How To Get Rid of Wolf Spiders

A wolf spider carrying infant spiders on thorax - keep spiders away from your home with Johnson Pest Control in TNWolf spiders are one of the largest spiders that you will come across in the state of Tennessee. But don’t act so fast to kill one, you might be harming your own home by doing so.

Wolf Spiders Hunt Insects

The wolf spider is sometimes referred to a huntsman, they don’t spin webs like the pretty pictures you see in photos or drawings. They do little burrows in the ground & nooks and crannies around the yard and home, if they do a web at all. The wolf spider is rather large and thick, which makes the sight of one pretty frightening if you are not aware of what type of spider they are.

The wolf spider will actually go hunting for insects as its prey. They are not interested in you or your home, they are just following the food. Like many of the spiders in Tennessee wolf spiders are quite good at being a decent option for natural pest control. The brown recluse and the black widow are the only two venomous spiders in Tennessee that pose a threat to humans. We don’t want those around, and we talk about them other places on the blog.

Still, you don’t want to see any spiders in your home, let alone a some wolf spiders. So what is a person to do?

  • Keep the house clean, if insects are not finding reasons to come into your house (usually food is a good reason) then the wolf spider will not follow. Keeping that food source out of the house will go a long way.
  • Clean up spider webs, don’t let those things fester around.
  • Be cautious about spiders carrying babies. A lot of times spiders will carry their babies on their back, so if you were to swat at a spider, you may get the big freaky spider, but you likely will unleash all the little freaky spiders into the house. If you see a spider setting up shop that has babies wait for a clear shot and have a vacuum that you can empty outside a the ready.
  • Get a perimeter treatment around your house.

What are Wolf Spiders?

Wolf spider crawling on a pile of orange fall leaves - keep spiders away from your home with Johnson Pest Control in TN

Wolf Spiders are common to find across the world. There are thousands of species of Wolf Spiders that you can find around the world. So it is no surprise that people get confused when spotting the wolf spider and confusing them at times with other spiders.

What To Know About Wolf Spiders

  • Wolf Spider carrying its egg sack
    Wolf Spider carrying its egg sack

    Wolf Spiders generally hunt at night. This affects their eye design, which is distinctive in identifying the spider.

  • Wolf Spiders hunt and live alone. They are known to carry their babies on their backs and carry an egg sack with them. But you rarely find more than one at a time.
  • The wolf spider depending on their surroundings and species has developed various ways they hide, live and hunt. Unlike most spiders that spin the web and wait for dinner to show up the wolf spider has been known to hunt down (even chase down) it’s prey.
  • Wolf Spiders do have a venom (as do most spiders) but their bite is not harmful to humans, except for a minor rash. Generally they don’t care about you at all (you’re a bit too big for their appetite) so if you are bitten by a wolf spider it is an accidental occurrence.
  • The wolf spider is a great pest to have around your home to deal with other pests. If you don’t have other pests for them to hunt you are likely not going to find the wolf spider as much.
  • Wolf Spiders have two eyes (eight total) that are unusually large in comparison to the rest of their eyes. This gives them a look that feels almost as if you are staring at something that doesn’t have eight eyes.

Wolf Spiders are often confused for the Brown Recluse spider here in Tennessee. In most cases, the misidentification comes because of markings on some wolf spiders can look similar to the violin marking on the brown recluse. One big distinction between the two spiders is their size. The wolf spider is much larger and thicker than the brown recluse. The set up of the eyes of the recluse and wolf spider is also very different, but who really wants to get that close to a spider to look into their eyes.

A fun thing you can do in your yard (especially with kids) is to go around the yard with a flashlight. The lights will reflect off the wolf spider’s eyes and give a little shine back to you. You can get this same shine during the daytime, but as we mentioned earlier, they are nocturnal hunters and are more easily findable in the evening.

A mother wolf spider keeps all her babies on her back after they hatch from an egg case she carries on her abdomen.
A mother wolf spider keeps all her babies on her back after they hatch from an egg case she carries on her abdomen.