Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Trapping Wolverine... It's Over In Montana!

YIKES... I see just in what limited print (electronic) media reports I read that just in the last week the "anti-hunters" and the "greens" have filed lawsuits and in one case WON a case! These reports regarded such diverse Hunting endeavors as an organized LEGAL Coyote Hunting event and the Hunting of Sage Grouse in the west!
If anyone is stupid enough to suffer under the conception that the anti-hunters and the greens are not trying to end all Hunting and trapping then said stupido deserves themselves!
The anti-hunters and the greens simply have switched tactics to go after small or individual aspects (ares/regions/policies) of the trapping and Hunting culture/industry ONE AT A TIME.
Sad this - BUT TRUE!
The anti-hunters and the greens should be fought at every opportunity or eventually if we don't fighback enthusiastically we will all suffer/be shut down.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

There's a thread on that coyote hunting derby in the Campfire section.

I can vouch....worse than skunk - just not as profuse.



Just like more than a few of us here I suspect.

We have pretty good populations as wolverines go; see plenty of tracks alright. Seeing the animals that make them however... that's a different story.

I have, etched into memory, retained an image I am sure I will not see again.

Picture yourself seated in a wet fall on a steep slope above an alaskan salmon run river. You are in heavy timber, looking into a river bend and up along a straight run.

To your side a downfallen tree has left a gap in the canopy that allows you to glass up top in the snowfields.

A billy skylines. Below him a snow patch and some bushes. From here into my field of view walks... a damn wolverine.

Crosses the snow patch and angles up top towards the billy.

Could have gone anywhere...

Went straight up to the billy and the billy moved.

Wolverine don't care.

Looks like things may have changed. The head of the USFWS decided says the theory that climate change will affect wolverine populations sometime in the future is too unproven to declare them endangered. This means the Montana FWP doesn't have any reason to end the season.

Of course, there's a big hue and cry among the climate change folks who were lobbying for the designation.

But varmint gay said it was a certainty....

But he got that information during a private, informal conversation with an unnamed Montana FWP "official"! How could anybody doubt it?

Just went on the Montana FWP website. It said the wolverine trapping season is closed for the forseeable future. I went to trapping and clicked on season dates.

Went and revisited the site and it read district 1-5

That's because there's (probably) never been any wolverines in MT FWP Regions 6 or 7, so there never was a trapping season set in those two regions for 'weasels on steroids'.

MT_DD_FAN, you are (probably) right about that! I live in Region 5 and I have seen several over the years and just 2 weeks ago my son who manages a ranch north of Red Lodge called me and told me about one that ran into a big culvert! He didn't have the nerve to crawl down into the culvert for a better look!

Just sayin,
Ken

Right. GA DNR swore up and down there were no cougars in GA. Trail cams started turning up pics and they said they were illegal escaped pets. Somebody finally shot one, as according to GA law, if it is not a legal game animal, it is legal for harvest. Turns out it was a young male from the FL population.

GA DNR now says there are cougars in GA and please don't shoot them.

Guy killed one in his barn in 2000 all the way over by Medicine Lake. It was mounted and I believe that it still sits in the refuge headquarters at Med Lake.

Yeah, that's what that 20+ page "memo" was saying--and the regional director went to great lengths to back it up. That memo read more a full blown literature review.

Casey

Yep, it's still there.

I saw one from the Supercub a few winters back south of Scobey on the Poplar River.

I saw one while jerking around with a bear in Alaska. Too foggy for a good photo, but no doubt about it's being a wolverine. Cool animal to see.

Yeah, they're unmistakable. I've spent quite a bit of time in the northern wilderness over the decades, from Montana and surrounding states up through western Canada into Alaska, and all across northern Canada. Have only seen two, one in Alaska and the other I managed to take in the Northwest Territories. Have only seen tracks in Montana.

When I was a Boy Scout in the mid-70s ('73) to be precise we went on a 50 mile hike in the Uintah mountains (Utah for you eastern boys). We were spread out on a high mountain trail and I saw a critter at the edge of a meadow I'm guessing 500 yards away. I am certain it was a Wolverine. It was low to the ground, had the form of a wolverine (I was a huge wildlife fanatic back then and knew my critters), moved like a wolverine and it was too small to be a bear. I had already had a pet badger and I knew a fair bit about the weasel family. It was definitely not a cougar or coyote. I believed at the time I had seen a wolverine and still do.

Spent a little time in the mountains since and have never seen another.

Jordan

There are wolverine throughout Northern Canada, but populations are very sparse. I have spent a good bit of time in Wolverine country, but never saw one. Would like to have seen the one that stole the backstraps off the one and only Dall ram that I'm ever likely to shoot. It was warm at the end of August in the mountain range along the border between the Yukon and NWT. I had sunk the deboned meat in plastic bags into the cold water of a glacier fed stream. No idea how that thief found the meat, but he got the best pieces. I found distinctive tooth marks in the empty plastic bag in the morning. I did enjoy the ribs hams and shoulders, but have always wondered since what sheep backstrap tastes like. Good I bet!

almost ran over one in 1981 when it ran across hwy 97 south of Bend Ore. was hauling logs to Gilchrist.. it was the one and only I've ever seen. interesting running gait.