Elk hunting Q.

[Dean2]

I tried to add some more to this post and by the time I did I was out of time and lost the info. That annoys the heck out of me.

Waht I was trying to add was comments around:

In Alberta we have a lot of those very large wolves. Despite a fully open season, no tags or limits and in many northern Counties a $500 bounty where wolves have become a real problem for cattle producers, hunting makes virtually no dent in the wolf population. There are way to few daytime sightings and far to much inaccessible country for hunting to have any effect on wolf populations.

The only effective control on wolves is shooting from helicopters, trapping and poisoning. I know many people don't want to hear that but places like Montana and Idaho better get some effective culling before the only constraint on the wolf population is food supply, wild or domestic.

The point that peoples fear of wolves is overblown has some merit but by the same token, the road apples the wolf lovers spread about there are no verified cases of wolf attacks on humans is pure propaganda. wolf attacks and even wolves killing people are relatively rare but there are a few every year in Canada and Alaska. We even have cases of able bodied people being killed by coyotes up here. One you may have read about down there was an Olympic athlete who was out jogging in an Ontario park and was attacked and killed by coyotes.

So to say that peoples fear of the wolf is totally unrealistic is over stating things in my experience.

 

[Rifleman1776]

Good post, Dean.
Difficult subject that does not seem to lend itself to reasoned discussion.
The extremist 'environmentalists' seem to control the issue with nonsense and hyperbole.

 

[Idaho Elk Hunter]

Dean you are soooooo correct in saying the only means of keeping them under control is trapping and poisoning. I know a trapper in one popular area that has pretty much cleaned them out and the elk were abundant in that area and no wolf tracks or howling heard. My neighbor who sets up camp and stays there for over six weeks (big camp)every year and this was first year with no wolves in his area. I think that trapper guy is also using something else, but at any rate the wolves are gone and elk have come back strong until another pack moves in. We now have them everywhere here....dumbest thing I have ever heard of is my opinion. Yes, the local tribe was the big reason they ended up here in north central Idaho.

 

[renegadehunter]

I didn't say gray wolves were a non-native species because they weren't here before being introduced (not re-introduced)...from humans killing them all off as you pointed out...but because they simply aren't a native species to Idaho. We had a different species of wolf before they were poisoned off years ago, according to everything I've read. These gray wolves are a lot bigger species, and therefore capable of killing larger game with less animals in the pack to help with a kill. Therefore they were introduced, not re-introduced. Controlling them without helicopters or poison is a pipe dream, or so history has shown. In my eyes they are like poachers. They kill when the opportunity to do so is presented, whether they are hungry or not. I've seen way to many pictures and heard to many first hand accounts from people that have found wolf killed elk and moose with nothing ate off of them. I wouldn't mind them being around, in all honesty, if they could be controlled and they truly only ate what they needed to...but we who live around them know that is not the case. "Big, bad wolf" stories have absolutely nothing to do with my opinion...or anyone else I've talked to in Idaho either for that matter. As I've said, I do not fear for my safety when in the woods because I know they are around...I'm way more concerned about happening upon a sow with a cub, or even a cow moose with a calf, then a wolf. In all my years in the woods a cow with a calf has been my only encounter that had me awlfully nervous for a few minutes, lol. (Well, I can laugh about it now...I wasn't laughing when it happened!)

 

[Zonie]

Well......

This started off as a hunting Elk with a .54 caliber muzzleloader and 3 pages later it's just a debate over wolves.

I suggest we get back to the original subject.

By the way, the only place I can see on the forum where debates about wolves would fit the forum would be in the Non-Muzzleloading Forum, available only to paying members.

The other place the subject of wolves might fit is if the subject was hunting them with a muzzleloader and that would go in the Traditional Muzzleloading Hunting section. It would need to keep the discussion to actually hunting them, not the merits of demerits of them being in the woods.