Yellowstone Park Wolves

[MTTW]

I was told that there were over 2 dozen wolves on Deckard flats one morning last season eating gut piles. Soooo.... tears are going to flow on both sides possibly.

It would be a good idea to close the flats and Eagle creek before that happens. Probably be doing the wolf haters a favor actually.

Kind of like chasing elk out of the park with helicopters in the 60s. Removing the quotas looks good on paper.

 

[buffybr]

Yellowstone NP is over 2 million acres. The wolves are free to live and roam anywhere inside the Park boundary. The buffer zone is that Park boundary. End of story!!

 

[MTTW]

I bet it isn't the end of story. I'm ok either way.

 

[shoots-straight]

Yellowstone NP is over 2 million acres. The wolves are free to live and roam anywhere inside the Park boundary. The buffer zone is that Park boundary. End of story!!

Yep, this is far from the End. You might wish it so, but those that made these hasty discussions will own this, but only if we hold their feet to the fire though. Some will point out that the enviro's are to blame and push that line.

 

[MTGomer]

This guy is going to be a gut pile somewhere between Deckard and Eagle creek by the time Thanksgiving gets here.

He’s used to having cameras pointed at him, as one of the most photographed elk herds in the world.

Quicker we can reinstate a buffer, we can get to the next debate… where to draw the line for the buffer’s buffer. How about I-90?

 

[Sytes]

The line in the sand...

 

[RobG]

Your claim is probably not true.

The most famous elk, elk #10 and #6, both survived the hunting seasons. As you might remember, elk #6 died a humiliating death after getting caught in a fence, (https://helenair.com/news/state-and...cle_9ed89a13-8ffd-56b9-959b-4ac53da2c4d4.html) and #10 was found next to a road with both legs broken by wolves. https://trib.com/outdoors/famed-yel...cle_98e9222a-5cdb-5257-9185-115a78cddc95.html

Why is it so important to kill these particular wolves?

This guy is going to be a gut pile somewhere between Deckard and Eagle creek by the time Thanksgiving gets here.

He’s used to having cameras pointed at him, as one of the most photographed elk herds in the world.

Quicker we can reinstate a buffer, we can get to the next debate… where to draw the line for the buffer’s buffer. How about I-90?

View attachment 196520

 

[RobG]

If you are going to post Yellowstone elk, at least put up a respectable one. I took this pic of #10 fifteen or more years ago.

 

[The Hedgehog]

No more wolf quota by Gardiner? Where's the little smiley face emoji with the hearts in the eyes?!?

.. found it!

 

[MTTW]

Getting harder to get pictures of big bulls in Ynp lately for some reason.

 

[Pmacc60]

I’m reading all the arguments and everyone has their points however the pro wolf groups seem to have the most rights here! It pretty easy to see that they can use the press, biologist and all the bureaucracies to get their way!The wolf issue has been shoved down the American hunters/ranchers throat , heavily subsidized and highly publicized in favor of the wolf groups. This is and has been a rigged game from its inception , I’m sorry but any wolf outside of the park is game ! I know my opinion isn’t PC but when did hunters get the benefit of the doubt ?

 

[MTGomer]

Your claim is probably not true.

The most famous elk, elk #10 and #6, both survived the hunting seasons. As you might remember, elk #6 died a humiliating death after getting caught in a fence, (https://helenair.com/news/state-and...cle_9ed89a13-8ffd-56b9-959b-4ac53da2c4d4.html) and #10 was found next to a road with both legs broken by wolves. https://trib.com/outdoors/famed-yel...cle_98e9222a-5cdb-5257-9185-115a78cddc95.html

Why is it so important to kill these particular wolves?

I said elk herds, not elk as in an individual/specific elk.
The northern Yellowstone elk herd is one of the most photographed elk herds in the world. I’d love to hear how that could be false.
I’m sure the ones in Rocky Mountain national Park are right up there near the top too.

It’s not it is so important to kill these specific wolves, but I do believe it is important that hunting regulations do not bend to social pressure, from emotional, non resident anti-hunters that view Greater Yellowstone as a place reserved solely for them to come and look at out the car window for a long weekend a few times a decade.

there’s no quota for most of the rest of the state, so why should there be one, let alone one so restrictively low as what it was, in the location where there are the most wolves?

The people behind the organizations that push this stuff are not our friends. These people hate you. They hate hunters. They hate hunting. You can’t appease your way into their good graces.
I think night hunting and baiting is the wrong move. Hunting wolves from a healthy population of wolves is not.
I too, think there should be some kind of mechanism to shut down the wolf hunt if harvest hits a certain level, just like there is for elk harvest on Deckard but I doubt that number is 3 and it certainly wasn’t 1 or 2.

Good news for the wolf people is that wolves are extremely and highly intelligent. More so than most people could ever imagine. If they take some hits this year it won’t be the same next year. They’ll stay longer where they are safe and be much more elusive and frightened of humans. They might become harder to photograph, but these are wild animals. Yellowstone isn’t for humans to take pictures of unnaturally tame wildlife. It is supposed to be for wild things to be able to be wild in a wild place.

If I was king for a day, the park wouldn’t even exist. We’d rip down all the infrastructure, put trailheads at the entrances and incorporate it into the A-B and Washakie wildernesses and let it be actually wild.

 

[shoots-straight]

Getting harder to get pictures of big bulls in Ynp lately for some reas

I’m reading all the arguments and everyone has their points however the pro wolf groups seem to have the most rights here! It pretty easy to see that they can use the press, biologist and all the bureaucracies to get their way!The wolf issue has been shoved down the American hunters/ranchers throat , heavily subsidized and highly publicized in favor of the wolf groups. This is and has been a rigged game from its inception , I’m sorry but any wolf outside of the park is game ! I know my opinion isn’t PC but when did hunters get the benefit of the doubt ?

You see this is a misconception brought forward by wolf haters.
No the wolf reintroduction was not "Shoved down our throats" over 150,000 comments were received and a large percentage were in favor of it. Even in Montana the majority favored reintroduction. Just an FYI.

 

[Ridgerunner6901]

Bet those wolves had names. mtmuley

They will now

 

[Ben Lamb]

I said elk herds, not elk as in an individual/specific elk.
The northern Yellowstone elk herd is one of the most photographed elk herds in the world. I’d love to hear your well reasoned response to refute that, if you’re going to claim it as false.
I’m sure the ones in Rocky Mountain national Park are right up there near the top too.

It’s not it is so important to kill these specific wolves, but I do believe it is important that hunting regulations do not bend to social pressure, from emotional, non resident anti-hunters that view Greater Yellowstone as a place reserved solely for them to come and look at out the car window for a long weekend a few times a decade.

there’s no quota for most of the rest of the state, so why should there be one, let alone one so restrictively low as what it was, in the location where there are the most wolves?

The people behind the organizations that push this stuff are not our friends. These people hate you. They hate hunters. They hate hunting. You can’t appease your way into their good graces.
I think night hunting and baiting is the wrong move. Hunting wolves from a healthy population of wolves is not.
I too, think there should be some kind of mechanism to shut down the wolf hunt if harvest hits a certain level, just like there is for elk harvest on Deckard but I doubt that number is 3 and it certainly wasn’t 1 or 2.

Good news for the wolf people is that wolves are extremely and highly intelligent. More so than most people could ever imagine. If they take some hits this year it won’t be the same next year. They’ll stay longer where they are safe and be much more elusive and frightened of humans. They might become harder to photograph, but these are wild animals. Yellowstone isn’t for humans to take pictures of unnaturally tame wildlife. It is supposed to be for wild things to be able to be wild in a wild place.

If I was king for a day, the park wouldn’t even exist. We’d rip down all the infrastructure, put trailheads at the entrances and incorporate it into the A-B and Washakie wildernesses and let it be actually wild.

So those elk are limited in harvest, right? There's a bull permit, cow permit, etc. The take is highly regulated and in fact, when it was proposed that units north of the Park go to Limited Entry, there was a massive outcry from hunters who didn't want to sacrifice their opportunity, and from outfitters who make their living off of killing park elk. What was the right thing for the elk in that instance?

But yeah, there's some hypocrisy here relative to what's a good buffer zone or low quota area for wolves versus elk. When Montanans were slaughtering elk left & right during the gut hunt, there was never enough opportunity. Then the herd crashed, and so we blamed the woofs for that (without any real evidence) and decided we needed to shoot woofs to help elk. Regardless of that, elk are not endangered in the GYA. Wolves are only 10 years off of being listed, and it took a literal act of congress to get them to a delisted status. I don't think you'll ever see those conditions happen again.

The virtue signaling from the commission on woofs is exactly what some folks want to hear.As a nation that is ruled by law, those actions have equal and opposite reactions. If the elected and unelected leaders spent any time actually discussing the issue with professionals and those with a long history working on this issue rather than catering to the loudest voices in the room, they wouldn't have ignored the actual biologists and adopted rules and regs that make litigation more likely to succeed.

Dislike those anti-hunting groups all you want, but unless they have the counterpart on the right side of this equation to create an opening, they were largely unable to get the kind of changes they wanted.

 

[TheTone]

Idaho doesn’t have a quota or buffer around the park, do Yellowstone wolves just know not to go west?

 

[MTGomer]

So those elk are limited in harvest, right?

313 is hunted by draw after Nov 15 and OTC prior.

I believe, but am not positive, that FWP still has the leeway to close down Deckard flats (which for those that are unfamiliar is the area immediately south of the Yellowstone river between Gardiner and Jardine on the park boundary) prior to Nov 15 if there’s a cold snap and a heavy snow pushing elk out of the park and harvest is high through the check station.

I don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t be able to do the same for wolves and wish they would figure that out.

 

[Ben Lamb]

313 is hunted by draw after Nov 15 and OTC prior.

I believe, but am not positive, that FWP still has the leeway to close down Deckard flats prior to Nov 15 if there’s a cold snap and a heavy snow pushing elk out of the park and harvest is high through the check station.

I don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t be able to do the same for wolves.

They have that option. Do you think they'll take it? I don't. It's far more important to virtue signal than actually manage wildlife.

If FWP leadership is so bad at managing elk (which I think the majority of us hold that belief) why should we encourage the same model with any other species?

 

[Pmacc60]

You see this is a misconception brought forward by wolf haters.
No the wolf reintroduction was not "Shoved down our throats" over 150,000 comments were received and a large percentage were in favor of it. Even in Montana the majority favored reintroduction. Just an FYI.

Sorry I’m not a wolf hater, I was involved in this discussion back in the early nineties and many of the pro wolf comments came from back east. So where did you get your Montana approval rate for wolf introduction , I would like to read that study. No misconception here and no wolf hating just the fact the lower 48 is not a natural environment anymore.
My point is if they stay in the park then so be it it if they push out of the park then they are impacting sportsman and ranches! That’s where they are and should be in danger ! Natural spreading throughout their former range is great but not this reintroduction such as Colorado is dealing with. My reason is the fact that even if legally killed there is still crying by the wolf loving community and the use of killing puppies as a explanation for why it’s wrong ! Again this is a rigged game forced down hunters and livestock owners throat!

 

[RobG]

I said elk herds, not elk as in an individual/specific elk.

Actually, you said "this guy" and posted a picture of an elk.

The northern Yellowstone elk herd is one of the most photographed elk herds in the world. I’d love to hear your well reasoned response to refute that, if you’re going to claim it as false.
I’m sure the ones in Rocky Mountain national Park are right up there near the top too.

It's a really bad comparison. Everyone here would go ape-sh*t if 10% of the herd was killed the first few days of a six month long season. Hell, we go ape-sh*t if a dozen elk get killed by a group of road hunters. And we don't even know each animal enough to give them names.

It’s not it is so important to kill these specific wolves, but I do believe it is important that hunting regulations do not bend to social pressure, from emotional, non resident anti-hunters that view Greater Yellowstone as a place reserved solely for them to come and look at out the car window for a long weekend a few times a decade.

Seven former FWP commissioners just wrote an article objecting to it. None of them are "emotional, non resident anti-hunters that view Greater Yellowstone as a place reserved solely for them to come and look at out the car window for a long weekend a few times a decade." (Pardon the source. The article was published in newspapers but this is the only version I can find without a paywall).

When folks here object to shooting pregnant elk in February or orphaning calves in August they are using more emotion than those seeing the practical issues of the targeting the Junction Butte Pack.

The people behind the organizations that push this stuff are not our friends. These people hate you. They hate hunters. They hate hunting. You can’t appease your way into their good graces.

You should not talk about UPOM and our legislators that way. I'm not joking. The people who made this hunt happen aren't your friends.

Regarding the anti-hunters, killing the Junction Butte Pack is their dream train wreck. There is no better way to keep them funded than shooting those particular wolves. You seem to be stuck on killing them as a matter of principle - not an actual need to kill them. Is it really smart to be giving the anti-hunters the train wreck they are looking for?