Come on guys! The view that anyone who admires wolves� or works for the federal government must be a tree hugging liberal is just plain silly. The feds have plenty of wacky right wing nuts to, just look at the current batch of wing nuts in the Bush administration! Enough of that!

Let�s keep in mind that the wolves, bears and all of the other beast of the scary forest and tundra were here long before any of us and they see other animals as something to eat or something to avoid. Humans have applied the notion of good and evil, just look at all of our bedtime stories. Yes the damn wolves eat live stock and once in a while they eat our pets, what do we expect? We are the ones who insist on living close to the wild places and yes we should expect that once in a while we are going to loose livestock to wolves. Hell I grew up on a dairy farm in Colorado and we lost claves now and then to coyotes but not to often. I remember loosing more chickens to skunks and coons than just about anything else!

I guess my point is balance. I live closer to Siberia than to an American road and the caribou out number humans up here 100-1. Yes we have lots of wolves and tons of griz but in all of my years stomping around up here and I do a lot of stomping around, I have only seen wolves once. I was stalking a group of 300 caribou this past fall and was with in 600 yards of being able to drop 2-3 fatties when the whole group exploded and I could not see any reason why. As the main group started to crest the top of the pass where I was sitting in I saw a white wolf running behind the whole herd. Just as the first 30 or 40 bou crested the ridge I watched a group of wolves ambush the whole damn herd! It was unreal to be sitting so close to this example of nature working like a well tuned clock. Was I pissed that the wolves nailed some caribou and I missed out? Hell no! I felt lucky to have seen this happen. If I had been 300 yards closer I might have gotten a shot off at a wolf but it was a privilege to watch it all happen and later in the day a dropped 2 nice bulls a whole lot closer to my boat! We all ate well.

It�s all about balance guys, balance. Room for all of us, even the left wing tree huggers and the right wingers too, maybe even a wolf or bear or two!



Walt
Kotzebue, Alaska
www.northwestalaska.com