Is hunters orange enough?
Yesterday Montana’s controversial wolf hunt came to an end as the years quota’s for the various hunting units were met; two weeks before the official seasons end.
I did however take the precautionary step of protecting my good friend with some blaze orange on the final day just in case. Nature has imbued my friend with many characteristics that could mistakenly put him in the cross hairs with his new neighbor, the wolf. While the season is officially closed I’m sure there will be some who will have their own personal extended season so my side kick will have to don this unglamorous garb till the coast is clear- from hunters that is.
Probably more disconcerting is the possibility of becoming an hors d’oeuvre on the wolves dining menu. Coyotes and Mountain Lions have long been known to move in the fringes of the human habitat and become easily habituated to easy food sources, garbage, pets and yes; humans. Poor taste aside for the “song dog” and the lions, are wolves really so selective that humans are off limits as a food source and somehow above their wild colleagues?
It’s been a long held and strongly defended belief (especially in the current wolf publicity campaign in the US) that wolves do not attack humans. Maybe us “yanks” have just been lucky so far. I happened upon some interesting reading via Save Elk, a site supported by a group of citizens in Idaho whose aim is saving the ungulate population from excessive wolf predation. The articles, reprinted by Tom Remington relate the story of Kenton Carnegie, a geological engineer who was killed and eaten by a pack of wolves in Saskatchewan, Canada. The original piece, “Death By Wolves And Misleading Advocacy. The Kenton Carnegie Tragedy”, was written by Valerius Geist, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science, The University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada. No, not an alias of one the brothers Grimm.
Are you shitting me? A government agency that “may” have to haze the wolves with firecrackers and a whack job enviro that wants me to clap my hands in front of my face to scare the naughty ‘ol wolves away? I don’t know which idea is worse but hey, knock yourselves out guys- dinners on you. If it comes to that for me and my pal I think we’ll just follow our natural instincts and use a bigger stick and head home for supper ourselves.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Wolves aren’t endangering the elk population. How could the elk have survived millennia of wolf predation, only to now fall victim to the few big bad wolves that have returned to their former stomping grounds? The idea that wolves are about to kill off all of the ungulate populations (whether elk or white tail deer here in the Midwest) is complete nonsense.
As for wolves attacking humans…give me a break. Far more people die from coconuts falling on their heads. Let’s kill all palm trees!
Elk were, and wolves also to a large extent, originally a prairie animal and were only limited by what the prairie could sustain. Habit loss has pushed the elk into confined areas, mainly the mountains, forests, and prairie transition areas of the west where they have become more concentrated and thus more susceptible to predation. The same goes for deer. Pronghorn antelope for obvious reasons have not made that transition.
As for the few “big bad wolves” you mention returning to their “former stomping grounds”, in my small corner of Montana a pack was removed last year that had thirty members. Even management agencies didn’t know for sure how many wolves were involved until they had become a problem with livestock. There are still more wolves in the same area. This story is getting repetitious all over the west. In this same area elk and deer populations have plummeted over the last few years. And no, winters have not been bad.
Even in the journals of early explorers like Lewis and Clark, large packs of wolves were never mentioned and they were never noted in the mountainous regions of the west.
I suggest that maybe we reintroduce a few wolf packs to your area of the mid west and let them run loose and basically unregulated for a few years and see if you still hold on to your current opinions. You obviously missed the point about wolves killing people and did not read any of the material that went along with the post. The premise that wolves won’t kill people is a false one, it’s a proven fact that they do and will in areas where wolf and human habitat overlap. However, if you would like to prove otherwise you could make a trip to Wollaston Lake in northern Saskatchewan and see what the wolves think about your chances of a coconut falling on your head.