A recently completed study indicates the wolf population continues to trend upward. The management recovery goal was 350 wolves in the state.

The recently completed study shows about 825 wolves. Factor in the 2011 pups and the population will exceed 1000 wolves.

What would you do - give the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources a pat on the back or a boot in the arse?

http://www.jsonline.com/sports/outdoors/120034129.html

Our government is a pack of very accomplished liars.

The wdnr makes alot of mistakes but I think this one is a federal mess. I don't believe the numbers though and think its far greater.

This all sounds familiar....

Sounds good to me

SSS!!!

Knew you would be pleased.

I think the recovery "goal" has more to do with the loss of huntable game than the actual number of wolves.
IMO, that is the real reason they were introduced when most people didnt want them in first place. Why else would the feds be involved if it wasnt progressing an agenda?
Eliminate the game, and you eliminate that evil activity the leftists and enviro-nazis dispise so much. Its not about the animals, its about controling humans, using sneeky tactics disguised as "helping" the environment and "natural" habitat. Guess they dont like the fact that humans are part of nature too.
Where are these bleeding heart liberals crying about the baby elk calves and famers livestock that are eaten alive by wolves? The elk and other wild game are just the sacrificial lambs if they can stop humans from hunting them.

On the other hand, it just might be the only way there will ever be a decent recruitment of hemlock and oaks again.

Do you worry so much about the trout that are eaten alive by these guys? I watched them tear one apart this morning while it was still flopping... http://www.ustream.tv/decoraheagles

Wisconsin doesn't have enough oaks? Are you nuts?

Wisconsin doesn't have enough YOUNG oaks. And if you know anything about oak dynamics in the state - you will know that the old oaks are declining (as old oaks are wont to do, plus a little bit more due to loss of fire, development, etc).

Yeah, that was the spiel we got a decade or so ago when the population was about 500+.. And they did NOTHING..

No chitsky..

I'd fire 'em all and start over...

Yep.. Jest a few more targets, possibly.. (not ME of course... )

You really have to ask ?

Maybe in some parts of the state.. But in others, I could show you a few million or so new ones..

Recovery was a minimum of 350 wolves. Adrian has stated a number of times that he would not like to see that level go much below 500 as populations are always volatile.......and going below 350 would necessitate going back on a listing.

He has also stated numerous times it is necessary and desirable for the state to be allowed to manage the population unencumbered.



Pat on the back. The DNR has satisfied their obligation for recovery and delisting.

The fed's called up the WIDNR and said "we're the federal government and we're here to help you." But, that does not mean the WIDNR is the victim here. They gladly threw in with the fed's.

Agreed - it is difficult to believe the numbers because of WIDNR's track record in wildlife counts.

Eastern Jackson county has a ton of small young oaks. Should I start wacking the wolves I see?

I have no issue with wolves inhabiting WI. I do have an issue on the completed study as it pertains to #'s. The WI DNR has proven time and time again (with deer and bear) that it's never even in the ballpark, let alone playing the same game when it comes to their "counts"......

If the study says 825, you can bet it's more like 1500 or 200. I'm prone to wager on the former.

You need to take into consideration the genesis of wolf recovery in Wisconsin to determine if the WIDNR should be credited with a pat on the back. In short, they were not forced to establish a wolf recovery program. True to WIDNR's MO they jumped at the chance to "manage" another species. In doing so it created another bureacracy and revenue source.

WIDNR should never have got involved - let the Fed's handle the prickly situation.

No doubt. Should we revisit the bear count or the last 4-5 years worth of deer counts?

There are few things harder to count than deer. Not much progress has been made in that area either.

Don't you mean two towsand?

Give us back our wooves you cheezers!

You know what it is dont you? It's those turkeys you guys have over there, you guys are trying to steal our wolves by baiting them with your turkeys aren't you?

Dave, I think you may have been sniffing a little too much of that POR-15

Actually it was an under the table trade, 1500 Mn grays for that brent favrey guy.

It didn't work out so good for Mn either... bad deal all around.

No it was really in trade for a Tucker snow machine. But WI only got 25 wolves, but they don't admit to getting screwed because it makes them look stupid.

Ya THINK??? Then why does the dumbazz WIDNR even TRY??? Weather forecasters have a better record..

LMAO.. I dunno - worked OK as far as I'm concerned; why, he ran the Queens chances right into the ground - as usual.. Hehehehehe..

Tooooo late.. The WIDNR is already PAST that little obstacle..

Because you will beat up on them even worse if they don't.

Every state I know of tries in one way or another - more often in a variety of ways (via indices like harvest rate/person/hr effort, DVAs, and aircraft and spotlight survey samples). But these are only good for detecting the slopes of trends, not numbers. Unfortunately, the public, much like the legal system, is pretty ignorant of what is reasonably possible and simply demand perfection and then whine like babies when they don't get it. None of them, of course, can do even half as well as the sad-sack DNRs of the world that are pretty much universally reviled by people such as yourself.

What's new?

If we are going to blame the wdnr for something we need a post about how they have mishandled cwd.

Yeah, and how everyone down to the newborn in her bassinet could have done better, even w/o the benefit of hindsight. Don't forget that part.

At least they got a good cheerleader in you huh.

Not really, I just don't see the need to hate them quite so much as most folks here do.

Hard to like a group who has taken our money and thrown it away. Money meant to manage fish and game has gone towards distruction of the deer herd,and million dollar advertisement budgets for don't move your firewood, and clean your boat.

They are just trying to hold their finger in the dike that is leaking invasive species right and left - species that certainly seem likely to have vast and negative consequences to the natural resources that they are charged with protecting.

Were they to do nothing (the economically correct option), you would fry their asses for doing nothing. But then you will fry their asses anyway.

Why don't you sign up to show them how to do it right?

Personally, I think their attempt to stop CWD in its tracks when it first was detected was courageous. Courageous people do not always succeed but they deserve accolades for trying. In any event, the failure is also and sadly due, in no small part, to the lack of public support that you and others offered. Now, CWD is a permanent part of the Midwestern deer herd and there ain't squat anyone can do about it. Maybe that will be a big deal one day. Maybe not. For a brief moment, they had a chance to remove all possibility of it becoming a problem permanently. I applaud them for trying, but I know you could have done better - I just wonder why you didn't given your vast expertise.

It was a courageous attempt from the science and testing available at the time. And it's the same approach states and provinces (who don't currently have CWD) have in their current CWD management plans.

Of course those states and provinces have the benefit of several years of rather intensive testing to know when CWD first appears. Wisconsin found out after the fact that CWD was more firmly entrenched than first thought.

Sorry to bust your bubble there Brent, you do not need a PhD to count deer. Us redneck's have a formula that will give a credible estimate of deer in Wisconsin.

Divide number of deer road kill into number deer harvested (bow, gun & muzzleloader). Divide that number by 2. Multiply the number deer harvested (bow, gun & muzzleloader) by that number. Example -

2010 Wisconsin total deer kill - 336,871

42,000 road kill (estimate)

336,871 divided by 42,000 = 8.02

8.02 divided by 2 = 4.01

336,871 X 4.01 = 1,350,852 pre-winter population estimate

Sure, we all can and do do exactly that. Didn't I just point that out above? Big deal. Do you think it is even close to accurate? HOw do you account for local variation (I assume WI has different zones that are managed individually). How do you correct that DVA count for nonreports (want to guess what the accepted correction factor is?), how do you correct for regional differences in road conditions, driver density, etc. What about your mortality due to nonhuman issues? (wolves, coyotes, disease old age, blah blah blah?). I have no problem with your guestimate. I have no reason to think it is particularly any better than anyone else's.

Show me how you validate it. Anyone can pick a number. Validating it is another thing. Yours is pretty certain to be an underestimate.

BTW, some strange gyrations in your math there.

2010 Wisconsin total deer kill = 336,871

FY 2010 road kill = 26,595 http://dnr.wi.gov/org/land/wildlife/HUNT/DEER/CKDFY10.pdf

336,871 / 26,595 = 12.6

12.6 / 2 = 6.3

336,871 x 6.3 = 2,122,287

That's using real data in your formula.

And that's a record estimate for over-winter population.

I used this data in my example - Wisconsin salvaged and unsalvaged deer carcasses

http://www.deercrash.org/states/wisconsin.htm

Yes........those are WDNR figures. Years 2000 through 2010.

You can find them here....

http://dnr.wi.gov/org/land/wildlife/hunt/deer/cardeer.htm

Your formula is hyper-dependent on road kills, and the lower the road kill the higher your over-winter population will be. Particularly in the year 2010 when road kill decreased and harvest increased compared to the previous year.

My formula may be as you say hyper-dependent on road kills, however when you average the road kill over a period of time, not like your one year (2010) statistic, it gives a credible factor to use in the formula.

Does it not make sense that "the lower the road kill the higher the higher your over-winter population will be"? In other words, the less deer killed on the road, the more over-winter. It is not quite that simplistic, I realize, but I like that correlation and interpretation part of the formula. But, then again I am just a dumb redneck out here without a PhD.

It is generally accepted by transportation types from agencies, AAA, and insurance companies that the real DVA rate is 3 times the actual count. Some reasonably argue closer to 4. So, multiply that 42k by at least 3 as the 42k is a direct count and thus an understimate, as is the hunter deer kill.

The math that roundoak puts forward is not ecologically rational. It MAY be a good statistical curve fit - I wouldn't know w/o a full set of raw data to test. AND MOST IMPORTANTLY another independent estimate to benchmark this. W/o that, it's just plain crap. Might be on target but its still crap until it's benched against SOMETHING biological.

And roundoak, no it does not make sense. The few deer killed on the road, the fewer there must have been to be killed in the first place.

If you want something based in actual biology you can try this

Total deer population * proportion does * average litter size must equal the total number of deer killed. which I would put at hunter kill + ( official roadkill *3)

and if you do that with a litter size of 1.7 (accurate for Iowa, probably ballpark for Southern WI) and a proportion does of 60% (probably a bit low, but reasonably knowable), then you end up with a MINIMUM herd size of 408.5K.

But this leaves out all other mortality including that from wolves (tens of millions to listen to you guys), coyotes (almost as bad), unreported hunter kills, disease, other accidents, old age, starvation, tree fall, and drowning through the ice and ten dozen other things, and so on. All of them act to raise this estimate - but how many fold? double, triple, tentuple? You can armchair all you want, but you really don't know and all you have left is guessing. Yss we can make more complex models, but they will all have issues, and any of them can be harpooned easier and more fatally than any blimp.

So, in the end, any of these estimates aren't worth a damn, which leaves counting. And counting has huge problems of its own.

But you are all experts, so, now that you have this magic deer count number, what are you going to do next?

Car kills or deer crashes are always going to be a contentious issue........particularly in Wisconsin where it isn't obvious where the data is used in current estimates.

How car kills relate to population isn't even a concise indication of trends. "Salvage by permit" and "Removed by Contractor" are only valid by yearly comparison if the same funding and level of commitment to remove is present each year.

In the 6 year period from 2004 through 2009, salvaged road kills dropped by 41%. However, in that same time period the DOT statistics on deer/car crashes dropped only 17%. So which is the more accurate indication of the change in the population?

The "Goal" has been exceeded for nearly ten years, though this current unchecked population explosion has been the real goal, all along. It has simply changed the hunting habits of many, out of necessity.

As hunting license sales fall, more collaboration with outfits like the HSUS and the Feds will increase, as they seek money. This is no accident. We'll see if the new Governor will take on this dirty nest of snakes like he did the unions. Gut 'em.

The population goals set by the DNR have been exceeded for over 25 years. The post-hunt population estimate was at goal one time in the last 27 years.

With rare exception, the goals have continued to be raised. Currently at their historical highest.

You'll have to look harder to find a conspiracy.

It would likely require some effort to hide the agenda to be a conspiracy. That stopped quite a while back & the partnership with HSUS pretty much shouted it from the rooftops. So, you're right it is not a conspiracy, anymore.

Wasn't this a wolf thread? As for me I see in unit 20 what wolves have done. I see 1/3 the deer I saw 20 years ago. I have seen one (1) snowshoe in 5 years. I can't see it not being the wolves. It doesn't take much to find a wolf track neither. I also see the deer in unit 20 eat my white pine tops off year after year. I see no cedar or hemlock regeneration. And yes, I see almost no young oak trees there. I see no healthy oaks, cedar or hemlock 8 mi. west of Shawano co. where I have land. My uncle planted 6,000 red oak on his land next to mine 10 years ago and they are 2 ft. wide and 2 ft tall. They get eaten up every year. They should be 10 ft tall by now. If you want a real healthy forest there are too many deer. If you like hunting there could be a bunch more.

if population estimates are correlated with road kill,does that mean there are less deer if we all drive slower?if we lower the speed limit back to 55,surely there would be fewer accidents,fewer accidents mean there are fewer deer,yes?
on the original topic,'scony only has 800 wolves,total?
I think we have 3000,IIRC.

I see the same thing in unit 9... Over the last 4-5 years or so, the deer sightings and tracks are way down and I find wolf tracks in places I never saw 'em before.. One time, after a fresh snow, we hunted a section of unit 9 and went home empty.. Came back the next day and there were fresh wolf tracks in my own footsteps from the day before ..

You can bet your sweet bippy I was payin' full attention the rest of THAT day... .

I don't think even the Vikings could fumble as bad as the DNR did on that fiasco. What a joke. Talk about diving right in without checking the water.

I don't have a problem with them trying to stop invasave species. But the lying, and stealing of dollars earmarked for other funds is a bunch of BS.

The deer herd crap started with the CWD mess. They dove right in. Could have talked to other state departments where it has been around for many years, which I believe it was in WI too. It isn't like it just appeared in one year.

Did they really believe they could "eradicate" an entire herd in an area? You can hardly do it in a decent sized enclosed area, let alone an open setting.

tz, exactly WHAT would you have done at that time with that in formation? YOu are quick to criticize but you don't have anything to offer except criticism.

Spending years to learn something (and damn little given the effort that has gone into it), would have guarenteed that anything you would do, would be too late - if you adopt "we need more study first" attitude. So, spell it out. What exactly would you have done and why?

trying to stop invasive species is a complete waste of time and money. Anyone that understands probabilities can see that.

And, when you are done with that, study up on the disease mathematics and you will better understand why they did what they did.

Looks like you just answered your own question..

I know my own answers. What I want to see is yours and TZ's. I don't think either of you have any. You're just complainers.

I sure as hell wouldn't have tried to wipe out 1/2 the southern state of WI of the deer without little more research that you biologists like so much. I don't have a problem with taking some of the deer all year, to get samples and try to get a handle on just how spread, or how many deer have it.

That isn't the only issues people have with the WI DNR. Holing public input meetings, then completely ignoring what the people that pay your salary have to say.

I can't give you a good answer on how to calculate game and preadator totals, but, by spending a lot of time in the woods I can damn sure tell you deer numbers are down and preadator numbers are up.

If the actually LISTENED to the hunters, hikers, bikers, fiserman, bird watchers, that spend time in the woods. I also take it with a grain of salt when I hear somebody in Butternut tells me they saw a pack of 22 wolves when they were grouse hunting. It does work both ways.

Then you lose. Time doesn't wait for you to dick around and collect samples (to what purpose?). Game over. BTW, they STILL don't know much of anything about how it is transmitted after YEARS of research. Just some vague ideas at best (and even those did not exist at the time when the disease was first discovered and there was a small but reasonable chance of doing something).

Again, you complain, but you have zero viable answers.

And they do spend time in the woods - a hell of a lot of it. More than you by far, in addition to listening to every whiny group of unhappy citizens (which pretty much includes the entire state's population, none of whom agree with each other either.

You're a biologist and STILL have no viable answers...and you're complaining about complaining. Sounds like government work to me.

My point is that CWD has been in other states for many, many years. It hasn't hurt their game population or the humans that consume it. Many would argue (or complain in your mind) that the western states where CWD was first found, has much better hunting and better managed deer population than WI does.

WI could have checked with these other states, asked for advise. This may take what? a few weeks, months, maybe a year at most to get a fairly acceptable answer on what to do or not to do.....But nope. WI had to dive right in and try to kill every deer that quivered in the southern part of the state.

Not only did WI DNR do that, they used sharp shooters that were allowed to break the laws that were set by the DNR to do so. Then they tell us that the disease is spread by close contact like corn piles. What do the sharp shooters do to get the deer in closer? Yep, corn piles! Then the DNR wonders why nobody likes them. Kinda like the bully at school that wonders why nobody will come to his birthday.

No lets get back to the thread about eradicating WI wolves.

It's good that you recognize total BS then... Kudos..

Much more useful..

I gave you a viable answer, you weren't listening. You have nada.

Again.

And ditto back to you...

As usual..

I had this nice and neat paragraph all typed out for ya BrentD and then scrapped it..

I'll let you argue with yourself - maybe you can make sense of half of it then... And then again, maybe not...

I'll sit and wait for your perfect solution. Gonna be a long long wait.

Yer at it again Brent,
You defend the so called professionals that spout facts that may not be close to the actual truth of the wolf situation.

The problem is that a bunch of starry eyed biologist and their eco crazy backers insinuated a wolf population into a landscape that has urbanized drastically from the envoirment it was when last they roamed those grounds.

The main problem is that they should have never been reinstated.

The solution is to remove them, not babble on about some ethereal, romantic view that in some way you've done the animals or the human population any good other than in your own mind.

As soon as Montana & Idaho get their chit together I
will try my damndest to be peeling the hide off a solid alpha male.
Maybe in both states if I can swing it.
I'd rather shoot wolves than deer or elk this year.
I'm totally stoked!

Perfect solution to cwd or invasive bugs,aquatic mussels,and weeds.Just leave them alone. I don't like to see my pheasant stamp money go to ads for "don't move you firewood".

Perfect solution for wolves is open season like coyotes until the population is much lower. Notice I didn't say total eradication.

if you like venison a 223 fmj through woofguts is safely effective

Yes..

A parallel example was the famous Dutch Elm disease.. The eco-nuts and tree-huggers went bananas trying to eradicate it.. They'd have saved billions of dollars if they'd just realize that once the food source is gone, the bugs go too.. The beetles could only survive in the heavier bark of older trees.. The young trees were relatively safe due to the juvenile bark layer..

Any time you concentrate a single species in high numbers you run much higher risks of insertion of diseases.. After the old Elms died off, what did they do? Replaced with Green Ash.. Now there's problems in those due to their high concentrations of plantings/population..

They never learn..

I heard scott walker is trying to take away the wolve's collective bargaining rights and the WIDNR is threatening a recount on everything.

So that WAS BrentD with a ' WALKER HATES WOLVES' sign in that video?? I KNEW it...

BentShe was the one holding up the sign that read...

'I'm A Dumbass Educated ManBitch'

26,000 bear in Wisconsin
1,500 bobcats
800 wolves.
Why do I see more wolf tracks than bobcat and wolf track combined? Because there are way too many wolves. I would not be surprised if there were 3,000 wolves in Wisconsin. Even around black river falls there is a bunch.

The WIDNR is very good at wildlife management - they manage to screw most things up.

There, I feel better now that expressed my daily WIDNR bashing.

You know why the WIDNR has never threatened to go on strike right?





Because nobody would [bleep] care!!

LOL!!

(I love throwin gas on the fire lol!! )

Excerpt from a Letter to the Editor published in the Lewiston Tribune on Jan 13th, 1967.....written by noted outdoor writer and hunting expert Jack O�Connor.

�I see by the Tribune of Jan. 9 that Gov. Don Samuelson says that he has got more criticism of the state game department than he has of any other department.

I�ve got news for big Don. If he fired every member of the department and staffed it with St. Peter, the Angel Gabriel, Sir Isaac Walton, Nimrod, Diana, Daniel Boone, and Charles Darwin he�d still get more criticism of the game department than of any other.

In my day I have been in a fair number of states and I have yet to be in one where the game department was not under fire and where there was not a strong movement underway to get rid of the director, to hang the biologists, to have the head of the law enforcement division torn asunder by wild horses, and the chairman of the commission beheaded, drawn and quartered, and his head exhibited in front of the state Capitol on a spike.

I long ago found out that if I wanted to get all the correct answers to the problems of game management I was wasting my time if I went to see the game department biologist. These poor slobs have only studied the various aspects of game management in universities for from four to eight years. They only spend about 250 days a year or so in the field and in the laboratory. They only know something about ecology, biology, chemistry, and various worthless subjects. As a consequence these biologists are all fatheads and their opinions are without value.

If I want to get all the answers but quick I just go to any bar, barber shop, or sporting goods store. I quickly find out that many people know exactly how all the problems should be dealt with, and that all this wisdom comes to them through a sort of osmosis�through having bought a hunting license, having spent two weekends hunting deer, or having talked to old Hi Jenkins, who used to be a market hunter and who came here in 1908.

For my part I set little store by these swivel chair experts in the game department or any other quacks with modern scientific pretenses. If I want to know how the weather is going to be I wouldn�t think of getting in touch with the weather bureau. Instead, I stop some little old lady on the street. I ask her how she feels. If she tells me that her corns are hurting, I know it is going to rain.

When I feel lousy I wouldn�t think of consulting an M.D. Instead, I pull a hair out of my head, send it to an old barber I went to when I was in college in Arkansas. He burns the hair in a darkened room, notes the color of the flame, and tells me what is wrong. The fact that I am still alive and relatively frisky at my advanced age shows the old boy knows his stuff."

Great Lakes Wolves

http://www.grandviewoutdoors.com/pr...es-wolves-could-come-off-endangered-list

"We've gone too long without that ability to manage some of these problem wolves and curtail the populations in certain areas," said Brian Roell, a Michigan Department of Natural Resources wildlife specialist. "It erodes the public support that wolves do have. In some areas it's gone close to zero."

I like this one.