Wolves in Idaho

[royinidaho]

Posted this in Elk, also........

[GoodOlBoy]

Not to mention defenders of the freakin wildlife aint havein to live and hunt there!

GoodOlBoy

[hobbles]

Wolfs can kill cattle but not elk, interestin,,,,

[fabsroman]

I think this is retarded. First off, who cares if the wolves kill the elk or hunters kill the elk, so long as there are still elk around. What do we expect wolves to do? Thing is that wolves don't buy hunting licenses, guns, ammo, etc. (i.e., they don't spend money). If the wolf population is getting too high, which I would highly doubt, then they should sell some wolf hunting permits at a decent price to generate some money to help the elk.

What really amazes me is that wolves and elk existed for so many years together without man's involvement. However, now we see fit to get involved. What ever happened to wildlife keeping a balance. When there aren't enough elk to feed the pack, some of them will die from starvation. Once the pack is cut back from starvation, then the elk herd will grow again. As the elk herd grows again, the wolf pack will also grow.

The only problem I can see is if the wolf pack moves somewhere else in search of food, especially if it happens to be an urban area.

[skeet]

Fabs for some reason it just ain't quite that easy. The amount of wolves in the area is increasing by leaps and bounds...and these are introduced wolves..not the type that were native to the area...at least according to what I have read locally. And the wolf pack will just go to eating what is abundant after the elk are gone..including cattle and continuing to increase their own population. Local hunter here in Wyoming said firing a rifle in the Shosone National forest is like ringing a dinner bell for the introduced grizzly bear population( the known nuisance bears live trapped from Yellowstone). We ought to leave well enough alone.

[Skyline]

I don't even know where to start with this one. I have lived with wolves around my whole life. I have seen entire moose populations wiped out in watersheds and then they hit everything else, elk, deer, sheep....until there is virtually nothing left.

Fabs contrary to what everyone wants us to believe.......full grown healthy elk and moose will be routinely taken by a pack of wolves. I've seen it.........many times. They have parts of the Yukon Territory where the wolves have knocked the hell out of the caribou herds so bad that the fish and wildlife branch actually stepped in and captured some caribou to put in a breeding pen to protect the local genetics.

Why does this happen...............well we are in the equation now. It is not like it was hundreds of years ago. In the old days hunters and trappers killed wolves.........they still do today up here and yet we do not have a shortage of them. When you protect them completely.....as your government boys are doing they can get out hand quickly.

You can leave it like that sure, and when the game population gets so low that the wolves have to start hitting cattle.......and actually they will do that anyways,even if there is lots of game......then you will force ranchers to break the law and shoot them........practice the 3 S's....shoot, shovel and shut up.

One other thing that you should consider is if the wolves decimate the elk and moose populations it means less opportunities for hunters. Is that what everyone wants......let the wolves run rampant and just cut the hunters off. Somehow I don't think that is what the majority will want.

I like wolves and firmly believe they have a place in the wilderness areas, but they need to be managed like all of the rest of the wildlife. Until you guys get your federal boys to hand the wolf management over to the states things will just get worse. Then you will need state wildlife officials with something between their legs as well...........cause when yo start killing a few the wolf lovers will go crazy.

[royinidaho]

fabs,

I only take a "little" issue with your comments.

Until I lived out here for about 40 years and my attitudes/feelings/knowledge shed the western PA lifestyle I most probably tho't the same as you. However...........

These wolves that have been imported are not the strain of wolves that the elk in this neck of the woods lived with way back when.

These ones are much larger and seem to have an easy go of it as indicated by their rate of increase in population.

Western folks are a complete different breed than the typical easterner. They (hopefully by now, we) think different.....

[fabsroman]

Okay, I see the problem with my logic, man and cattle. Back in the day, before man was around, the wolves and elk lived together and lived for many centuries together, with a balance being kept. When there wasn't enough food, there weren't as many wolves.

The problem now is that the wolves can decimate an entire elk herd and then move on to cattle or the neighbors dog.

It is kind of like how I worry about the foxes behind my townhouse when I let Nitro out. I have seen two of them running around in the protected "wetland" area and Nitro likes to go down there and do his business. If I wouldn't end up in jail, I would shoot both foxes.

I also agree with limiting predation on waterfowl and upland birds. For some reason, when man got thrown into the loop, we threw everything out of balance and we have to work hard to keep everything in balance.

So, yes I think some of the wolves should be thinned out, just like the whitetails are being thinned out in Maryland. I guess it is hard for me to understand because they used to be an endangered species. I had this same discussion in the Africa forum regarding an elephant hunt I saw on OLN. In the end, I was told that there are about 800,000 elephants in the world and that the hunting of old bulls allows game preserves/parks to stay open with the money they generate from these hunts.

At the end of the day, it is hard for me to grasp the problem without knowing everything about it. For instance, more auto accidents are caused in Montgomery County, Maryland by whitetail deer than by other motorists. However, the deer lovers are always up in arms when professional shooters are brought in to thin out herds in certain areas.

[BILLY D.]

fabs

a few years ago were bombarded with propaganda there were no mountain lions in the state by our f&g dept. this year they had a hunting season on them. they set a limit on them, allowing 5 to be bagged.

all this hullabalou after f&g said there were no lions. even though ranchers and farmers were reporting sightings and having animals killed and mauled by cats. one lady lost a beautiful horse that was mauled by a lion. i guess the lion had bitten off more than he could chew and left. the horse was so badly mauled it had to be destroyed, and this was only a 100 feet or so from the ranchers house.

wolves are another problem here and elsewhere. i read in another forum were the wolf problem is handeled by using the 3 s method. SHOOT, SHOVEL AND SHUT UP. the smart sob's that love wolves have installed chip transmitters in the wolves so they can trace them if somebody shoots one. the word is out here. if ya shoot one don't try hauling it anywhere.

our elk herd here is very small, a few on the canadian border in the northeast part of the state, some in the missouri basin and a few in the grasslands area in the roosevelt park area.

there is no doubt we will have a wolf problem here once those move from wyoming and idaho to here the same way the mountain lions did. they spread like std's.

when the world ends there will be four things left on the earth, mosquitoes, cockroaches, coyotes and wolves.

p.s. i don't think the fox would bother nitro too much, he'd probably tear them a new doo doo shute. that was the only bad habit my lab had. he despised fox and coyotes and would chase them for miles. i guess he thought those little son of a guns ain't gettin' my birds. lol




a man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.

[fabsroman]

Billy,

So far, Nitro has surprised two foxes here and both times they took off running. What I am worried about is the one that might happen to have rabies or if he catches one, that it might have mange. Other than that, I am not too worried about them attacking Nitro because he is 100 lbs. Of course, he might think they are his play buddies. He surprised and caught up to a groundhog before it got to its hole, and he had no idea what to do. It was almost like he was trying to play with the groundhog.

My old English Springer Spaniel would have killed the foxes and the groundhog in a heart beat. Maybe that is why Nitro is a better house dog.

[royinidaho]

fabs,

More details. In the days of which you speak, before white man in the west......

The native wolf in Idaho was a much smaller animal than what was reintroduced (Canadian Grey Wolf, I believe)

They were, and "were" is accurate as the reintroduced wolf has made the native wolf extinct. Really.

I saw two myself (natives) about 26 years ago. Long before digital cameras:( just 30 miles east of here.

One was cruising at about 35 mph along side of me before I slowed and it xrossed about 20 ft in front.

Take 50 or so pounds off of these reintroduced wolves and you have a whole new ecology. Maybe one we could live with. Until then (I was going to say SSS, but I won't);)

[Skyline]

Roy.............you are bang on. The wolves were obtained in Alberta. They are big animals and guess what......their main prey species where they were caught was elk and moose? Big surprise, huh!

[fabsroman]

Yeah, that is kind of tough. Northern species are just bigger animals period. Take northern whitetails and compare them to the ones in Texas or Mexico. They are much bigger animals.

The northern prey animals (i.e., Moose, Elk, Whitetails, Mulies, Caribou) probably had to be bigger bodied animals to survive the elements. Hence, evolution probably only allowed the larger predators to survive and the runts were not able to live long enough to reproduce.

Introducing northern species into a southern climate can wreak havoc on the ecology, but leave it up to man to do something like this. We try to fix the ecology that we ruined in the first place.

Believe it or not, they introduced resident geese in several states several years ago, probably over a decade, and now they have one heck of a problem with them in Maryland. They are proposing a resident goose season that will open the first of August with a 15 bird limit and no requirement for plugs in the shotguns. Maryland has a resident goose population close to 90,000 and its target population is 30,000. I will not even get into the whitetail issue here. Of course, the abundance of these animals makes it great for sportsmen, but it is sometimes scary driving to the fields in the early morning worrying about hitting a deer on the interstate at 75 mph.

[Skinny Shooter]

Originally posted by fabsroman
So far, Nitro has surprised two foxes here and both times they took off running. Of course, he might think they are his play buddies. He surprised and caught up to a groundhog before it got to its hole, and he had no idea what to do. It was almost like he was trying to play with the groundhog.
Send that dog up to me for a bit and we'll have him adjusted correctly. Nitro will be the newest member of the red mist culture... :D

[DaMadman]

I am sorry but I agree with some of what you guys are saying and some of it is plain poo.

Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, three states that are being affected by the reintroduction of the wolf are simply required to come up with a Federally approved management plan and as long as they can do that then the wolf population can be held into check.

Sure I would hate like hell to be in one of the areas that is affected and have wolves eating the Elk I planned on hunting but for God sake whether they are reintroduced or not the wolves were there first.

The wolves were descimated by man and I personally think now that they have been reintroduced they deserve at least a good managment plan before a state just opens a season on them.

I do agree that they need to be kept in check but without a plan to manage them it will just wind up like it did before, with the wolves descimated because people in general dislike preditors that compete with them for anything including Elk, Deer, Land ect.

BTW I own a small piece of property in Montana and have checked into this Wolf situation and Montana already and I believe Wyoming already have their Management plans passed and in place. As of 2 years ago Idaho was the one the was holding up the show.

[rick savage]

that;s what happens when man gets involved with nature, i;m glad we don;t have the wolf problem here in oklahoma, we are starting to have a problem with cougars

[M.T. Pockets]

I know there were more predetors in the ecosystem before man came, but there were also 50,000,000 buffalo and other sources of prey on unlimited real estate.

Today, the elk's habitat is a percentage of a fraction of what it used to be and they have predictable ranges that they're self contained in. With all the development and sub divisions, elk don't have the free run of a dozen states like they used to. So, this means the wolves can concentrate on these smaller areas and really raise havoc with a particular heard or population.

Take the area South of Yellowstone, before man came the elk had a natural free range to winter in. Now that same area is filled with billionaire vacation homes with mowed lawns and fences. So, the feed ground became necessary to maintain the herd through the winter. So now you've got several thousand elk in a a few areas smaller than some shopping malls. The wolves can surround the herd to prevent them from moving between the feed grounds and contain them, I'm afraid of a disease problem someday.

The Northern Yellowstone herd seems to be hit the hardest of all, the wolves must have an effecient system there.

I'm from Minnesota and am no stranger to wolves. I sure wish the Fed's would leave it to the states now on how they want to control wolves. I'm not anti-wolf but for the life of me I can't figure out why some people worship them like some type of holy animal. Go to Jackson, Wyoming or Ely, MN and you'll see what I mean. I don't want to eliminate them, but let's face it - with man in the ecosystem you have to control all the animals. You can't control some and let others go uncontrolled.

[Skyline]

There also comes a time when you have to weigh the balance of demand. Do you lower the wolf population to a level below what the area could actually support, due to hunter demand for elk or do you manage for the wolves and hunters are further down the list as far as priorities.

It can come to that. So you as hunters have to decide .....do you want to hunt elk or are you content to know that the elk and wolves are out there and you are no longer a part of the equation.

There is another aspect to this and it is non-resident hunters. They are further down the priority list than residents. If the wolf impact on the elk herds is so strong that they have to cut back on hunting allocations, then the residents are going to scream even louder than they currently do and demand that the legal harvest be kept for resident hunters. After all they live there and they pay taxes in the state and.....I couldn't blame them.

So do the non-resident hunters think that a high wolf population is more desirable than them having a chance to go out west and hunt elk?

I'm not making this stuff up.......I've seen it.

So, I guess we all need to think long and hard about just how PRO wolf we really are. I like wolves.....I do want some of them out there, but I'd rather see them kept below carrying capacity so that I can still hunt. If wolf predation is to the point that they are closing the season (It happens) or it is so bad that the resident non-first nations people are cut off.........then things have gone too far.

[rick savage]

good info to think about

[denton]

Everywhere that there are coyotes, they are seen as a nuisance. Generally, the western laws boil down to, if you see one, feel free to abate that nuisance.

Wolves are so similar to coyotes that they freely interbreed.

So, if coyotes are a bad idea, why are wolves a good idea?

[Skyline]

Uhmmmm..........because it is politically correct and, your federal boys knew that if they introduced a bunch to the area (to help supplement the existing wolves and the ones that were already migrating your way from Alberta and BC) they would expand quickly under federal protection and start hammering the hell out of the elk and bison around Yellowstone. That it would go a long way towards ending the depredation problems by wildlife from a federal park on state land (both public and privately owned).

Wolves could do what hunters could not ..... hunt in a national park or certain wildlife refuge areas..............not to mention that the new land owners from Kalifornia and anti-hunters are making it tougher all the time for hunters to access the migrating herds as they leave the park and or drop into wintering areas surrounded by acreage owners.

Unfortunately............the wolves just kept expanding and eating elk. Not really a tough sequence of events for them to have foreseen, but apparently it was acceptable collateral damage.

Sounds like some kind of conspiracy theory doesn't it?! ;)

[royinidaho]

damadman,
"Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, three states that are being affected by the reintroduction of the wolf are simply required to come up with a Federally approved management plan and as long as they can do that then the wolf population can be held into check. "

The problem is that the Feds must approve the State's plan. The state is more locally oriented.

I don't think that eradication of the wolf, again, is the most desirable outcome. If the states could implement their management plan without excessive federal influence it would be well and things would quiet down quite a bit.

[Wolvie]

Hi All,.its been awhile,but I guess Wolvie is Here in time,...

Anyways,..Killing Wolves for being wild and being "Wolves",is kind of Redundant isnt it?

I mean if they were to attack cattle,or other "Domestic Livestock",then of course there should probly be some action taken.
But I have been to Idaho, a few times,and Elk and mule deer and antelope theres alot of!!!
Wolves would be nice in any state in my eyes,they were here before we were and should be here now.
Though I am a hunter, I also believe in life of all creatures.
Wolves serve a purpose,as do Coyotes,buzzards,and worms.

It the chain that binds us all together in one way or another.
The Food Chain,...they take out the ill,and the weak,...a healthy elk is pretty big and strong,...and if they (Wolves),were to attack an healthy bull elk,..well let me tell ya ,they would have a fight fer sure.

The goverment has stuck their hands in so much of the free world,that now they are about to naw off their own limbs for do so.
When I see articles like this,it just tells me the same thing over and over,...let man and beast live as they have and stop the culling of animals that dont need it,..and start 'Culling" the goverment officials that dont do crap except make up more rules and BS laws.
They need to worry about our boys over in Iraq,and start bringing them home,...we arent there for the reason we set out to be there for,which is Osma Bin Laden,...
Sorry got off track there,...
I say let the Wolves be,...WOLVES LIVE unless they crose the line into Domesticated killing,..just let them live.

Later All
SAFE HUNTIN~

[M.T. Pockets]

I don't want wolves to divide hunters, but I think it's best we let the people in the states that have wolves decide on how to manage them. It's easy to like wolves as long as they're in somebody else's backyard, chasing & killing the animals someone else plans on hunting this fall.

I might as well talk about the white elephant in the living room.

Where there are wolves there is less opportunity for the sportsman to hunt animals. Personally, I like to hunt big game animals and more wolves or wolves being introduced into areas where they haven't been for 100 years, is going to limit hunter opportunity. Is this selfish on my part ? Maybe. But I'll take a stand on it and live with it. For example, in Sweden & Finland up to 50% of the moose population can be harvested in a given year. They don't have large predators.

I don't want to eradicate the wolf, but I don't like the idea of "reintroducing" them where they haven't been for a long time. I think they should be hunted where there is a sustainable population, the grizzly bear too. The ecyosystem has changed too much. With sport hunting in the scene now, the role of the large predator in the ecosystem has also changed. Uncontrolled, the wolf will have devestating effect on hoofed animals in a given area.

[fabsroman]

Looks like the President is thinking about taking the grey wolf off of the endangered species list.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060316/ap_on_sc/gray_wolves

I think I am going to have to agree for a controlled amount of hunting. We have a problem with whitetails here in Maryland, and it would probably be good to have some wolves here. Since there are no predators of whitetails in our area, the population has exploded and hunters can take tons of deer every season. All of this when 20 years ago the limit was one antlered deer. Now, they want hunters to take does, and bunches of them. Resident geese were also introduced about 20 years ago, and when hunting first started for them, we were allowed to kill a couple a person and the season began September 1. Now, Maryland's DNR has proposed an August 1 start date, a 15 bird limit, no possession limit, and the use of unplugged guns because the population is getting out of hand.

Wolvie,

In the end, the ecosystem cannot manage itself anymore because man has had way too much influence on it and we continue to influence it more and more each day. We destroy fields and move deer into pockets of woods where they tend to flourish because there is no hunting and they love the homeowner's shrubs and other high dollar landscaping. I almost ran into one on Monday while driving over to my aunt's house, and there were three more waiting to cross the road. There are more auto accidents caused by deer in the county I live in than by other motorists.

Wolves, if left unchecked, would end up getting themselves into trouble. See, it isn't like the old days when man wasn't around. If the food supply (e.g., elk herd) got too low, there would be nowhere else for the wolves to turn to for food, so some would die through starvation. Same goes for the elk herd if there is not enough grazing to live on. The problem today is that a starving wolf that cannot find any elk to eat can find cattle, sheep, a dog, a baby, a cat, a person, etc. Things that weren't around before man, but things that man will get really pissed off about if the wolves eat them. I know I wouldn't like a wolf to eat my dog, much less my child.

We live in a pretty residential area, but we have a wetland "preserve" behind us where I see deer, ducks, geese, groundhogs, and foxes. To meet, it is great to see these animals. I even got to see a pair of mallards this evening wading through the marsh grass. However, I am sure that the neighbors with their small dogs are scared to let them off their leash for fear of one of the foxes grabbing them. Me, I let Nitro run around without a leash because he is much bigger than those foxes and I have seen the foxes run when Nitro approaches, but I do worry a little about a rabid fox.

At the end of the day, life is too complicated not to have laws, and the more complicated it gets, the worse it will get. 100 years ago, there wasn't nearly as many issues as there is now. We didn't have to worry about copyright infringement from a teenager downloading a protected song over the internet onto their IPOD. Barely even had to worry about auto accidents, and the few horse collissions that we had weren't all that bad. The laws are a result of people not knowing how to behave and one person's moral values being different than another.

As far as the war in Iraq is concerned, I think we should leave the troops over there until Iraq settles down. We never actually went into Iraq to find Osama Bin Laden. The reason we went into Iraq was because of weapons of mass destruction, and we didn't find them. Maybe, if we stay over there and the Iraqi people get their freedom, we might not have to worry about the middle east as much. Who knows. I love how people think that ending the war in Iraq will make all their problems go away. One of my clients, a real estate agent, made a comment that if we brought the troops home and ended the war, the economy would probably get a boost from it. I was dying to ask him how that could be, but I bit my tongue since he is a client. Of course, he doesn't blame the markets sluggishness on the fact that realtors helped driving the price of homes into the unaffordable range or that with the interest rate increases, what the realtors and new home contractors made barely affordable became unaffordable. Nah, we always find something else to blame. I truly hope that the new home contractors, real estate agents, and mortgage brokers saved up their money from this 3 year boom they had because I think they are in for some slim pickings over the years to come.