[M.T. Pockets]

Roy, I think I share your views pretty closely. I don't have a deep seated hate for wolves. I don't want to kill them all, but I didn't agree at all with reintroducing them in areas where they haven't been for 100 years. Not at all. Man has screwed up the whole ecosystem so much that introducing wolves is going to have an entirely different impact than it did when they used to be there. To much development has impacted the areas where game animals live, especially in the winter time. I don't like to see this propoganda geared towards our youth though, telling them at a young age how special wolves are and getting all warm & fuzzy. If you want to see it even worse, go to the International Wolf Center in Ely, MN. I've been there, I was expecting some general information on wolves in the ecosystem and they did that, but it is almost a cult like worship of them. I've seen it in Jackson, Wyoming too.

I find myself having to defend myself, and maybe I sound selfish, but I don't like having to compete as a hunter with an unlimited, completely protected wolf population. Sound selfish ? Sorry. I know upland bird hunters that promote shooting fox and other predators, I know waterfowl hunters that promote shooting skunks & racoons and other predators that eat eggs on the nest and they don't have to apologize to anybody. Nobody feels bad if someone shoots a coyote, but suggest killing a wolf and it's a different story.

I don't like reintroduced wolves, bad idea. Now that they're there I wish the Feds would turn over control to the states to manage them as a game/trophy animal. There's no better way to manage a population than through legal sport hunting. It gives some folks (mostly non-hunters) warm & fuzzy feelings that it is a natural ecosystem to have all these large predators managing the ecosystem so hunters aren't necessary anymore. I don't mind hearing or seeing a wolf in the wild, but by wild I mean truly wild where they've always been like Alaska, Canada and parts of Northern Minnesota. I've seen them in all these places and it's exciting. I've also seen a reintroduced wolf in Wyoming, it looked like something that escaped from a zoo. These are a strain from Canada, not the true wolf that used to live in the west.