oak,
Leopold was never ever the last word on game management. He was the first word. The Sand County Almanac was not a scientific treatise of game management but a philosophical perspective on it. The primary literature is full of the actual science, but I know you don't want to go there. Meanwhile, the field has moved on a good long ways, and it is well demonstrated that wolves can have a real and positive effect on the environment. You only need to look as far as the recruitment rates of hemlock in your state to get an idea of how far out of bounds whitetail deer have become.
What you and many others at the fire don't like is someone that fails to walk in lock step with the prevailing attitudes here. I don't mind doing that where I feel it is valid and where I know something about the topic. This is one of those issues. I don't suppose you are going to change your mind. You are rather locked into narrow group think. But there are others here that can think outside of that little box, though they do not speak often since they are only going to be berated by the loudest members here.
This is not a place for independent thinking but I like to reprove that fact every so often. Just to see if anything has changed.
Brent, you need to step back and take a deep breath. You have contributed to this site for sometime now and it should be apparent this is not a knitting society website. This is a huge sandbox and there are individuals that do not play well with others, yet you continue to participate. Sure, there are bullies and loud people posting here, but I dismiss them as less than 10% of the population and look forward to communicate with and learn from the other 90%.
You have pegged me wrong as I do respect philosophical perspectives if it can be verified by accurate science. In the instance of wolf studies, I have seen much dissertation that is weighted to a predetermined outcome. I think one could call it junk science, maybe that is too harsh. I learned long ago that one can not hang their hat on the philosophical musings of Leopold. He could not grasp the fundlamental law of survival of the fittest and pined for a natural world that he never experienced and existed only pre-historcally in North America.
Regarding deer impact on regeneration of flora in Wisconsin and elsewhere... it does concern me. I see it in my woodlot up close and personal. I do not have a fool proof solution, but it would help if the Federal and State wildlife agencies would get out of the way and let the ultimate predator, the hunter, become more involved. But that will probably not happen because those agencies manage big game as a natural resource...right it is a resource...a source of revenue to further their expermintation.
I started forming my opinions on the wolf's role in todays world in the early 1960s while doing deer pellet counts in northern Wisconsin. At the time there was a remnant wolf population and the occasional emigrant from Minnesota or Michigan. One January morning our work crew snowshoed into a known deer yard just south of the Bad Indian Reservation and experienced a rare encounter with an adult and yearling wolf eating on a live button buck. We chased the two off and dispatched the deer with an axe. Two weeks later another crew reported wolf carnage in a deer yard on the Totagatic River. Our crew had to see this for ourselves and we snowshoed in the next day. 11 deer carcasses and one set of wolf tracks.
It has been stated here in this thread that Leopold changed his negative outlook on the wolf upon watching the fierce green fire die in a female wolf. He wrote later that the wolf and other predators need to be protected.
In my case my outlook on the wolf changed from favorable to un-favorable. That view has been sustained today with the current circumstances of promoting the wolf in todays world. Simply...we can not re-create a landscape where the wolf was a dominant predator. All the reasons are obvious.
I think George William Featherstonhaugh summed it up best: "The scythe of what is called "civilation" is in motion, and everything will fall before it."
