Deer and Elk Hunting in Idaho and Montana After Wolf Introduction

[boneaddict]

Different ideas are fine even if they are a bit unsubstantiated.   He came to the right place.   Generally though, as certain types sit there and judge others for being close minded, they are often the ones that have thrown away the key to unlock their minds.   

[wraithen]

I don't want him banned. This guy is great info on what we will have to fight. I say let him stay so we can practice.

[Boss .300 winmag]

No cherry picking going on guys. As I said, I took the first year on each game dept web site and I took the last.  If there was a real problem it would show.  Harvests go up and down naturally and they did so before the wolves. Habitat and severity of winter are the two main limitations of deer.  Habitat and roads are the two biggest ones for elk. 

As for animals being harvested in different areas..... that's the way it's always been. If I hunted the same area of Washington I did 25 years ago, I wouldn't even see a deer let alone harvest one. As habitat changes, you have to change how and where you hunt. Heck, the Panhandle of Idaho hardly had an elk in the days of Lewis and Clark. It took some huge forest fires to create the habitat they needed. Logging mimics fires now days. Hunt that heavy reprod, and you don't have much of a chance. Find the areas with good light to the forest floor and you;re in business.

My only reason for this post is to open some minds. A lot of closed ones with locks on tight.  It's not as bad as you have been told.

Dude have you hugged your tree this am? Why would you want to be PRO WOLF, nothing to be gained from thier reintoduction but mahiem!   

[Pathfinder101]

I don't want him banned. This guy is great info on what we will have to fight. I say let him stay so we can practice.

My thoughts exactly

[Sitka_Blacktail]

Sitka you are so full of it: 

Please expalin IDFG and MFWP own counts in the units affected by wolves like the Bitterroot, Lolo, Northern Yellowstone, Payette, etc?

No effect by wolves eh! 

I never said no effect. I said it's not as bad as you've been told.  There are a lot more issues as far as survival goes that affect deer and elk populations.  The biggest is habitat. Besides all the outside influences that people have on habitat, an unchecked herd of elk or deer can be their own worst enemy. They can literally eat themselves out of house and home and do so much damage that it takes years for recovery.  Go back in history pre wolf introduction and you will see harvest levels rise and fall dramatically in some cases.  It's the classic feast or famine scenario in wildlife.  Good management can level things out a bit and get rid of the high and low curves and make things more consistent.  But there are those who believe you can redline the highs and prevent the lows from happening. That won't happen. Eventually the highs take too much toll on the habitat and everything falls apart. Then the recoveries take longer.  Wolves and other predators can actually help prevent some of that. A healthy herd that is trimmed naturally tends to throw more twins. Females in stressed herds that have maxed out their habitat tend to have singles. Take out too many males through hunting and you get females that don't get bred on top of it and it's a double whammy to the herd. So if you have habitat issues in a certain area, it's crazy to think you can keep hunting the males hard taking the same amount of animals year after year and protect the females and somehow the herd will bounce back. You end up with a bunch of old cows and few males to breed them. So it's better to disperse the hunting to other areas where the habitat is better. Instead of saying "I've always killed my animal in unit xxx and I should be able to forever", hunters should be saying "Where can I hunt that will have the least impact while the animals in Unit xxx recover".  And."what can I do to help unit xxx recover"? Maybe support road closures, promote sound logging practices, maybe temporarily reduce predator numbers, maybe reduce the number of bulls taken in that unit, etc. , but when the habitat comes back, numbers will increase. It's happened time and again and there's no two ways about it.

If you think insulting people who disagree with you is gonna change that fact, you're living in a dream world.

As to the Lolo zone, here's some reading for you. Go down to page 22 and start with the historical perspective then the habitat issues, then the biological issues. This zone has had a problem since the late 80's. That is before wolves were introduced. Poor calf recruitment. That speaks to habitat issues. Have wolves added to the problem there? Probably. But until habitat issues are addressed, it's not going to matter much.  Interesting to note, historically, that unit had few elk.

https://research.idfg.idaho.gov/wildlife/Wildlife%20Technical%20Reports/Elk%20Statewide%20PR10.pdf

[Bob33]

We are not necessarily going to ban someone simply for having opposing views on the wolf issue.

There are hunters that are pro wolf.  I honestly don't understand that myself, but I know some.

[Bean Counter]

I don't think they should be extinct. I'm guessing some do?  I kinda liked them on the brink of extinction though 

[Machias]

If they make the herds so healthy then why is Alberta about to whack 6000 of them?  It's because left unchecked they create their own havoc.  Proper management of all species, keep the damn politics out of wildlife management.  And you have to include hunters in the equation, no matter how bad the left wants man out of the woods completely.  If deer and elk numbers were destroying their habitat prior to the wolves then it's the Fish and Game's fault for not liberalizing seasons to bring those herds back to proper levels.

[CedarPants]

Besides all the outside influences that people have on habitat, an unchecked herd of elk or deer can be their own worst enemy. They can literally eat themselves out of house and home and do so much damage that it takes years for recovery. 

Would it be fair to say that wolves do this exact same thing? 

[wraithen]

Sitka, proper management is what we don't have and why we are all up in arms about this. Of course any animal can overpopulate an area and then crash when resources are gone. Us hunting curbs that. When the population increases it is more likely that we will have an easier time harvesting them. What is good about the management plan we have for wolves? I'm curious to know which points you side with.
As for the ungulates benefiting from another apex predator, this is only true in specific circumstances. The apex predator can also spread disease around just as easily as picking out the weak ones and basically eating away the disease.
The population used poisons on a massive scale combined with constant hunting and trapping to eradicate the wolves. There aren't many animals that could stay around as long as the wolf with that kind of pressure. People aren't advocating that here anyway. Wolves are good at staying away from people as long as they are kept in check. The more people try to see them the more used to people these animals will become if we don't keep them in check. The wolf lovers will create an atmosphere that could become dangerous and needlessly have disastrous consequences. Once that happens the pendulum will swing the other direction and people will push closer for eradication again.
Instead we need to keep these animals in numbers that work for the wild, not against them. We have some great areas for wolves in this state that nobody would worry about what they did and they wouldn't receive a lot of pressure. These areas that aren't disputed are also probably the last ones that will have wolf tracks.

Overall most of us want responsible management in place with a good solid plan that works. Why don't you?

[Dhoey07]

No cherry picking going on guys. As I said, I took the first year on each game dept web site and I took the last.  If there was a real problem it would show.  Harvests go up and down naturally and they did so before the wolves. Habitat and severity of winter are the two main limitations of deer.  Habitat and roads are the two biggest ones for elk. 

As for animals being harvested in different areas..... that's the way it's always been. If I hunted the same area of Washington I did 25 years ago, I wouldn't even see a deer let alone harvest one. As habitat changes, you have to change how and where you hunt. Heck, the Panhandle of Idaho hardly had an elk in the days of Lewis and Clark. It took some huge forest fires to create the habitat they needed. Logging mimics fires now days. Hunt that heavy reprod, and you don't have much of a chance. Find the areas with good light to the forest floor and you;re in business.

My only reason for this post is to open some minds. A lot of closed ones with locks on tight.  It's not as bad as you have been told.

Dude have you hugged your tree this am? Why would you want to be PRO WOLF, nothing to be gained from thier reintoduction but mahiem!   

Sitka is just offereing a different opinion than yours, does that offend you in some way that you need to resort to name calling/insulting people?  Ingorance is ugly.  I am not pro wolf, but it was an interesting read and he brought up some questions that i've asked myself.
  I do think he is spot on about closed minds regarding wolves.  Maybe i missed some parts of the conversation, with editing or deleting, but calling for him to be banned and attempting to insult people make US hunters look bad. Just my 

[Sitka_Blacktail]

If deer and elk numbers were destroying their habitat prior to the wolves then it's the Fish and Game's fault for not liberalizing seasons to bring those herds back to proper levels.

Habitat, habitat, habitat Machias. What part of that don't you understand? In the case of the Lolo zone, it's likely getting overgrown so there isn't enough feed to support a bigger herd, just like it was in the past. In that case, trimming the herd doesn't change the amount of feed available.

I know it's it's "common Knowledge" in the hunting community that "wolves are bad!"  "Common knowledge" can be wrong.  Case in point....... The earth is flat. Or....No man will ever set foot on the moon.

A better case in point in this situation.......Forest fires are bad!  Drilled into our heads when we were little kids. Stop all forest fires at any cost........

Except now we know that forest fires are actually beneficial. They open the forest canopy and allow browse to grow. They add nutrients to the soil. They cause some species of trees' seeds to sprout.  They kill bug infestations.  And suppressing them for decades make the fires worse when they do occur from built up dried debris on the forest floor. 

Animals love burned over units. They will often time be feeding in areas where fires are still smoldering. The Idaho Panhandle wouldn't have become a premier elk area without them. Part of the reason the Kenai Peninsula was such a fine area for moose in the 70's was the resulting browse from a huge forest fire.  There are documented cases everywhere you look.

So hunters need to decide if they are blindly following "common knowledge". The only way to do that is to educate yourself.  I'm not here to insult anyone. I'm just saying there are way more things to consider than most hunters think about. And I'm not afraid to show the other side of the coin.

I cringe when I see hunters boldly posting on public websites about SSS and denigrating wolves offhand.  All that shows the public is the intolerant, uneducated, illegal side of things. If that's how hunters want to be perceived by the general public, I feel sorry for them as a whole because they are digging the hole to bury themselves. And they are taking the rest of us with them.

[Sitka_Blacktail]

Would it be fair to say that wolves do this exact same thing?

It's fair to a point.  I've never advocated not managing wolves as part of the overall scenario. When it's prudent, trim them down. But they will never wipe out a healthy herd that has healthy habitat.  It's not the way nature developed them.  Predators have built in limitations. It's not in their biological best interest to wipe out their food supply.

Saying wolves will wipe out game populations just by the fact of being somewhere is like saying "because there are sharks in the ocean and killer whales, our oceans will soon be out of fish."  I'm here to tell you, that line of reasoning is plain wrong.

[NWBREW]

It seems to me your mind is closed Sitka. Are you saying the wolf had nothing to do with the loss of elk in yellowstone, Bighorn, Bitteroot and Lolo. You want us to open our minds....I ask you to do the same. We are looking for a GOOD MANAGEMENT PLAN. GOOD MANAGEMENT IS THE KEY. Open your ears and listen.

I'm not trying to be an A$$. Just asking that you open your mind as you want some others to do.

[Boss .300 winmag]

How come the elk in Yellowstone haven't come back? Oh I know why, wolves keep eating them nonstop! They have been there what since 1995, populations since then have done nothing but DECLINE in that region and ever where they migrate to SMARTICUS! SICKA_YELLOWTAIL!