This is jst a few of many articles I have.
My position on the whole wolf controversy is we had a viable population and was lied to in the beging. I do not want the wolf destroyed only mannaged by the states in question. It is figured by 2010 that we will have wovles in every county in Montana and without managment you think they will not exspand to other states.
If anyone thinks its not a great concern for the future of hunting you are dead wrong period.

With elk tag numbers declining so are hunter numbers, pay close attention because I feel the atnis new what they were doing.

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Elk numbers plummet; wildlife managers respond by regulating hunters

By SCOTT McMILLION, Chronicle Staff Writer
LIVINGSTON -- Elk numbers continue to plummet in the northern Yellowstone elk herd, according to a report released late Tuesday.

The herd is now the smallest it's been since the 1970s.

A Dec. 18 flight by state and federal biologists found 8,355 elk despite "relatively good survey conditions," which means good weather and enough snow to make elk visible from the air.

That's a drop of at least 880 elk, or 9.5 percent, from last year's count of 9,215, when conditions were poor and biologists said they probably missed a lot of elk.

The herd has dropped by an average of 6 percent a year since 1994, when the herd had at least 19,359 elk. That timespan coincides with the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park in 1995.

"Wolves are certainly a primary mortality factor" for elk, said P.J. White, a Yellowstone wildlife biologist.

Another big factor is human predation, especially in the annual Gardiner-area late hunt. But unlike wolves, which are protected by the Endangered Species Act, hunter numbers can be restricted.

Regulating hunting numbers "is the only tool we have" in that area, said Tom Lemke, wildlife biologist in Livingston for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

The late hunt that began last weekend has already been cut in half, and might be pared some more, Lemke said. This year, 1,400 permits were granted, compared to 2,880 in 1997.

Lemke said it's too soon to give any specific numbers, but "it's possible we will reduce them" further in coming years.

"When you have fewer elk, you harvest fewer," Lemke said.

White said the herd size probably will continue to shrink.

"I expect the population will continue to decrease in the near future," he said.

The effect of wolves on elk has become a big issue with some hunters and outfitters in the Gardiner area.

Fewer late-season hunters means fewer people renting rooms, buying meals and hiring guides in that parkside community, where the late hunt has become part of the winter economy.

"It's breaking us," said Bill Hoppe, a Jardine outfitter and a founder of the Friends of the Northern Yellowstone Elk Herd.

He said he has 40 hunters booked this year.

"I used to take 100, sometimes 150," he said. "All the outfitters you talk to are way down."

With the cuts in permits, "that's 1,000 people who didn't come to town," Hoppe said, and most hunters bring a companion.

If each spent $100 in Gardiner, that means $200,000 in lost business, plus the $200 a day charged by guides.

Last year, guided hunters took almost 50 percent of the 718 elk harvested in the late hunt, according to an FWP report.

Hoppe last year predicted a significant drop in elk numbers and said they'll continue to fall.

"What'd I say last year? That we'd be down another 1,000 elk," he said. "Like I told you last year: I told you so."

So how many elk is appropriate for the northern range? People have argued about that for most of a century.

Until 1968, rangers regularly killed hundreds of elk at at time inside the park, keeping the herd to about 3,500 animals, and critics still said the park was overgrazed.

After the National Park Service culling stopped, the herd grew quickly. And the number of hunting permits outside the park grew as well, with the goal of avoiding overgrazing outside the park.

Now, since the return of the wolf, the herd has seen a steady decline.

Nobody knows how it will end.

"We'll continue to monitor it closely," White said.

He noted that wolves aren't the only factor at play.

Preliminary reviews of data collected last summer show that grizzly bears are killing an increasing number of elk calves. Black bears and wolves also kill significant numbers. And weather is always a factor.

But of the three major factors affecting elk numbers -- predation, weather and hunting -- only hunting can be controlled.

White praised FWP for reducing the number of hunters.

I commend them for taking that step," he said.
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Second A

Please dont take this article the wrong way and take time and read it then think about what is happening to a renewable resourse like deer and elk. There may be some harsh statments in this article but you have to live at ground level to see what is happening.

I think I can speak for most sports men and women that we do not want to eliminate any one species just control it so that we have a future in hunting and the outdoors as we seem to be the only managers of wildlife and our dollars go towards protecting and preserving there habitat and the animals.

I have long said that this has been an anti strategy and we will pay in the end by having are rights taken away from us.




By Sheriff Mike Cook

I have talked about the wolf problem before many times. Now I have some real proof that they are killing all our elk and deer. The sad thing is they are now attempting to protect the grizzly and spread it out across the western states also. These large predators will have to eat each other because all the other game except man will be gone and man is much easier prey than other predators.
I said proof and here goes. A friend of mine had a long conversation with me today. This last elk season an old friend of his invited him to go to Idaho into the central part of the state, hunting unit's 10 & 11 if I remember right, and hunt elk. It had been four years sense this person had hunted this area but he had hunted it for 18 years prior to that and had taken big bulls every year in that area and he was very familiar with this area. He also told my friend that there was a lot of elk in that area.

I might add these hunters are the type that get out and walk all day and hunt very hard. They spent three weeks in this area hunting hard and didn't even see an elk, alive that is, and no new elk tracks or sign. They did see about six old wolf kills. My friend said there was wolf tracks around each kill sight and that the elk and one moose had been eaten. He also said that the trails in the area showed that at one time there had been a lot of elk in the area. The trails are starting to grow back over and the only animal tracks were wolves.

This points out quit a story about what is going on, on the ground, in these areas where the wolf has been planted. Anyone who doesn't believe that the wolf will wipe out the elk and deer herd's is either stupid or just plain uninformed. All they need to do is get out in the woods and see it for themselves. This is not the way to balance nature as the lies from the pro-wolf people would have you believe. Another lie, they do not eat only the weak and tired.

The problem is that elk, deer, and moose have lived for generations without predation by the wolf so they don't know how to protect themselves from this big old gray wolf that isn't native to this part of the country any more. They are about a defenseless as a child on the streets alone in New York City without even a weapon. Even if we get this stupid law turned around and once more get ride of the wolf like we should be doing it will take years to help bring back the deer and elk herds. The animal rights people will have put a stop to hunting like they wanted in the first place.

In the January 2004 NRA magazine "American Hunter" there is a very fair article called (Wolf Troubles in the Rockies) that everyone should read. Our hunting and wildlife is very much in danger of being reduced to near extinction. It won't be long before the deer and elk are listed as endangered and the hunting seasons will be stopped. The sad thing is we allowed this to happen. Every hunter and rancher in America should have saddled up and rode into Washington DC and demanded a stop to this stupidity a long time ago. Anyone who supports any of these stupid ideas deserves to be thrown out of office and never voted for again.

We should have a law passed that makes it illegal for anyone to plant or protect a predator and put them in jail for a long time if they do. Until we stand up and demand the same common sense our ancestors had in the law and our rights we will loose this. It may be illegal for them to plant these wolves in the first place and that still needs to be decided.

I want to see a law that protects anyone who shoots a predator and see the bounty laws returned so that people will go out and hunt them down. It seems that if I remember history right the ranchers would pay hunters they called "Wolfers" to go out a rid the range of them to protect the livestock. That needs to be done again.

Here in Oregon we need to demand the law to be changed to allow hunting with hounds and bait again. The deer and elk are being killed by predators and the ones they don't get suffer and die from disease. I look to see our hunting opportunities to be slowed way down here also. We will also have the wolf if we don't march on Salem and demand that they do away with Oregon's Endangered Species Law and to pass a law making it a crime not to shot any Wolf seen in Oregon.

Now I know that a bunch of you whacko Wolf lovers out there will get mad and send me all kinds of dumb e-mail's telling me how stupid my ideas are. To you I say don't even try because you not only don't know what you are talking about, you have nothing valuable to say about it. All you do is call me names and make nothing in the way of justification for your side of this argument. In short you don't have a clue so crawl back in you hole of stupidity and stay there.

To all you others who have a clue and want to do something to save our environment from destruction, not to mention our food supply, please get up and write and call your elected officials and let them know how you feel on this one. Demand the law to be changed now before it is to late.

God Bless America and God Bless our Troops still in harms way.


Michael E. Cook, Coos County Sheriff, Retired.