Well first off, having grown up in Alaska, lived a fair share of my life in Washington and Idaho (
working on farms), and now living here in the midwest, I've probably seen more wolves AND more of what wolves
can do than you ever will. So it might be wise to walk a mile in someone
else's shoes before you insert your foot in your mouth and start ripping on them..."bud."
Take a deep breath and read some of this drivel you're parrotting...it's the same thing that everyone else spews with no fact behind it.
"The sky is falling because I saw a wolf...kill 'em all...." It's usually passed from one person to the next with few people actually stopping to consider the veracity of what the hear.
"Stand for"
your deer and elk? You mean "stand for" them so YOU can kill them, right? They're not "our" deer until we legally harvest them. Before that, they belong to the state. That's why we pay for the privelege of harvesting them. But they belong not just to you, but to everyone who is
eligible to harvest them. My wife doesn't hunt, but she pays taxes and votes, so they're her deer just as much yours and mine. So spare me the "stand for 'our' deer" speech. Besides, I'm pretty sure cars kill more deer than wolves do.
So when I see hunters out on I-35 blasting Hondas and Fords, then maybe you'll have a point on that one.
Other than people who already hate wolves saying they didn't get a deer last year
because of wolves (
), I have yet to see any real proof that wolves in MN/WI are doing so much damage to the deer herd that we need to take the law into our own hands (and I certainly don't see any reason to kill an animal inhumanely just for doing what nature bred it to do). And for every person who says the wolves are to blame for his empty freezer, there's another who still kills a deer and ain't complaining at all. But no one seems able to explain that little mystery...
It was the same out west. But now there's delisting, management and wolf hunts and the complaining is dying off - not because they're killing so many wolves and the so-called 'decimated herds' are miraculously rebounding, but because there's nothing more to complain about or to blame. Of course, no one ever thought about the
other factors that affect a successful versus an unsuccessful hunt: weather, terrain, movement of the deer, bad timing, or just crappy luck. And they aren't talking about them now, either.
As for farm animals, you're compensated for that, are you not? The farmers out west were. And pretty fairly. But there are also those guys the DNR wardens are always talking about, getting compensated with taxpayer dollars for every other livestock fatality because you blame ALL of them on the wolves. A DNR guy told me about a common "farmer trick:" kill a wolf and use the severed paw to put wolf prints around every dead cow you find on your land. Easy money. That's called "fraud"....
"bud".
No, I realize you're probably not like that and wouldn't do that, but my point here is that some farmers would and DO. Not to mention poisoning everything under the sun to deter wolves from roaming their land...or being the loudest critics of wolf protection while simultaneously using government land to graze their cattle on (western hypocrites).
I bring this up because using the
"I'm-a-farmer" claim like it's some kind of moral high-ground in the argument for or against wolves isn't gonna fly with me; I've known, worked for, and and lived among enough farmers to know better.
Small children in the yard? Kinda reaching there, aren't you...there's been ONE proven wolf fatality in
all of North America. One. And only just recently. That says it's time for management, not for knee-jerk paranoia and eradication.
I think it's funny that you assume that liking wolves or being a "sympathizer" is such an insulting thing, anyway: I'm a sportsman and I love
wildlife, period: not just the species I can eat, legally kill, or which represent some tangible benefit to me.
I'm also smart enough to understand that advocating killing wolves and making the woods a giant game farm
just for us hunters is never gonna happen, and the more we run our collective mouths about "SSS" and that crap, the more damage we're doing to our own cause. That was my only point in replying in this thread.
Do you want wolves to be protected for another 30 years? With the numbers to
continue increasing from what they are now, with NO management? That's what's gonna happen. Some other environmental group just petitioned the feds recently to have wolves stay on the endangered species list until they can occupy the same range in ALL STATES that they once did. How long will THAT take? How many wolves do you think there will be in the midwest by the time we actually have a viable wolf pack in
Florida???
I like wolves just like I like deer, bears, cats, etc. I feel fortunate to get a deer when I hunt (and I think I've been lucky in my life), but I also know there are other factors at play when I
don't get one. I think wolves should be managed here and I know a lot of people who'd like to hunt them. That's cool with me, as long as it's legal. But whether we like it or not, this is not frontier America, anymore - where wolves were a constant threat to our very survival. The world has changed in the last 100 years, not only in that sense, but in the sense that the people who make and influence this nation's laws are mostly non-hunters: you SHOULD care what environmentalists say, because as loopy as some of them may be (like PETA), most of them are not running around the internet talking about taking the law into their own hands. The more credibility we take away from ourselves, the more ammo we give to them.
Actually, I "get it" enough to know that simply seeing a wolf while walking my dog doesn't mean I need to jump on "kill-all-wolves" bandwagon that a lot of people are so content to ride, blissfully ignorant of what their negative message is doing for their argument