A Project of Sage Steppe Wild
Mike-S sent me a number of photos of killed elk, also a deer buck, and a bighorn ram. There were several other photos of the same event, taken from different angles and some others too small I thought to tell much at all. I didn’t put these up.
I created a special web page for the photos.
Note several “Mikes” post to this blog, and I hope they will all use a last name initial or something to distinguish themselves.
So what do folks think?
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Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan’s Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of “Hiking Idaho.” He also wrote “Beyond the Tetons” and “Backpacking Wyoming’s Teton and Washakie Wilderness.” He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
Comments
Ralph – This Mike fellow, is he Mike S or Mike letter 5?
If you’d like, I could send some similar photos that are posted on this website of animals that have succumbed to unkonwn causes. Photos of deer, elk, pronghorn and bighorn killed by vehicles … or wounded and never found (“good God I’d have to get off my ATV and sweat – can’t do that!”)
If Mike S or Mike 5 or whoever this wolf-hatin- character is, wants to use graphic photos, then I gotten’m as well.
What about the heads and feet of spotted fawns and elk calves killed and tossed along the highway by “sportsmen”? Arrows stuck in the sides of bear cubs, fawns and elk calves?
And all the stories I’ve heard in the local bars of the great white hunters who got their thrill and kill of a life time hunt to blast a mt goat, only to have it fall off a ledge so they went and shot another?
Mike letter S R
First the concept of surplus killing is highly suspect because none of the animals will go to waste. Nature is like that Mike. Second there may be a number of reasons a particular kill was not finished, i.e. another predator pushed the wolves off the kill, not all kills are finished in one setting, or men on snowmobiles came bombing along. Also much like you and I Mike, we just don’t always “clean our plate”. Then to get more specific:”Surplus killing of domestic animals lacking normal defences against wolf predation may not be unusual(Young and Goldman1944; Bjarmaland Nilsson 1976; Fritts et al. 1992),but it is rare for wolves to kill wild prey in surplus. All cases of surplus killing of wild prey reported for wolves have occurred during a few weeks in late winter or spring when snow was unusually deep. In 30 years of wolf-deer study, Mech observed this phenomenon only twice (Mech and Frenzel 1971a), and in 40 winters of wolf-moose studies, it was seen in only three winters (Peterson and Allen 1974; R. O. Peterson, unpublished data). DelGiudice (1998) recoded it during only a few weeks in one of six winters.” This is just a small amount of information available by wolf biologists that have been studying wolves for decades. I distilled the above from the book ” Wolves Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation. In any case such instances of wolf surplus killing is minuscule compared to the yearly count of ungulates lost to wounding by hunters and never recovered, not to mention poaching. If we want to make a real impact on elk and deer numbers, stop poaching, oh wait, maybe I should say surplus killing by humans where typically only the front and hind quarters, or antlers, are taken and nothing else
Yes, wolves do kill their prey. This is what predators do. Why does Mike seem so surprised at this?
I have some photos of wolf killed elk, deer, and one bighorn that I would be happy to share. They show how little goes to waste in an environment where humans are not around to interfere in the consumption process. Ralph, let me know if you are interested in these and I will email them to you…
Well, speaking as a naturalist, my question is, what is new or unusual about these photos?
Assuming that wolves are responsible for these killed animals, which is assuming a lot, since we don’t know the source of them, except for the feedground photos–which I recognize as having been taken three years ago by renegade rancher Dan Ingalls from Fremont County, Wyoming and splayed across the pages of the Casper Star Tribune to titillate the public with “nature red in tooth and claw”–there is nothing out of the known range of wolf behavior in these photos.
To those people who express horror at the wounds that prey suffer in predation, whether from wolves or any other predator, I try to point out that wolves weren’t issued high powered rifles with which to do their killing. They have to use their teeth; that’s what those teeth evolved to do. No mammal predation is “clean and sanitary.” It’s not an operating room; it’s a bloody, messy, gory business. And it is also natural, and has been a natural event for millions of years.
During my over 40 years as a hunter, I have also seen deer and elk gut shot, dragging entrails, limping along on three legs because one’s been shot off, blinded by a bullet, and other brutal wounds inflicted by hunters who never bothered to follow their quarry to the end and where left to die. I have seen hawks and owls blasted out of trees or the sky for nothing more than being hawks or owls. I have seen foxes, coyotes, and even wolves that have been poisoned by pesticides. One wolf I saw in the Yukon that had been illegally poisoned with Thimet,a neurotoxin used as a pesticide, had suffered such spasms that its jaws had cracked before it died.
When we compare what humans are capable of doing, and have done to animals, and what animals do to themselves, I can only say that when we call “nature red in tooth and claw,” it’s more our nature than theirs we are describing.
A comment on the feedground photos. These photos were pretty much staged to support the Wyoming G&F Department’s complaint about wolves “disrupting feedground operations.” It is not clear that all these elk that were dragged to the road for all the snowmobilers going up the Gros Venre road to gawk at with “horror” are wolf kills, as opposed to elk that died of other causes and were wolf or coyote scavanged. We do know that the number of wolf kills on the feedgrounds have been comparable to the number of wolf kills in free-ranging herds. Nothing new there.
As for “disrupting feedground operations,” wolves are guilty as charged. Good for them. The feegrounds are an absolute disgrace, not to mention a tragedy for the disease hazards they pose.
I also wonder about the claim that a wolf or wolves killed the bighorn sheep ram that is pictured. We’ve known since Adolph Murie’s classic study of the natural history of wolves in Mt McKinley (now Denali) National Park, that wolf predation on sheep is minimal since sheep are hard to run down, or more accurately, to run up. Up north, I myself have seen wolves try to go after Dall Sheep; sheep run uphill and leave wolves dragging with their tongues out. Most wolves leave sheep alone for that reason. They’re too hard to catch. Individual wolves do learn to hunt sheep from above, and in that case, it’s all over but the eating.
It’s not a good photo, but from the looks of that ram’s horns, it was a fairly old ram and he probably wasn’t long for this world anyway.
And so, the only story that these photos are telling, assuming the photos are legitimately photos of what wolves have done, is the story of evolution in action. As the poet Robinson Jeffers once wrote, “what but the wolf’s tooth whittled so fine the fleet limbs of the antelope?” Well, it was probably the American cheetah’s tooth that whittled the pronghorn’s fleet limbs, but we have to grant some poetic license to an ecological truth.
None of the photos appear to be wolf kills to me.
The only thing I can surmize from the poor angles are domestic dogs or humans. The feed lot photos appear to be just plain gutted out,like they died from something and the DWS came and gutted them out to save the meat. Which is something WOLVES DO NOT Do Leaving the carcuss intact. Wasting perfectly good meat in the middle of winter. HELLO!!! Where are the TRACKS??? Humm, no birds, coyotes, eagles, cougar? The big horn does it have a tag? I call bull shit!
I am especially impressed with one thing Robert Hoskins wrote: “it’s more our nature than theirs we are describing.”
I have often thought that people look at some wolf behavior and see a glimmer of themselves or of those they know, and it is hard to look at.
What I find so interesting is that often the same people that appear to be so outraged at the killing of “their” deer – or whatever – by a native predator are likely the strongest supporters of things like the senseless war in Iraq.
First off koolaid drinkers, these are all Wolf Kills and they are sport killed big game animals.
These animals were killed by Wolves and left for dead. They were not, nor were they going to be consumed at any time.
Ralph naturally left out the part of my Email that stated these were Wolf kills for some self fulfilling reason.
This goes to show that Wolves kill not only for food but for Fun. It has been documented and the pictures are posted here.
This debunks Ralph’s prior comment that Wolves do not sport kill.
“You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink”
Mike S. – So what you are saying, then, is that wolves are like humans – they kill for sport too? Interesting connection…
And I just have to add one thing about the last photo … the supposed wolf-wounded elk …
How many (it is dozens by now) of times have I seen a seriously limping buck antelope in the middle of the Owyhee Desert … following the Great White Archery Hunter sets up blind on stinking cow pond in the Owyhee desert — antelope season.
Does the Mike who sent these photos also think that the Hunter shooting and wounding an antelope just trying to get a drink is some kind of savage creature, too???
Here’s the links to the so called “BullShit” Denise and all you other nonbelievers.
Read the truth, see the truth.
Enjoy.
Robert, Here’s your old sick Ram link.
http://www.aws.vcn.com/alaska.html
Here’s a link to Hamstrung Elk that Ralph said was too small to post.
http://www.wildlife-enhancement.ca/Whats%20New_6.htm
http://www.mtmultipleuse.org/ENDANGERED/wolf_pics.htm
Ok, Mike. These multiple links were caught as “spam.” I have now unspammed them, and I am irritated plenty. I spent an hour making a fresh page from scratch, and you could have just posted the links.
Waste my time again like this, and you are out of here. Now, however, I can see why some of the photos looked weird. That’s a Dall sheep!
webmaster.
Matt,
Now you’re getting it, Wolves do sport kill.
At least one of you understands.
Naturally my links comments and links to the sites where these pictures are posted has not showed up here.
I wonder why that is. It was posted between comments 11 and 12.
Mike, WordPress’s program picks up multiple links in posts as spam. I just found you comment’s in the spam box. I will unspam them.
Posters should know that multiple links in posts are caught as spam.
Ralph
Maybe the website gustapo will let me post these this time.
Here you go Denise.
http://www.aws.vcn.com/alaska.html
http://www.wildlife-enhancement.ca/Whats%20New_6.htm
OK, It looks to me like these photos are just various odds and ends collected from around the world. The keepers of the web pages think they will shock people because they are ugly and somehow prove that wolves did it and did it for sport.
Ralph,
You’re spending to much time “preaching to the Choir”
You can portray these websites however you like but the facts are there for all to see.
These photos must be fabricated or photoshopped right?.
Could it be that these are extremely rare instances when Wolves have actually commited the act of sport killing and a human just happened to be there to catch it on film?
Not likely.
Now that you have put the “facts” in the context from where they came, I do think everyone can see.
Ok, Mike. These multiple links were caught as “spam.” I have now unspammed them, and I am irritated plenty. I spent an hour making a fresh page from scratch, and you could have just posted the links.
Waste my time again like this, and you are out of here. Now, however, I can see why some of the photos looked weird. That’s a Dall sheep!
I posted the links how is that wasting your time?
Oh I guess I should have know that multiple links would be known as “Spam”
Kick me off if you need to.
I think your wanting me off of this site has more to do with the fact that I’m proving you wrong once too often and that’s getting to you a bit and nothing to do with you having to unspam my posts.
“Now that you have put the “facts” in the context from where they came, I do think everyone can see.”
I asked you if you wanted the links earlier when I sent you the pictures and you replied to that.
I told you they were “indeed” Wolf kills and you post them as “photos of killed elk, also a deer buck, and a bighorn ram”
Notice to all commenters. This site automatically marks your comment as spam if you include more than 2 links in a comment. I don’t see your post unless I happen to look in the spam box which may have a couple hundred real spam messages in it — I might never find it.
webmaster.
There´s a old saying: Nature knows no good or bad, only humans do (do they really?). Fun killing? Hard to believe! There must be something more behind it. If you dig the web deep enough, you will find all these weird pictures you want, originals or faked ones, in the correct context or not. Somebody alway has a nice and tasteful collection posted and captioned in the exact sense you want it. Everyting is fact of course, even the great chainsaw massacre. And by the way, it was GESTAPO not GUSTAPO.
Mike, why do you assume that these are sport kills. Were they observed from time of death until decomposition? Who is to say that wolves/coyotes/bear etc didnt return to feed after the pics were taken? Were these taken in high traffic areas (near or on roads)?
The problem with Mike S. is that he clearly isn’t a naturalist and doesn’t know what he’s talking about; he doesn’t know the difference between a fact and a lie, consciously, but he’s clearly more comfortable with the lies that increase his comfort level.
It’s damn difficult to look at a photo of a dead animal and determine what killed it. Technically speaking, it helps to observe in person what happened before and after death, as is mentioned above. That’s why when ranchers make a claim that a wolf has killed a cow or a sheep, it requires a direct assessment of the carcass, for example, looking for examples of bleeding from a wolf attack. How many claims are out there that a wolf has killed an animal and yet there’s no evidence of bleeding, only scavenging?
As an old game warden once old me, for many ranchers, any animal that doesn’t come off the range is automatically chalked up as a predator kill, which automatically goes to the state wildlife agency for compensation, since Ag-dominated state legislatures have decided to be generous with hunters and anglers’ license fees to subsidize ranchers for livestock losses, proven and unproven.
The trouble is, Mike, there are people out here who do know what they’re talking about and what you can’t stand is that they know you’re talking nonsense. If talking nonsense makes you happy, go for it. But don’t expect us to believe it.
As an afterthought, I’d like to add a fact established by original social survey research that Stephen Kellert of Yale University conducted for the Fish & Wildlife Service back in the 60s. He found out that of all the different groups of people assessed, and this was done nation-wide, that the people who knew the least about natural history were animal rights activists and sport hunters. As a hunter myself, and a naturalist, I’ve always found this fact interesting. It adds color to the claims made by many hunters and hunting organizations about wolves and other predators.
More interestingly, the people who knew the most about natural history were trappers. During my time in northern Canada, I had the opportunity to meet and talk with many trappers, both native and white. I’ve rarely been more impressed with peoples’ knowledge of the land and its wildlife.
Something to think about.
I just don’t see why anyone familiar with the outside, hunting, or “nature” gets upset about this? Mike S., can you explain that? Is it waste? Is it that the animals “suffered”? All I see are pictures of nature that are particularly gruesome, but no more so than any that I’ve seen in my time in the backcountry. How can you ascribe some human value to an animal, anyway? Do you expect them to play by our rules? And how can you possibly judge the circumstances of each of those pictures? What happened to prevent the wolf from coming back and finishing them off? Any number of perfecty “natural” things could have. Or maybe not – some things can go unexplained and I am fine with that too. I guess it just shows that it is a tough world, not always fair, sometimes brutal, and often not as majestic and wonderful as a postcard. That’s life in general, though, isn’t it?
Robert, that last comment is very interesting and while I generally don’t think too highly of trapping, the one trapper that I have ever met had such a deep respect and knowledge of the natural world it was hard to not be impressed…
“It’s damn difficult to look at a photo of a dead animal and determine what killed it”
Especially when there are Wolf tracks surrounding the animals that were killed.
Now we can’t trust the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game either right?
“Mike, why do you assume that these are sport kills. Were they observed from time of death until decomposition? Who is to say that wolves/coyotes/bear etc didnt return to feed after the pics were taken? Were these taken in high traffic areas (near or on roads)?”
Wolves not Bears or Coyotes!!!!
“I just don’t see why anyone familiar with the outside, hunting, or “nature” gets upset about this? Mike S., can you explain that”
Who’s upset?
I am merely showing some of you here that this “sport Killing” by Wolves does happen and quite often.
“And how can you possibly judge the circumstances of each of those pictures”
Who’s judging anything? I’m merely showing the photos and the links.
I know everything thats show support of Wolves doing anything wrong is OK with you guys. I get it.
Watch out for the black Helicopters too.
I am not saying that these are not wolf kills. I am asking you how you know wolves or other carnivores would not have returned to eat the animals. Take your blinders off and privide some real answers for a change instead of generalizations.
want to see something truly scary, go to Rocky mountain National park, and look at what the deer and elk have done by over grazing, or watch one of these animals die slowly from some disease, suffering over a period of time.
Thats much more disturbing than any of these pictures
Regarding trapping and the realities of the natural world, I offer this quotation from John Haines’ book of essays, The Stars, the Snow, the Fire.
“The plain vocabulary of this woods-lore [of trapping] hardly conceals a native harshness. Sooner or later the thinking man considers the barbaric means of what is plainly a kind of murder: the steel jaw and the wire noose, the choking and the crushing, the cutting and tearing of the wet skin from the cold body of the dead beast. And the end in view: selling the fur so that others may be rich and clothed beyond their natural right.
“In all that hardness and cruelty there is a knowledge to be gained, a necessary knowledge, acquired in the only way it can be, from close familiarity with the animal hunted…
“So much can be said about it from one conviction or another, the attitudes easily become partisan and intractible. There is the coarseness too often found in those who follow the trade, especially when mere cash is the end in mind. And yet to some fortunate individuals there have been few things more deeply attractive than this seasonal pursuit of the wild. It is life at its fullest, uncertain and demanding, but rich with expectation. The wilderness is open, and whoever enters it knows the satisfaction of being at ease in a country that he calls his own.”
Haines goes on to say: “I ran a trapline periodically for over twenty years in interior Alaska. That old persistant dream, fed by the old tales, the worn books: to be alone in the snow with my dogs, tending the traps and snares. The trail before me, and the life of the animals I sought, secret and apart from my own.”
Haines, trained as a painter and one of the best American poets of the last half century, just as Robinson Jeffers was one of the great American poets of the first half of the century, both as naturalists and thinkers, strikes the core of what is otherwise the setting of partisan bickering among people who know little about how the world works, especially the natural world.
Rarely has trapping, or the use of the land in general, had such an eloquent spokesman as Haines. (Indeed, of all who write about the land, Haines has no peer as a prose stylist or thinker. Most of what we think of today as nature writing is pabulum). Haines tells us there is a moral element to land use, a secret as well as moral knowledge that must be paid for by experiencing its harshness as well as its beauty without losing respect for either. Part of that moral stance toward the land is the understanding that life eats life; life must kill to live. The ultimate intuition of natural life and living is that what happens happens, and that one must respect and accept that. From that respect for life as it is, in those who think about it–and human beings have been thinking about from the first stirrings of human consciousness–comes respect for how we use life for our own living. That, for what it’s worth, is the heart of any land ethic, as Aldo Leopold so clearly understood.
You see this respect and awe for living and dying plainly in the cave paintings of France and Spain. Some of these paintings date back 30,000 years.
Those old hunters, trappers, and gatherers were much more sophisticated than we are today.
This is why the hatred of wolves so rawly exhibited in many media from some politicians, bureaucrats, ranchers, hunters, etc., is unacceptable and intolerable; there can be no compromise with it, any more than there could be any compromise with the segregationists of the South who opposed civil rights. One cannot oppress life for long, one cannot disrespect life for long.
Among these people there is no respect for life and the challenges of living, which require both giving and taking. Where there is no respect, there is only taking, taking, and more taking.
This land is being “taken” to death by those who do not deserve to go onto the land.
“I know everything thats show support of Wolves doing anything wrong is OK with you guys.”
This statement illustrates just what I was saying that you don’t seem to understand. Wolves do not know right or wrong. That is a human value. Even *if* they “sport kill”, who are we to say that it is wrong? It just doesn’t mesh with your values, but we all know there are plenty of humans who hunt for the sport of it. It always made me wonder why we call the animals we hunt “game”.
To quote John Mellencamp, “people believe what they want to believe when it makes no sense at all”. Find a dead animal, take a photo, and say wolves killed it. By that logic any dead ungulate anywhere must have been killed by wolves. How wonderful it must have been for deer and elk prior to wolf reintroduction! I can picture all ungulates dying peacefully in their sleep in only the finest of nursing homes. Anyone familiar with nature (including human nature) realizes how brutal life and death is for wildlife. The photos and commentary on the links provided offer alot of opinion, but no facts. Facts would include things like: amount and location of hemorraghing, bruising, broken bones, and canine puncture wounds. Even the presence of wolf fur, scat, or tracks (while not conclusive in itself) would lend some informed basis to a determination beyond a hatred of wolves. Wolves may have killed all those animals or they may have killed none. Death isn’t pretty no matter what the cause. It gets tiresome having to sort through hyperbole and opinon to reach the facts about wolves, but let’s all keep trying.
Just one question (asked with tongue firmly planted in cheek): When Governor Otter shoots that first wolf, will he be “sport killing,” or is he going to eat it? ^..^
Interesting reference made by Mike S. to the “Gustapo”[sic].
Aren’t they the ones who killed 6 Million people?
Ours is a species that lives figuratively in a “Glass House”. And you know what they say about “Glass Houses.”
You’re in serious need of a life, or at least a date, Mikey.
Another point. During my time up North, I did not find the Alaska Dept. of Fish & Game to be particularly credible regarding truths about wolves and wolf predation. The attitude of the Alaska Board of Game and many in the Department toward wolves is pretty much the same execrable attitude of Montana’s Dept. of Livestock toward wild bison, which, when you think about it, doesn’t reflect much ecological awareness or respect either.
In a nutshell, here’s what’s going on in Alaska and northern Canada with wolves, moose, and caribou. It is essential to take into account the impact of development on natural ecological functioning and population dynamics over the decades. Beginning with the construction of the Alaska Highway in 1943, the construction of a network of roads and two tracks running off the Highway from northern British Columbia through the Yukon and into Alaska over the last 50 years has been devastating to wildlife, particularly to their migrations.
For example, woodland caribou of the Alaskan and Yukon interior used to migrate long distances. There is a small village in the southern Yukon called Carcross–that stands for Caribou Crossing–where caribou used to cross the upper Yukon River. It was a major hunting site for Natives in pre-settlement days. With the building of the Alaska Highway, other roads and highways soon followed. Their impact has been to block the major migrations, essentially locking caribou populations into specific areas.
Caribou no longer cross the Yukon River at Carcross.
This inability to migrate, coupled with the easier access to their remaining habitat from roads and trails, has resulting in an intolerable demand from more and more hunters for more and more moose and caribou.
Where wolf control has and is still taking place, it is only in areas fragmented by the Highway and its network of roads and trails. This is especially the case in the game management units between Anchorage and Fairbanks. This area is covered with roads and crawling with ATVs and snowmobiles. Here is where there is no tolerance for wolves.
Therein lies the problem. There is excessive demand for moose and caribou, especially moose, from urban and suburban Alaskans from both Anchorage and Fairbanks, and, before the current Iraq war, from personnel from the military installations outside those cities.
The average hunter from Anchorage or Fairbanks thinks the State owes him a moose every year, and by the way, the State also owes him easy access to moose. This narcissistic demand for moose has gotten so bad that three years ago, the Department, thinking for a change, came up with a proposal to guarantee moose licenses to hunters who would promise to be wilderness hunters, which essentially meant giving up their ATVs. The thinking was that there’d be fewer hunters in the areas where these “wilderness licenses” were targeted.
However, as you might expect, the howling from Anchorage hunters was heard all the way down here in Wyoming. These people think God gave them the right to drive their RVs to the hunting areas and then to drive their ATVs all through the area to get a moose. They also think God gave them the right to an easy moose so they could get back to the RV for a beer and TV every night.
Hell, they might as well live and Boise and hit the canned hunting establishments of Idaho.
Alaska’s “wilderness license” proposal was dropped.
In short, the problem with wolves, moose, and caribou is in fact a problem caused by people who are determined to take everything and give nothing. Many Alaskans, having no sense of restraint, in a kind of Romanesque bread and circuses fantasy, kill off wolves to assuage their anger for not finding a moose.
“It’s damn difficult to look at a photo of a dead animal and determine what killed it”
Especially when there are Wolf tracks surrounding the animals that were killed.
Now we can’t trust the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game either right?
Wolf tracks do not a kill make…they do also scavenge. Just because there are wolf tracks around it does not mean they killed. You need to look more closely to determine a kill. Maybe the next person who came along saw human tracks and thought a person killed it. These pictures certainly do not tell the whole story. And how about the fact that if the wolves did kill it, they left it when the snowmobiles came along?
Mike (reference post #2)
I will take the input of all those gentlemen who have spent lifetimes studying wolf ecology as to the incident and frequency of Surplus killing,(still a shaky concept) and having said all that, the only question that remains in regards to your posts is; ‘so what?’
In the post #28, Robert Hoskins wrote: “Among these people there is no respect for life and the challenges of living, which require both giving and taking. Where there is no respect, there is only taking, taking, and more taking.”
The “no respect” is so true. I recall seeing a pickup truck in Salmon Idaho with a freshly killed deer splayed out in the back, it’s head facing outward, blood still dripping. As if the driver of the rig, wanted to say: “Take that you bear huggin’, granola eatin’ worthless people. I’m a REAL man a I got my barr.” Similarly, coyotes are killed in horrible ways and hung on barbwire fences to further state who is in control of Idaho’s wildlife (ranchers, predator foes and trappers).
If delisting goes through, it will the beautiful wolf whose head is put on a stick and paraded through the streets of Boise, much to the cheers of Governor Otter, the Game Commission, and most of our legislators. I hope those reading this blog will help fight delisting by supporting wolf conservation groups and also by sending a stream of letters to Idaho’s newspapers protesting the pending wolf slaughter.
Both Robert Hoskins and Jordan have expressed exctly what will surround any wolf hunting in Idaho. You don’t have to spend much time on BLM or Forest land, or at an IDFG game check station in Idaho during any hunting season to know exactly what will happen. There is no end to the displays of machismo and savergy that will occur.
In fact, working in check stations and dealing with this all has prompted several FG biologists I’ve known to give up big game hunting, and some all hunting altogether.
Nothing is too big or small to make a display of savagery with – from dead sage grouse stacked on top of a metal toolbox in the back of a pickup bouncing down the road in Owyhee County to dead black bears prominently lashed onto giant pickups parked by hotels along the main road in Arco … and endless coyotes hung on rancher fence posts …
Ahhhhh, Nature is so cruel…if you apply human social standards to wildlife….I have been a hunter and worked for a private big game hunting outfit, working security and checking trespass permits. I have seen many, many animals shot just because it moved by people calling themselves “sportsmen”, and just as many wounded and suffering by hunters that can’t shoot straight or do not know how to track. Now, that is not just cruel, it’s evil. I have enjoyed being a responsible outdoorsman for several decades. I also have enjoyed watching wolves, and believe that the balance of nature was served when they were reintroduced despite the big game outfitters and organized livestock organizations that fought against it out of their self interests. I can see that in some ways the wolf reintroduction was more successful than many expected. I think that human encroachment into wildlife habitat causes the need to manage and to control wildlife to minimize disease and predator vs. development conflict. And for the record …elk feeding lots should be stopped and anyone grazing on my public lands should be charged much more. I see what uneducated but well meaning “enviro’s” (I guess is the tag we use to insult) did in California for which the consequences is coyotes in the suburbs, and even the cougars taking dogs out of peoples yards here where I live. I can see that there should be some control of wolves in some areas as well. However….the stories generated from ignorance and hate, to influence others to join their side to hate and eradicate.. and pass laws certainly sponsored by money from outfitters and livestock organizations and supported by further by generating public fear, worries me when I see the intention is not to manage and control, but the first step to ‘kill em all’. I have seen slow deaths from predators to…but then I watch National Geo and found out that’s why we call it nature.
What is this supposed to prove? That wolves kill elk? I think we already knew that! From what I have observed, wolves will make a kill, eat, leave, return hours later or the next day, eat more etc. I have watched wolves return to a kill a week later when virtually no meat was left and gnaw on the bones. Now, when humans descend on the kill, photographing it, moving it, leaving their scent around it, I can understand why the wolves might not return. This doesn’t make it a “sport” kill, it makes it “smart” wolves.
As for the internet: if you search long enough you can “prove” any theory you may have. If you want evidence that the world is flat you can find it. I recently found a website with photos similar to these that claimed that the carcases were left by human hunters and that up to 40% of animals shot by human hunters (especially bow hunters) are left to suffer and die a slow death. I didn’t believe that either, because I don’t believe it’s true. At least I hope that it isn’t.
Wolf kills are no prettier than human kills are no prettier than wolf kills. When you take an animal’s life, there is blood. This is nature and it is perfectly normal. Seeking to make a point with bloody carcass pictures says more about the person that posts them than about wolves. Wolves and humans are predators and predation is often a bloody business. No big deal.
Re. my comment #36, I meant to say it was a black bear, not a deer on display in the pickup bed in Salmon ID.