their presence.

-shrugs- I don't know enough about Yellowstone to make any kind of parallell, but I'm just saying that obviously, things differ geographically. Nova Scotia isn't Yellowstone either, so it's slightly silly to make any conclusions on how they fare here compared to there. Yellowstone is such a special case that it can't really compare to Nova Scotia.

Maybe it'd be easier to make any kind of conclusion if we make a formula - estimate how much meat a luperci in optime would need. Add a variable for added energy consumption winter-time, potnetially add a variable for pregnant females or near-grown pups. Map out what prey lives here, and where in Nova Scotia they live (f.ex. for all we know there isn't much around where AT lives, so that would be a big problem for AT in winter, when traveling takes much more time unless they invent skis - which would be awesome). Then we'd have some local information which is much more relevant to the discussion