BrutalAttack, thanks man! You're speaking my language. I've been making many of your same points for a while now. (I made the one on the degradation of Idaho's elk habitat long ago. I studied under James Peak at the U. of Idaho, and back in the '70s he wrote his first paper predicting a coming decline in ID elk numbers. Wolves weren't even a gleam in a tree hugger's eye back then.) It's like throwing rocks in a pond trying to splash out all the water, it just makes no impact at all.

I live in the Bitterroot valley where we have record elk numbers and record calf:cow ratios. We also have wolves running around all over the place. You walk in to the local cafes, and the talk is all about how the wolves are wiping the elk out here. There's just a total disconnect between reality and people's perception. I recently had a set-to with a family friend who, in his own words, "haven't picked up my bow all season, haven't even bothered to go out". Yet this guy can tell me, who is out in the woods almost literally all the time, that me and the Fish and Game don't know anything. The elk are on the path to extinction.

I recently saw some of these wolves that everybody knows just kills stuff and leaves it lie. These wolves were in the middle of an elk haven, and I interrupted them in mid-attack on a cow elk. (True story - one I'll tell in full someday.) Anyhow, I got a really good look at these ravenous killers. Their body frames were comparable to German Shepherds, but they were carrying about 10-20 lbs. less body weight than a domestic dog would be packing. They looked lean as hell, basically healthy but VERY lean. Now, if these things run around killing things and leaving them lie, then we have a new line of bull for the antiwolf slobber-slinging brigade. WOLVES ARE STUPID! They ought to at least eat enough of all their abundant kills to not look like anorexic runway models.

I'll say again, I think the key is habitat. Predators are seconday. Give'em good habitat and they will thrive. We're coming off the fires of 2000 here, and the elk are fat, happy, and abundant.