Since I will be living in the hart of wolf country in a few months,I may just get into the wolf lottery next year!.


Thanks for your email. After hearing complaints from hunters and trappers, like yourself and looking at the western states and their fee structures, I plan on working on lowering the harvest tag fee in the 2013-2015 budget next session.


If you have any other questions or complaints, let me know.


Sincerely,

Scott Suder

State Representative

Wisconsin’s 69th Assembly District

There is NO HUNTING ALLOWED in Yellowstone Park. Can you make the distinction between there, and other places that are not national parks? The greenies point to the increased willow growth along streams in YP due to depredation of ungulates by wolves. If there were a hunting season for elk/deer/moose, those hunters would also help control the ungulates.

What do you consider a 'natural environment'? Is man excluded from a 'natural environment' in your view? We evolved with the rest of the animals, and our hunting is just as natural as theirs, as is managing their effects. Or is man on some separate plane to be excluded from all natural things?

MikeG has it right. The wolf issue is not biological, it is political.

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I have a very good friend who lives in Wi and has hunted deer there for some 30+ years. He is a very experienced hunter and considers himself a "meat" hunter who has added, to the larder, some 75-100 deer over the years. In the last 3 years, however, he has seen as many or more wolves than he has seen deer in northern Wisconsin. I get day to day reports as he hunts, seeing & hearing wolves, while I hunt and see bunches of deer. Oh, by the way, wolves have not been re-introduced into Tennessee.

It will only take anyone, curious, to look at the total statewide bag the last 4-5 yrs as compared to earlier to see what an effect it has on the deer population there in Wisconsin. Wonder what wolves would do in Indiana??

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A veteran is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote
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That is honor, and there are way too many people in this
country who no longer understand it.

Here in SD G&F claims there is no wolves in the Black Hills just like there are no black bear in the Short Pine Hills. Well for the last 6 years I've seen tracks and other sign of wolves in the area although I haven't personally seen one. The man who buys my fur also traps and has caught wolves in his coyote sets. Still the offical stance is they are isolated cases and not a problem.

Anyway there is a story I got second hand concerning a rancher up by Deerfield who had been having some issues with livestock losses. This is an area where locals insist there is an active pack. The rancher shot two of the pack who were chasing calves. During the confrontation a neighbor reported him to G&F. They dug up the carcasses and the DNA matched the Minnesota wolves. The story goes that G&F was going to charge him with taking an endangered species. His defence was, "You guys told me there are no wolves up here, I just shot a couple stray dogs who were attacking my calves." I heard they didn't charge him. The story didn't make the news that i'm aware of, so it might be truth or fiction.

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You are not alone. But we are pissing into a big wind of "big bad wolf" on this question and no logic or science will ever be able to overcome emotional responses. It is indeed kind of sad. I have never seen or been involved with a discussion of this question that didn't become more emotional than rational. I avoid them, simply because I always end up being called names.

But you are not the only conservationist/hunter on these pages.

Thanks Sask,

You hear all kinds of arguments against predators being reintroduced, but when animals like elk or turkey are restored to historic ranges, with the intention of eventually hunting them well, that's billed as a great win for sportsmen. It is a great thing to restore a game species, but where the habitat will allow it, I feel it is just as good to restore a predator species, but ONLY if the long-term plan is to also hunt them, so their numbers are controlled.

Man has always been a part of the natural world, but what modern civilization has done to extirpate any species that competes against us is anything but natural. That is my personal conviction and I will not attack anyone who feels differently. Why others feel compelled to attack people with a conservationist mindset is something I do not understand.

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Well, Jason, I guess you don't want to hunt deer and turkey anymore. Or if you go hunting, you don't want to be able to see any game or have much of a chance at shooting it.

Go back and re-read Shawn's numbers on a.) the amount of elk taken by sportsmen pre-wolf introduction, and b.) the amount of elk eaten by the packs. Any coincidence that the numbers come out the same? No, it's not, that is the goal of the greenies and leftists who got the entire thing started in the first place.

I don't think that either your or the rest of the hunters that thing wolf reintroduction is a good idea have really read through what is happening, vs. theory on how it should go.

Tell me why somewhere between 80% and 100% of the sport hunting opportunities should be lost, ironically funded by the sportsmen and women who now no longer have game to hunt?

Waiting for an answer and not calling anybody names......

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MikeG

There should be an open season on WOLFS thougout the country.

You keep hanging your hat on terms like 'exterminate' and 'extirpate', like everyone is advocating that, and it simply isn't true. It's a 'straw man'-type argument that anti-gunners use a lot. Try to come up with a real point to debate.

You might be interested that Idaho likely still had an indiginous population of wolves when the Canadians were introduced, and that native species was probably killed by the Canadian wolves. Another [sub] species gone, but not by man.

You're not being attacked; you're just getting your feelings hurt. Don't act like you alone carry the conservationist label.

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OK, first things, first...this is just an online forum. I assure you, my feelings are not getting hurt. I just thought more of the members here would be conservationists, and that's obviously not the case. I can live with that, although it is definitely disappointing.

You don't like the term "extirpate". That's actually a good sign. I haven't seen you say anything about killing all the wolves or having an open season on them, all across the country. You're probably well-educated on the topic and know that wolves exist only in a handful of relatively small pockets in the lower 48.

What I'd like to know is this: Do you want to eradicate wolves from Idaho, or do you think it makes sense to have a small population that is huntable? Please explain your position, either way, so that folks who have never lived with large predators, or hunted in areas where they live, can understand. (Despite certain people's assertions...I've done both.)

A forum is a place where a free exchange of ideas and opinions can occur. I'm all for that and it does not bother me if someone else feels differently than I do about something. I know what I know...and that ignorance abounds. I'm not accusing any one individual of it, but our society is rife with a lack of real knowledge; the more "emotional" a topic is, the less the average person truly knows about it. They just go off what they feel.

In the case of wolves, what a lot of people feel is fear and competition. The real competition, in this case, are the greenies who have heretofore made it difficult to hunt wolves and keep their population under control. The only cure for fear, in this sense, is knowledge. The OP is about removing the obstacles for hunting wolves in WI. That's great! The challenge of alleviating the irrational fears is a task I'm not interested in tackling. I learned a long time ago that swine simply will not harmonize, no matter how many voice lessons you give them.

What keeps getting lost in all of this is that I've SEEN and LIVED this scenario. I hunted in CA before the moratorium on lions and after. I know how much it can screw up local ungulate populations! The politicians let voters determine biological policy and that was a recipe for disaster. In WI, they are actually FIXING the problem, by liberalizing the hunting of wolves, whereas CA put a 30-year moratorium in place and it's only about halfway done. At least Idaho and WI "get it" and are allowing wolf numbers to be controlled. The folks in CA are pretty much out of luck.

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I don't think anyone wants ALL the prediators killed at least I certainly don't. Also don't want to see the game I hunt to become a memory, That is happening fast in this area even without a major wolf problem.... yet. So far turkey, big horn sheep, mountain goat, antelope, deer and elk numbers are showing rapid decline to the point of seasons being closed and license numbers being slashed. I know the wolves aren't to blame for all that but we have a serious mountain lion problem here the state seems reluctant to address. Recently the G&F said there were 300 lions state wide. The hunters raised the BS flag on that. G&F asked how we could be sure there were more since no private group had the ablity to count them like they do. That may be true, we don't know the exact number. When a person considers last years lion season hit the alotted number of 75 in about 45 days with less then optimum conditions.... no way 1/4 of the lions was taken that soon. By the way we can't hunt with dogs, so most were taken by chance encounters and calls. The state says they have about 200 collared lions. From what I've heard the majority taken had no collars. Also lion season used to run concurently with deer season. When that was the case the quotas were hit faster since there were more hunters in the field. The lion huggers cried foul, so now the season is by itself, starting in January.
Now I know this thread is about wolves but based on the track record of the state addressing the lion issue we can't expect any better results when the wolves become an problem. Since they both prey on the same game I can't imagine the populations of game animals improving anytime soon. Most of the guys I talk to are in agreement we won't put in for any cow or doe tags and ones that come in combination licenses will go unfilled. It's discouraging to think our conservation efforts will go through the digestive tract of a lion this next year.

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No, Jason, you are assuming this issue is under the local control of the states. It is not. The feds forced it and the greenies lie and sue to block local control until it's too late. The cumbersome regulations and constant lawsuits prevent effective predator control.

Somewhere back in this thread, a parallel was drawn to the wiping out of the bison herd. There is a parallel but it's not what you think. The bison herds were wiped out as political and economic warfare on the native tribes. Without means of support they were easily controlled and conquered.

Folks in the big city like to think of the West as a giant wilderness uninhabited by humans. There are farms and ranches and cities and towns and houses all over the place, excepting national parks and such. While there is a lot of public land, it isn't all in one continuous chunk save for true wilderness areas like interior Alaska.

Turning wolves loose in Yellowstone might have made for an interesting biological experiment if there was a 6 foot electric fence around the place, but there isn't. Once the genie is out of the bottle, people livelihoods are being destroyed. Whether they depend on ranching or hunting to make a living, that living is going down the drain. It's politically convenient for the left to destroy these folks as they don't support the left, by and large.

Or, to put it in other terms, if the government randomly picked large employers in your state and burned their factories to the ground and confiscated the properties, with no compensation to the owners and no jobs left for the employees, I suspect you'd be rather mad about the issue.

That's what this is. It is economic warfare against the states were wolves are being put back in. The argument that there should be plenty of resources available for the wolves rings hollow, as the land supports many, many more people than it did 2- or 3- or 4-hundred years ago. Guess where the wolves were thriving with little human conflict in the 20th century? The wilderness areas of Alaska. That's the another big lie, that wolves are endangered. There are plenty of them in Alaska.

That's what it comes down to. The environmental movement 1.) doesn't want anybody to hunt, and 2.) would prefer we all live in little concrete boxes in a few cities so we don't "spoil" the wilderness that no one is allowed to use.

You have to look past the emotional arguments. These folks who are suing constantly to prevent predator control are the same crowd that would rather all animals in shelters be killed to prevent folks from having a pet cat or dog. They are the same crowd that wants to ban all hunting and firearms ownership. They are the same crowd that wants us to all hold hands, sing songs, and give everything we've worked for to those for whom it's inconvenient to get a job and support themselves. They are the same crowd that spreads the lie that predators "only" eat other wild game and "never" attack humans. Unfortunately a lot of hunters swallow various amounts of this nonsense. And if a hunter can be deceived, what chance does the non-hunter have of seeing through the issue?

You can't wipe out predators by sport hunting even when it's unrestricted. We have more mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes, and who knows what all in Texas and they can all be shot on sight, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. And it's been that way for decades.

Wake up the smell the coffee before it's too late.

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MikeG

Just because many of us do not like the current situation with the wolves doesn't mean we're not conservationists as well. It really does seem like you think you have exclusive rights to the term, defined by how you alone behave and think.

No, I just want them controlled to reasonable levels, just like bears and cougars are, or at least were. The greenies got a triple whammy against hunters with the wolves since hunting cougars or bears with dogs has pretty much been eliminated.

I'm not fearful of wolves, or bears, or cougars. They just all need to be managed, with biology as the basis. But wolves are different. Sport hunting alone will not manage them. Our F&G is trying to respond, allowing more than one tag, trapping, long seasons, but the greenies are complaining about all of this too.

How did the wolves get eliminated from most areas in the past? Hunting was part of it, but poison was probably a key factor. That doesn't sound very good, but that's where it may have to go to get them controlled since all the silly lawsuits and judge games let them get out of control, but that's where the greenies pushed it.

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Chippewa tribes join call to stop DNR plans for wolf hunt – WTAQ News Talk 97.5FM and 1360AM « alliance for animals: Wisconsin animal news.



The Indian made enough money off the white man they should just keep their mouths shut.
After all we gave them a good deal................CASINOS!.

I know this is a common theme in the western states, but does not reflect the reality of the midwestern wolve. They were not reintroduced, and they are not some "invasive" strain. Our wolves have naturally expanded their range from Canada into MN, MI and WI. That occurred with legislative protection, to be sure, but our wolves were not stocked.

And the fate of sport hunting is being decided by our demographics, not some leftist political agenda. Hunters are declining in dang near every state. The older generation has done a poor job of recruiting newer hunters. We would rather spend time on the computer, ranting about the decline of civilization, than to go gather some kids for a squirrel hunt.

You don't know that they weren't deliberately re-introduced by game departments. There have been cases of game departments deceiving the public - a well known instance was biologists in California being busted on fake evidence, I believe in regards to mountain lion population? Shouldn't be too hard to find.

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MikeG

Whether the wolves were actually reintroduced (relocated) to WI, or expanded their range through oppressive penalties, is now moot. They are there, and their effects are being felt.

From a Feb, 2011 article:

'The new data reveals wolves killed 47 calves, 16 adult cows, six sheep and six farmed deer on Wisconsin farms in 2010. The estimated value of the destroyed livestock was estimated at $114,000.

In addition to agricultural losses, wolves were responsible for killing 14 pet dogs and another 20 bear-hunting hounds last year, Adrian Wydeven, wolf expert for the DNR told the Duluth News Tribune. The state paid more than $61,000 in damages for the dog losses.'


Wisconsin Wolves Killing More Hunting Dogs | Outdoor Life


So, the state paid $61k in dog losses. It doesn't say whether the livestock losses were compensated. Anybody from WI happy about your taxes going towards this? I know it's a small amount in a huge state budget, but every nonsense item adds up to the bottom line. If you think compensation of livestock losses (if that actually happened) to the rancher is 'zeroed out' with payment to the rancher, think again. Those losses reduced the number of animals to market and thus affected the end pricing to us consumers. So, we get to pay for it in our taxes, then we get to pay for it again at the market. It's only going to get worse.

BTW, Defenders of Wildlife (they're not) WERE compensating ranchers for livestock losses in ID until several years ago, when they skated free of the obligation. Now they put that money towards more lawsuits to stop wolf hunting seasons.

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Then show us your proof.

I'm not sure where you were going with this, but I'll offer some facts about the previous and new WI wolf management operations.

Up until very recently:
Wolf damage was paid out of the nongame program budget, and primarily with chickadee checkoff funds donated by income tax payers. Additional money may have come from hunter license dollars, but I'm not sure. Livestock losses were paid, but not completely. Dog losses were not paid at full claimed value in many cases, but were at an "assessed" value established by DNR and those may have been prorated in some cases if claims exceeded the available funds.

The new program:
Application fees for the new wolf license and license fees are directed to pay for wolf damages and any leftover money is directed towards wolf management. I think that would include paying for the federal Wildlife Services trappers to take livestock depredating wolves.

So far, there have been >18,000 applicants for a wolf permit. They paid $10 The license fee, set in the law written by Scott Suder is $100 for residents and more for nonresidents. The plan right now is to sell More than 1000 wolf licenses to non-tribal hunters in a few weeks. So, there should be >$280,000 to pay for damage and wolf management in the next year.

Again, hunters are the only people paying for the benefits and problems caused by wildlife.

That's mostly where I'm going. Those that are pushing the wolf populations experience no monetary impacts due to their cause. They - for the most part - don't hunt, so they contribute nothing to hunting licenses or guns & ammo taxes that go back to game. Most are anti-hunting, and the wolves and the courts are a dream come true for their cause.

What I don't think some hunters understand is that in some areas, wolves are severely impacting elk hunting opportunities with 50%+ tag reductions, and that loss is not compensated in any way. In WI, substitute 'elk' for 'deer', and imagine how you would like it.

'More than 1000 wolf licenses.'? I hope it's a lot more than '1000' for the sake of WI hunters that like to eat venison.

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