Environment

You Don’t Have To Eat Wolf Meat

When it comes to wolves, we can only assume reader Gordon was asking about the four legged variety of wolves and not the political variety. No doubt the tag and bag limits might be appealing. One could argue both varieties are carnivores.

Q- “If Idaho now has tags, hunting season and limits on wolves, doesn’t that make them a game animal? Since it’s against the law to waste meat of game animals in Idaho, will Gov. Butch eat the wolf he intends to shoot? If not, will F&G arrest him, as the law would seem to require?”

RESPONSE FROM FISH AND GAME–
“If the wolf season becomes reality, the gray wolf will become Idaho’s eleventh big game animal.

Regarding the question about wasting of meat, we will simply refer your reader to Idaho Code Section 36-1202 which prohibits the waste of game animals; but excludes all carnivores except black bear. Although mountain lion and wolves are big game animals, they are carnivores and Idaho Law does not require a hunter to harvest or eat the meat of a mountain lion or wolf.”

Comments & Discussion

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  1. Reminds me of the tin sign I have in my Kitchen “People eat People’s Meat- Peoples Packing, Cincinnati”

  2. 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 . . .

  3. I wonder if he will do it from a helicopter like the wonda from the tundra, Sarah Palin.

  4. Why not eat the wolf meat?

  5. Shucks!
    But thanks for checking it out, Guardian.

    I’ve eaten mountain lion — it’s not bad. Dunno about wolf, though, but suppose it’s edible, since dogs are.

    As for a season, tags, etc., on politicians: I don’t think it’s neccessary; they clearly are predators, and definitely not an endangered species.

  6. 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.

  7. Mr. Watcher
    Aug 21, 2009, 9:38 pm

    Look at real world logic in this matter. For every wolf hunted and killed that will leave how many more times the weight of that wolf in elk, deer and moose meat for others to be able to eat. My hunch is a few hundreds of times more meat and hopefully the females are the ones that get tagged the most. Which will only make it so more elk, deer and moose live and hopefully start regaining their numbers back.
    This federal project has proven itself to be a HUGE mistake in the big picture.

  8. Very good, quinx!!

  9. Mr Watcher you are correct! In the area north of Boise, known as the Sawtooth Zone for elk, the Fish and Game has already reduced the number of Muzzle loader elk tags by nearly 90% and the any weapon tags by over 50%. This amounts to a tremendous loss of revenue to the already strapped Fish and Game. All this to leave enough elk to support the Canadian Wolf. A Wolf that was never native to Idaho.

  10. Yossarian_22
    Aug 22, 2009, 10:28 pm

    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.

  11. Love you, Yossarian! Not sure why.

  12. Mr. Watcher
    Aug 23, 2009, 7:56 am

    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.

  13. Mr. Watcher
    Aug 23, 2009, 8:52 am

    “There is no economy left to recover. The US manufacturing economy was lost to offshoring and free trade ideology,” economist and former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts wrote last month. “The real economy was traded away for a make-believe economy. When the make-believe economy collapsed, Americans’ wealth in their real estate, pensions, and savings collapsed dramatically while their jobs disappeared.” Americans are “over their heads in debt. Jobs are disappearing. America’s consumer economy, approximately 70% of GDP, is dead. Those Americans who still have jobs are saving against the prospect of job loss. Millions are homeless. Some have moved in with family and friends; others are living in tent cities.”
    A good elk stew would fill the bellies of many hunger children. You know its almost like the government willfully is destroying a wild, natural food source for some strange reason. There is zero logic in the ecology balance to have brought that wolf into ID, MT and WY. I strongly believe that wolf was brought to our part of the country for political reasons because nothing else fits sound and logical reasoning.

  14. Blazing Saddle
    Aug 23, 2009, 9:44 am

    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.

  15. Mr. Watcher
    Aug 23, 2009, 6:09 pm

    Blazing Saddle, one quick question: What kind and where is all of this construction in subdivisions that is taking away land for elk. Please provide any links that you have so that I can educate myself because I really need to, if this is the case. The last I understood, construction was way down big time starting from 2007 and yet the elk herds are dropping in huge numbers for all of 2007, 2008 and all of this year. Educate me please, thanks in advance.

    EDITOR NOTE–Just to interject a personal observation. ELKhorn at Sun Valley is a prime example of development on elk range. We have seen dozens if not hundreds of elk there.

  16. Mr. Watcher
    Aug 23, 2009, 7:29 pm

    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.

  17. I wonder how many wolf hunters will get injured, paralized or killed while hunting with ATV’s? Just back from the Atlanta area and it looks to me like Idaho outdoorsman don’t like walking much. ATV’s everywhere.

  18. Blazing Saddle
    Aug 23, 2009, 10:58 pm

    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.

  19. Here we go..I’ll have to say it….It must taste like chicken.

  20. 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.

  21. Either way, I would still shoot one, or for that matter as many as I could to get that dang species that belongs in Canada out of our state since all it is doing is a bunch of no good.

  22. Larry Fortensky
    Aug 25, 2009, 1:51 am

    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.

  23. Mr. Watcher
    Aug 25, 2009, 8:37 am

    Larry, sorry to break your heart but I have never hunted one day of my life. In fact I have only fished as a kid less than ten times. I’m out for what is known as real nature in its right balance and the gray wolf is not in the right balance. You can place false propaganda on people as greedy but the truth is the people behind this are all over the place. Kind of makes me think of liberals who are all for killing babies through abortion but are against capital punishment, makes zero sense. Which is spot on the same as wanting nature to be in a balance to keep Bambi living but is discarded with the gray wolf. Truth be known the gray wolf is a way to attack gun rights because the liberals and/or Marxist believe the Second Amendment is about hunting and sport shooting. So they really believe if they destroy the game there’s no reason for citizens to own firearms. You can’t make this stuff up.

  24. Idaho Born & Raised
    Sep 2, 2009, 1:37 am

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

  25. Blazing Saddle, that was perfect. I was born and raised in Idaho. Brought up as a fisherman and hunter. Taught to eat my kill, every time. Squirrel, deer, elk, you name it.

    I now live in New York (not the city, but the pretty parts). I visit Idaho frequently as I still have family there.

    You know, the city of Boise has grown in size BIG TIME in the last 10 years. But you ask a resident of the city that has been there for 20, and they “don’t see that is has grown much”.

    The problem is everyone in Idaho is on the inside looking out. I am now on the outside looking in.

    My last visit to Idaho, I saw a MOOSE in down town Cascade Idaho. It was only about an hour and a half or so from its normal habitat.

    I saw Elk in McCall. Quite a few of them. More than I ever saw when I was growing up in Idaho.

    I had near misses on the highway for more deer in the two weeks I was there, than in the 8 years I was driving in the state.

    I look at the “numbers” given by the Feds for elk counts in the three states that wolves have been planted in. MT is steady, WY is up, and ID is down slightly.

    But Idaho has also started sprawling out in the towns, with them spreading into animal territory.

    This will, and likely has, effected elk population. Sure, wolves are taking some elk. But the IDF&G killed some 130 or so wolves for “killing livestock”, and those livestock owners were reimbersed.

    From the outside looking in, it see no reason for hunting wolves at this time, other than the same fear of wolves that spurred near extinction of wolves in the northwest to begin with.

    To the hunters, if you get one, eat the meat. A real hunter eats what he kills. The difference between hunting and murdering is that hunting is for a NEED. Need for food, need for the money from pelts etc.

    Are you a hunter or…???

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