Originally Posted by
AK Jeff
On the contrary tango, you're actually the one who's always crying wolf on this board, with very little if anything useful to contribute. Your assertion that the hunters in MT/ID/WY aren't "real" hunters because they're fighting back against the wolf lobby is preposterous. Everybody understands that the wolf is there to stay and that's a fact. What they're tired of is this ****amamie puppet show that is being perpetuated by outside interests. What it has left the states with is a game of continual litigation, abrupted hunting seasons, and hunting quotas that don't even come close to controlling a wolf population that is now nearly six times the recovery goal that was established when they were first reintroduced. It's clearly a game that is being used as a tactic to force out the western big game hunting and ranching interests with the wolf as the primary tool. The groups like Defenders of Wildlife know full well that once the wolf is classified as common game and controlled that their agenda is going to have to take another route.
Now you seem to think that you're so high and mighty over there in BC because you live around wolves, so I decided I'd take a few minutes to look over the provincial hunting regs there. What I found was the following, bearing in mind I'm not claiming to be an expert I just caught on to the obvious. BC doesn't charge a license fee for residents to shoot wolves. In fact they were the only big game species listed that didn't have a tag fee. In general the season length was quite lengthy, from approximately September well into the following spring. The limit was most commonly 3 wolves per person, and in some areas there was no closed season below 1,100 meters in elevation. So the bottom line is you have exponentially more opportunities to keep wolf populations in check up there, which is all that the states want as well. Now seriously tell me that you wouldn't be in the slightest bit perturbed if some group out of Ottawa sued saying that out of the blue your wolves are "endangered" even though there isn't a shred of evidence to support that. Then imagine that your hunting opportunities for wolves were slashed and you had to stand by idly and watch their numbers climb to levels well exceeding recovery goals, and the same said group still claimed they were "endangered." Would you seriously want to have to kowtow to that kind of stupidity? That's what they're dealing with south of your border, and you obviously have no first-hand knowledge of it whatsoever.
Well I don't see where I'm claiming to be so high and mighty but for you to suggest that most people on this board are willing to accept that the wolf is here to stay, is a bit disingenuous. Trust me SSS does not mean Sacred, Safe and Secure. It means poacher in BC ..........and Montana.
No where have I advocated not managing wolves and in fact I encourage it, yet some members even here seem unaware that wolves have been hunted and quotas filled already this winter and in their own back yard. Seems to me it is not I that hasn't a clue. Furthermore for RMEF to use phrases such as the wolves impact on elk is comparable to the destruction of the bufallo is simply amateurish, and plays right into the hands of the antis. If the wolves eat a few thousand force fed elk and this is described as "destruction of the herd" what would the antis use to describe the number harvested by hunters. Holocost comes to mind but that may be too tame a description.
As far as any group from Ottawa trying to list wolves as endangered whell I guess thats what we call democracy. In BC every green group around the world is trying to stop our grizzly hunting as unsustainable but that just forces the province to prove otherwise and the bears (which belong to the public) and I benefit from the research.
As first hand expierience...................maybe not so much but there were always lots of elk and wofies in the Flathead River Valley (and grizzlies) just north of the Montana border and I simply can't understand how these same wolves became super wolves killin everything in site simply because they crossed the border. Again another mythe, these wolves always had duel citizenship and are not a franken wolf from Canada.