Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Delisting Wolves.

The 1st year wolves were legally hunted in Idaho I, the eternal optimist, did buy 5 tags. I now have much more experience and only buy 2 at a time.

I recently watched an excellent video produced by the State of Idaho on the economic impact that wolves have had on the State. Old Goosey might actually learn something.......nah, not him.



mike r

It is also an antigun ploy.

No game to hunt. No need for sporting arm.

No hunting seasons. No hunting. No legitimate reason to own guns. (in the minds of the liberals)

1184 views , keep it going folks nearly 1200 signatures in a little over one day .... LAF ...

TTT a heartfelt thank you to all ...................

You betcha. Add oil exploration and production, and mining to that. Listing the Sage Grouse would mean the end of a way of life.

I just signed up. Go Trump!. MAGA!

And there used to be several hundred thousand wolves living across the Western US. I don't think "100" can be considered the recovery of a population.

Is that what passes for your thinking?

That's the dumbest thing I've seen as a rebuttal for a long time here. You should go into Democrat politics.

100 was the "recovery" goal, until there were 100, then they moved the goalposts. Repeatedly. As RC, says, the woofer uber alles crowd will never find a "recovery" goal met.

Restore the Western US to the condition it was in when there were "several hundred thousand wolves", and we'll talk.

In the early exploration of Alaska, there was little game to feed the explorers, who were often on starvation diets. Natives several times saved lives of same. By feeding them fish- wolves had pretty much eliminated most of the land herbivores.

First rule when you are in over your head in a hole is to stop digging. "STFU before you get any deeper" would be good advice, if I cared to offer it.

I don't. Keep digging.

If you are interested in improving your wolf management education, start with Jim Reardon's "Wolves of Alaska". Not a documentary per se- more like historical non-fiction fiction. Mech, Lopez, et al have good info on the biology, etc.

The man in charge of the Yellowstone reintroduction did much work here on the Kenai National Wildlfe Refuge before geting the recovery job.. Ran into him one night years ago at a mutual friend's place and the three of us got to tipping a few. Too many, that is....

He said that during the reintroduction he tried to keep the number of death threats from both sides fairly well balanced..... he figured that way he was doing it about "right".

The man is not without a sense of humor.

When wolves eat all of their food supply, the wolf population itself will crash. Both populations are then liable to remain for long periods - many decades- at low levels. By managing the wolf population to a controlled level, prey species will thrive, and then can support a higher wolf population than if the wolves are uncontrolled or allowed at too high a "recovery" level. The peaks and valleys for both populations will be somewhat evened out, and the decades long starvation periods will be shortened or even eliminated.

"Recovery" is not an unlimited except-by -themselves level of wolves. It is a sustainable, self perpetuating level that allows for optimum prey species levels which can then support both (higher than low, but lower than high) wolves aas well as humans. That means human intervention, management, and reasonable, sustainable wolf populations where even feasable. The problem is wolves are better breeders than humans are able to easily control except by extraordinary means. Hunting and trapping by the public alone usually won't do it.

"We can't just let Nature run wild!" - Wally Hickle (then Governor of Alaska).

I worry more about human population numbers...

Mighty deep and muddy waters there...

WOW you really are stuck on dumbazz. There used to be wide open spaces with no ranches, people or livestock.

Well, to be honest it wasn't my best outing!

Missed an opportunity at a wolf, then missed a buck! I'm pretty sure it was a bull sprig buck....

The bottom line is: As long as the Rocky Mountain ecosystem has an apex predator armed with rifles, the ecosystem needs no wolves.

Every elk or deer eaten by wolves is a deer or elk which will not be going into some hunter's freezer. And each one eaten accounts for several big game tags which will not be sold.

And what is the annual elk kill per wolf again.

Based just on game killed by wolves, there is no justification for reintroducing them to this ecosystem. And that is without counting the cattle and sheep killed each year. We lost enough livestock to coyotes, we sure as hell do not need to be battling wolves as well.

The only good wolf is a dead wolf.

Wolves were never extinct ranchers I met during my years in Idaho all agreed .
The need for planting packs of wolves was all a lie .
One rancher told me about riding a 110cc honda atc in sw idaho owyhee desert - just sight seeing - riding the fun little atv . Came over the top of a hill and 6 wolves ran off of a muledeer kill this was in the late 70's . He shut it off and grabbed his binos - said they ran about 500 yards stopped and stared back for a minute then trotted off into the sagebrush . Said he had seen wolves down there his whole life , had family in nevada who had seen them too .
The whole wolf thing was a liberal pushed gov't backed BS operation .
Who here doesn't know how many times the gov't has put critters here & there trying to help something and their help turns into to an environmental disaster . . . .

5 years before the 1st introduction, my son and I watched 2 wolves running a calf elk in Idaho's Stanley Basin. Plain fact: extinct wolves don't eat elk.
The introduction violated the Endangered Species Act. We had a small population of wolves that, under the law, should have been propagated. Instead, they flagrantly violated the law and brought in gray wolves that quickly killed off and/or bred the natives out of existence.