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Didn't feel like bumping one of the rancher vs. hunter vs. conservationist wolf threads.
Caught a couple of pretty cool stories on wolves this week:
Ice Fisher Captures Two Wolves Hunting Coyote
This one is really interesting, as is the whole long term wolf study on Isle Royale.
Wolf that left Isle Royale on ice bridge has incredible 2 year journey.
Interesting. Reading the other links to those stories about those wolves, it seems the research predictions went a bit off script and all kind of unpredictable things are happening.
easily my favorite animal
Yeah it’s pretty wild. I’ve always wanted to go camping/backpacking there and it would be unreal if we got lucky enough to see some of these wolves.Quote:
Originally Posted by Timberridge
Someone here told the story about working on the ferry to Isle Royale (I think, may be another Superior island) as a kid which was nuts.
Nice job Cheeseheads. And the choad Feds that had a hand in this.
Trappers, trophy hunting ballcuppers and whoever "Hunter Nation" are, are all fucking lardass, incel tools.
https://www.fieldandstream.com/story...ZLE9P9c5wRn_tk
^^
This shit sickens me.
You clearly fell for more click bait and don’t understand how the North American model of conservation works.Quote:
Originally Posted by BmillsSkier
Wolf numbers are at all time highs in WI (modern times) and the quota was set for 200 wolves iirc. The fact that the quota was met quickly has nothing to do with any of the nonsense you disparaged above. No trophy hunting, no egregious glory killing, just a predator population being kept in check by paying hunters. Look into the historical stats of wolf hunting there.
I understand if wolves are your spirit animal (mine too), but that shouldn’t cause you to lose critical thinking skills.
You live in CO, right? Just wait until wolf numbers explode here and we are forced to keep them in check with hunter management after reintroduction was forced down our throats by public outcry, not sound biological science and conservation of all species being taken into consideration.
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I’m generally in favor of hunting but have no clue why you’d want to kill a wolf and for the DNR to say they were closely monitoring the hunt seems like a gross understatement.
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Wolf numbers exploding in Colorado! Lol
Thanks for the laugh. Maybe with wolves the biodiversity will return to the Grand Mesa. Far too many years of cattle grazing has made a complete imbalance that seems to be improving as the industry recedes.
Look at history and you'll see cattle ranchers trying to scare off anything that potentially takes away their areas in the NF. They really went after sheep ranchers in a nasty way back 100 years ago. Wolves are a threat to them so they will fight tooth and nail to keep them out. Their political campaign worked to scare people all over the state. They are expert politicians. Too bad wolves aren't.
I can assure you from years of on the ground data that our elk population is decimated and our cat population is through the roof.
I wonder who would win a wolf/cat fight?
Was out last night on the XC trails, and there was about 5cm of fresh snow over much of the upper elevation trails. A pack of at least 4 wolves were running over the whole area. Some tracks were a couple hours old, while some were only minutes ahead of me. I would be lying if I said my headlamp didn't spend almost as much time scanning the woods on each side of the trail as on the XC track itself. Both very cool, and a bit unnerving. Some of those tracks dwarfed my closed fist in comparison. Guess they've put a large enough dent into the upper valley moose population that they decided to move into the main valley for the smaller game, not uncommon this time of year.
Big issues with predator/prey biology here. Wolf numbers over most the interior plateau are high, and the moose populations low. Caribou herds continue to struggle too. My thoughts are that the combination of shorter winters with decreasing average snowpacks in the plateau and lower elevations of the highlands, and greatly increased recreational snowmobile traffic across most of the area (providing nice packed trails through deep snow over large distances) is allowing for greater predation success for the wolves during the winter months. Combine that with the politics of both ungulate and predator hunts, and everyone seems to be losing. Given the sensitivity of indigenous harvesting, I can see more areas having increased restrictions to the non-indigenous hunting in the near future. And that's not going to go over well. Just too many folks on the planet nowadays, and that isn't changing anytime soon it appears.
So I live in Wisconsin and spend a lot of time in the woods. There are a lot of wolves in Wisconsin, idk exactly how many, but I'd place a large bet on it being double what the DNR has for their estimate.
How the season works is when they determine the quota is going to be met they have to give hunters 24 hours notice that the season will be closed, hence going over the quota. You can also subtract the 81 tags given to NA tribes from the overall number because they came right out and said we aren't hunting the wolves.
I get why people are upset about a wolf hunt, the times I've been able to see them in the wild was absolutely one of the coolest things I've witnessed in my life. But deer populations across most of Northern Wisconsin are 40% below objective. Some of that is due to no logging causing a lack of food and bedding habitat, some is from wolves. But it also says something about how high the wolf population is when the lard ass hunters meet the quota in 3 fucking days.
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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhrOjQaZNco
This is from a Rogan show..... like him or not, it’s a crazy story.
The worst case scenario for wolves is too many wolves.
Can an internet biological scientist explain the sound, studied, population management argument for moving the hunt up to RIGHT FUCKING NOW vs. Nov '21 as originally planned to allow the wolf pups to mature? I don't know shit about hunting or biological conservation but I'm not opposed to either. Seems like there's an ethical argument for allowing the mature population to raise the young population before being offed. Not sure what the argument is for Feb hunt beyond immediate gratification.
I had wolves in my neighborhood in Northern BC (between Hazelton & Terrace) on the Skeena River. I was xc skiing across my field with my dogs (komondor, Shepard mutt cross, and lab mutt cross) one day and noticed a "stump" with ears I'd never noticed before. As I skied the length of the field I watched it and it kinda looked like the ears were tracking us so I turned 90 degrees and skied towards it. Well holy shit, the biggest black "dog" I've ever seen stood up, looked at me and sauntered away. Although they had no idea we were under observation I was really glad I had 3 big dogs with me.
That was the only place I took my gun with me when I went fishing and never went anywhere on the property without my komondor.
Not sure of the WI wolf specifically, but the breeding period generally runs from Jan to the end of Feb. I suppose if you are trying to impact the population most severely in the short term, a hunt now that might remove one or both of the breeding pair of a pack would result in a short term drop in the number of pups born. But the likelihood of pack fragmentation, leading to an increase in the subsequent year's number of breeding pairs, would defeat that strategy in the longer term.
But for some reason I suspect the hunt moving forward now was largely the result of a successful lobbying effort.
From what I've read they have had a plan in place for a hunt for a long time, they just couldn't enact it with them federally protected. As far as why now I really have no idea. Lack of conflict with other hunting seasons, longest amount of time from when pups are born to let them mature, convenience?
We have a Democratic governor and the head of the DNR is a former biologist and the management strategies they've put in place for other species have been science based. The target number since day 1 of wolf reintroduction has been 350. We've been at or over 1000 for 15 years.
If you want healthy, stable populations of all species unfortunately you have to manage predators as well. Otherwise you just get the boom bust swings of predator/prey populations.
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RTFA.
“ Wisconsin politicians were not in favor of the February hunting and trapping season, but the state lost a lawsuit and appeal launched by Hunter Nation, a Kansas-based hunter’s rights advocacy group. A court order required the hunt to commence in accordance with state law.”
No problem with hunting, or population management. This entire story just reeks of out of state lardassess getting their rocks off killing wolves in a free for all.
Trapping is for cocksuckers.
Killing an overabundance of top tier predators makes sense, but I highly doubt any of these "hunters" are in it for that. Eat a lot of wolf meat do ya?
Go back to Colorado, hippie.
:D
Yup...and I hope all those Wisconsin hunters that recently killed 216 of my brothers get ass cancer.Quote:
Originally Posted by stealurface831
Quote:
Originally Posted by bagtagley
:D
If it’s anything like coyote hunting in the NE, it might’ve been a shitshow in WI, who knows.
People running dogs from pickup trucks around here sometimes leads to bad hunter press.
K-9’s are highly adaptive. They figured out how to work humans didn’t they? They’re also very adapt for successful breeding. Red wolves have been determined to be an offshoot of the coyote. interspecies breeding only makes them more fit.
As long as we have livestock, there will be population control measures, though k-9’s as entire genus really have nothing to fear from humans. They’ve made it this far.
Well, to be fair, it’s probably a lot of deer hunters who eat lots of venison and want more deer. That said, not a fan of this hunt, and really not a fan of most of the hunting energy/vibe/culture around here (North of Wisconsin). Creepy white trash scuzzers. I spent lots of my youth at the end of the road 25 miles north of a small town. As I remember it, there was still quite a divide between local poor people who quietly hunted for food, and the kind of recreational, government-permit-dictated, wearing all the hunting clothes and the hunting bumper stickers hunting-season vacation hunters. The former likely don’t exist much anymore as the entire northwoods cabin subsistence lifestyle has been pretty much completely extinguished, and the latter scene is just the worst stew of bureaucrats and conservation cops and awful gun nuts and opportunists selling all the gear and crap these gravy seals need to feel like real men.
Also, the Isle Royale mag is Mustonen.
Also, in around 1985ish, my mom was dating a conservationist, and though I have zero idea how this happened, at one point we had a litter of wolf pups in a box in our back yard for a few days. I remember had to leave them alone so they didn’t get too used to people.