When will I be able to buy a cow or domestic sheep tag from Fish & Game? We need a major hunter effort to reduce the numbers of these invasive species that have destroyed so much native habitat and that have greatly reduced the numbers of deer, elk, and antelope in our state. Compared to the impact of domestic livestock, the impact of wolf predation on Idaho big game is trivial . . . and no one benefits except a few ranchers who happen to be very influential with the Legislature . . .

Why not eat the wolf meat?

I have hunted most of my life. A mentor taught me the principle that if you shoot it you eat it or find someone who will eat it.

I am older and moving slower now and still think this is a good rule for folks to observe.

Very good, quinx!!

I think the wolf shooters should wear their preys’ skins and heads to the tea party protests at health care town halls. They can call themselves “Wolverines” and claim to defend us all from affordable insurance policies.

Yossarian, fair question for you. The economy is trashed and there’s nothing left to revive. This country has lost its manufacturing base and we had a fake economy for a some time. Once the smoke and mirrors could no longer give the impression that the US has a real economy. Everything has been tanking, such as home values, commercial real estate and people’s investments for their retirements. Reflecting a nation that has no real economy that produces.
My point above is, its going to get far worse and the suffering has in fact just started. Even President Obama has stated many times that unemployment is going to get far worse. I’m not telling you a question but I’m making sure we are on the same page in the real world for my question to you. If you should find yourself and your family between a rock and a hard place with very little food. Are you going to reject some deer, elk or moose meet from a friend? Would you be willing to starve and watch your family starve so these transplanted wolfs can eat all the game food?
You may feel this is all a joke and thats fine, you have that right. But I’ll warn you of one thing, you haven’t seen anything as bad as this economy is going to get.

A biologist friend of mine summed it up pretty succinctly: If you don’t have water, you don’t have fish. And, by extension, if you don’t have land, the right kind of land, you won’t have animals.

Each year we turn more elk and deer habitat into subdivisions and wheat fields. With no place to live, animal numbers decrease.

You can blame the sprawl on dogs, but not on wolves. Commissioners have reduced elk herds far more than canines.

With dog otter shooting a wolf, the guilty will murder an innocent. Truly, a metaphor for Idaho.

Ed, granted there are a few places but nothing that is destroying the herds very survival. Nothing is on going and growing in construction that is the cause of the problem in any regards to even a fraction of the damage the wolf is causing to the herds.
btw/ Jackson Hole is a place where many homes are and that never seemed to effect the elk in that area. In fact the locals used to have to work at making sure there was plenty of hay to feed the starving elk as they came out of the mountains during hard winter snow storms. This was seen as bad by the liberals for interfering with mother nature. But somehow the gray wolf isn’t. You can’t make this stuff up! So the bottom line is Jackson Hole didn’t effect elk population and in fact that elk population grew larger.
Nothing we have “ever” seen in this part of the country has damaged and is destroying the elk (and deer, moose too) herds as this gray wolf has.

Watcher,

The short list begins with developments called Boise, Nampa, Caldwell, and the interconnecting ag land. Deer, elk, and more used to migrate out of the central mountains all the way to the Snake River down toward Marsing and Homedale each winter. Hint, the Lake Lowell area is called deer flat because historically, there were a lot of deer there. Cut off from their winter range, their numbers dwindled.

Emmett used to be prime winter range for deer and elk. Ditto Horseshoe Bend No more. Roads, houses, and hay fields put the kibosh to that. Big game numbers tanked.

There used to be a prime bit of winter range in the Portneuf Valley that was chock full of elk, deer, bison, and the odd grisly bear. They were wiped out by a development called Pocatello.

The wood river valley used to host a plethora of deer and elk each winter. Wiped out by Ketchum, Hailey, and Bellevue.

There was a valley further east originally known as Pierre’s Hole (Close to Jackson Hole.) The early trappers liked to rendezvous there because the big game, mostly elk and deer were so thick. A little development called Driggs, and the surrounding ag land nipped that problem in the bud.

Even where towns are pretty scarce, the impact of non-wolf activities can be severe. The construction of I-84 through Raft River down toward Salt Lake City cut hours of the time it takes to get from Boise to Utah’s capital. It also blocked the migration route of thousands of deer and elk to their winter range in northern Utah. Animal counts plummeted.

And, how about dams. Pick one, just about any one. Diversion, Lucky Peak, Black Canyon, Deadwood, Milner, American Falls, Palisades, and on and on. Most of them destroyed hundreds of square miles of prime bottom land where big game wintered. The feds knew game numbers would plummet when they were built, and built them anyway. (Footnote, most of them have still yet to be mitigated, even though the feds promised to as far back as the 1930s!)

Maybe these things, city’s, roads, dams, and fields, are necessary. As they say, people gotta live somewhere. However, there are better and worse ways to do things.

They knew about, and could have included overpasses and other features in the design of I-84 to facilitate migration. Didn’t.

Most cities could have set a no-build boundary that maintains space for wildlife. It works in Jackson (enforced by the Feds).

Locally, we didn’t have to approve Avimor, Harris Ranch, or the Hammer Flat, all places known as last remnants of good winter range, and where big game will be nevermore as soon as they build out. There were plenty of other places to build that would not have impacted big game, but they approved them anyway.

So, keep it up. Keep ignoring the impact of diminishing habitat. (For homework, go find a cattle rancher and ask him how well his herd would do if he or she had to keep them all winter, without feed, on a side hill, up where the snow is three or four feet deep. (hint, the answer is: Not good. And, it doesn’t work well for deer and elk either.)

Anyway, when you’ve destroyed all the habitat, particularly all the winter habitat, and the game is all gone, remember to blame it on the wolf.

Some of you just don’t seem to get it. Mr. Watcher gives the strongest examples of the argument: Wolves are bad. Subdivisions, paving over the winter feeding grounds in the valleys, the hunters, roads, etc. are basically harmless. Only wolves really kill elk!
There, I’ve said it. Now all you big brave wolf hunters can go shoot those nasty canines and feel good about yourselves, instead of having to admit you’re killing only because you think killing is fun and it makes you feel big.
Well, if Mr. Watcher is right about how the entire country is going straight down the drain and the only way we will be able to feed our families is by shooting elk etc., then y’all had damned well better be eating the wolves you shoot; there is no excuse for wasting meat of any kind. And if, God forbid, any of you get a bit careless and kill another hunter — well, meat is meat!
And while I haven’t been hunting for a while, if it becomes necessary I will do it again — but I will eat what I kill.

The wolf haters are motivated by personal profit. They want the biggest elk reserved for their wealthy out-of-state clients. They make thousands getting a big buck for their rich clients. It’s not about the elk; it’s about their greed.

Blazing Saddle…thank you, thank you, thank you!!! couldn’t have stated that any better myself!