Washington State Gray Wolf Management...

[Scot E]

Originally Posted by dook

The introduced Canadian wolves in Western Montana have pretty well decimated the elk populations. The harvest is less than 10% of what it was before the wolves. In 5 years there will be no more elk in Montana.

200 years ago there were no elk in the mountains, they ranged in the plains. After our ancestors wisely exterminated the wolves, sportsmen introduced the elk in the Rockies, which was an overwhelming success, and the elk did no harm to the environment.

In the 80's there were fantastic elk populations and everyone who wanted meat had it in their freezer, plus outfitters made money from out-of-state hunters. It was win-win.

The feds could not stand the idea of gun toting self reliant people filling their freezers for free so they started the:

FEEP. That stands for "Federal Elk Extermination Program". (that's what I call it anyway).

The feds had all the information at their disposal and knew that no elk could survive the wolves in the Rockies because elk and wolves had never co-existed in the mountains before and elk needed sight distance to defend themselves from wolf packs. They knew the introduction of Canadian wolves would decimate the elk and did not disclose this. They also did not disclose that the wolves were diseased with "hydatid". This was a closed door decision.

We have been deceived, folks.

It will be easier to implement gun confiscation after hunting is no longer an American tradition.

Everything is going just as planned!

Can't say I disagree with anything you said. It is a real mess in Idaho too and a sad, sad story. Problem is that our opponents are very well organized and the "good 'ol boys" are busy playing and raising families and we just can't get enough people to wake up to what is really going on. Add to that the feds being either directly involved or at minimum completely clueless and you have a recipe for disaster!

My hope is that this political reawakening to conservative and constitutional principals will also bleed into this topic as well and get some things changed and wake some people up! Like you said though, we don't have much time. Idaho is in real big trouble. Nobody is saying much but if you look at the reduced cow tags, the addition of limited hunters in general hunts, and now they are talking about going to a draw for everything, well it is just a big disaster! I have over 25 years of spring, summer, and fall scouting in 2 completely different areas in Idaho to compare current notes with and it just makes me sick. Where I used to see 200+ cows calving in the spring I saw one yearling cow this year. I could go on with story after story like this!

[dook]

Originally Posted by Scot E

Nobody is saying much

What gets me is that the RMEF and the Mule Deer Foundation won't mention that the Canadian wolves are diseased with hydatid or that the feds knew in advance that elk extermination would be the outcome. These organizations are supposed to be on our side, yet the majority of their members don't understand these important details.
You can look up the word "hydatid" on either one of their websites and get nothing at all.

Another thing everyone needs to understand is that a few wolf tags will not solve the problem. Wolves are extremely difficult to hunt and most of those tags will not get filled if they are ever issued.

The issue is not weather we should be allowed to hunt wolves but weather they should be thinned out by poisoning, which is the only effective solution. It's either that or it's too late for elk in most areas.