Wolf Hunting Tactics and Issue Discussion
Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 12:03 pm
There seems to be a lot of people who think wolves are easy to kill and easy educate here in Idaho and Montana. So for the sake of discussion, here I go.
Here is a list of things I have tried or I know people have tried with limited success:
- Calling in areas where fresh tracks are located
- Trying to box in the area where wolves are and walking out a track
- Trying to box wolves in and work ahead of them with multiple guys on different ridges and creek bottoms
- Sitting on wolf kills (blind or treestands)
- Spot and stalk
- Boxing in a lion track, letting dogs tree for a while with a few guys a couple hundreds of yards out watching for incoming wolves (even this is considered baiting by some Fish and Game Officers)
Here are the issues with these tactics:
Most of our roads only go part way up a drainage and the wolves will travel through the top. It makes it very difficult to make sure things are boxed in. There is a limited amount of time you have to hunt them in good snow conditions where you have access to leapfrog them and get them boxed in (assuming the roads do exist). By Dec 15 in a lot of areas, the forest service either shuts off road access or has winter closures that prohibit human entry. There are a lot of guys that are trying to call wolves who just plain can’t. This educates them in the wrong way. It doesn’t take too many botched calls or botched sets to educate wolves about what is going on. The same is true with trapping. Wolves often do not return to their kills. Quite a few of our wolf kills are incidentals (many by treestand hunters) or people who see wolves on a fresh kill.
Here is a list of things guys have tried to minimize wolf interaction with dogs:
- Boxing in a lion track even with wolves present, running it anyway, making lots of noise, having someone walk with/behind the dog, keeping sleds running as close to the dogs as possible, putting bells on dogs, leave a radio running in the truck, firing gunshots…
Here are the issues:
A lot of times, if you find wolf tracks and the country is big, you do go find somewhere else to hunt that day. Maybe this is wrong or sounds dumb to some of you. Most of us that have jobs though, only have limited days to hunt. It takes time and tracks to make dogs. You do have to choose how to spend your time. I’ve asked most of my hound and non hound buddies who spend most of their free time in the woods. All agree, if they spent their entire winter just hunting wolves, they might be able to kill one or two. That essentially makes that cost and hound hunting prohibitive. If you spent all winter doing it, you couldn’t run dogs.
I think most of these dog-wolf interactions occur when the hunter doesn’t know there are wolves present or a lion travels much further than the hunter anticipates. This gives the wolves a chance (there are a lot of times in this BIG country, even the best athletes simply could not stay with dogs moving a lion track) to move in on trailing dogs as they trail by the wolves (most the wolves bed during the day) and triggers a prey instinct in the wolves to protect their territory. I don’t think we probably want to know or think about how many time wolves have come towards trailing dogs during a race and we never know it.
People also have to understand that their isn’t a lot of common sense here with LEGAL wolf control. We winter feed elk and deer but turn around and let the wolves come into the feeding stations. This habituates them to humans and makes their lives fairly easy.
We have taken up much of the winter range with development. This has changed since the 1930’s. I think wolves probably have an easier time to make a living now. The elk and deer can’t come down on their historic winter range in a lot of areas. It is all tilled under with pivots and canals. They have been forced to stay higher, in more snow (mostly in closure areas) and I believe this makes hunting easier for wolves. I believe this is one of the main reasons some areas have been decimated by wolf reintroduction. I also believe that our elk, who didn’t really have a main predator, were easy pickings for the first few years. They probably lost the art of avoiding and eluding wolves.
Also remember, we have only had two seasons in Idaho and it looks as though our wolf population may be on the decline. Although most of the data shows that the overall number is down, the dispersal of the wolves seems to be over a larger area and in smaller numbers. I’m not sure this is better for the hound hunters. We have only had two LEGAL seasons (well 1 ¾) that we could educate wolves. It wasn’t too long before that that a hound hunter couldn’t even shoot, harass, pursue…. a wolf coming into his own dogs and livestock owners had to call fish and game before they could shoot a wolf harassing cattle It is estimated that Idaho alone (this doesn’t include border packs) has around 750 wolves. I believe the number is probably 50% low. See, I am actually a guy with a Masters degree in Natural resources and I have read most of the wolf and lion studies available. I also know that Idaho Fish and Game has pursued and tried to prosecute a pile of poached wolves.
There are a ton of factors here at play that make this situation difficult. To have everyone in other states criticize and judge all of us here in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming and act like we are a bunch of idiots just turning around and pouting every time we see a wolf track is ridiculous and offensive. There are a lot of guys who do spend a significant amount of time, energy and money trying to hunt and educate these animals. In the areas where I hunt, there has been less than one year of legal wolf hunting. That isn’t a lot of time to try and educate an entire wolf population. The interaction between wolves and dogs is fairly low. It isn’t like we have wolves coming every time we turn loose. I believe this is because guys are conscious of their dogs safety and try to find areas where wolves are not as active. In bear season, unless you have a camera and are hunting over bait, you don’t even know if a wolf ran across the road five minutes before you turn loose. It’s a huge gamble. Obviously we all want to do what is best for our dogs and best for our wildlife in the long run.
I am telling you, guys are trying every legal way possible to do what you’re saying. It is going to take time, more than two shortened hunting seasons, to even begin to dent the population. And it will never be a problem that is fixed. Even in Alberta where for the most part, they have awesome roads and liberal seasons, the hound doggers still have to watch out for wolves.
Stop acting like we don’t know (or that you know better) how to deal with this problem. It is going to be a calculated risk in our states for any hound dogger to turn loose. It is just the reality we will have to live with. Hopefully, the government can get some sense and do more aggressive control to knock their numbers back to an appropriate level. It won’t be long until wolves do get back to Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Washington, Oregon and California are already seeing it. We will see then how you guys will deal with the problem. We are trying, we are educating and we aren’t turning and hiding from them. If that’s what anyone thinks, you need to take your time (like I have done) and get educated and get realistic about this situation.
Here is a list of things I have tried or I know people have tried with limited success:
- Calling in areas where fresh tracks are located
- Trying to box in the area where wolves are and walking out a track
- Trying to box wolves in and work ahead of them with multiple guys on different ridges and creek bottoms
- Sitting on wolf kills (blind or treestands)
- Spot and stalk
- Boxing in a lion track, letting dogs tree for a while with a few guys a couple hundreds of yards out watching for incoming wolves (even this is considered baiting by some Fish and Game Officers)
Here are the issues with these tactics:
Most of our roads only go part way up a drainage and the wolves will travel through the top. It makes it very difficult to make sure things are boxed in. There is a limited amount of time you have to hunt them in good snow conditions where you have access to leapfrog them and get them boxed in (assuming the roads do exist). By Dec 15 in a lot of areas, the forest service either shuts off road access or has winter closures that prohibit human entry. There are a lot of guys that are trying to call wolves who just plain can’t. This educates them in the wrong way. It doesn’t take too many botched calls or botched sets to educate wolves about what is going on. The same is true with trapping. Wolves often do not return to their kills. Quite a few of our wolf kills are incidentals (many by treestand hunters) or people who see wolves on a fresh kill.
Here is a list of things guys have tried to minimize wolf interaction with dogs:
- Boxing in a lion track even with wolves present, running it anyway, making lots of noise, having someone walk with/behind the dog, keeping sleds running as close to the dogs as possible, putting bells on dogs, leave a radio running in the truck, firing gunshots…
Here are the issues:
A lot of times, if you find wolf tracks and the country is big, you do go find somewhere else to hunt that day. Maybe this is wrong or sounds dumb to some of you. Most of us that have jobs though, only have limited days to hunt. It takes time and tracks to make dogs. You do have to choose how to spend your time. I’ve asked most of my hound and non hound buddies who spend most of their free time in the woods. All agree, if they spent their entire winter just hunting wolves, they might be able to kill one or two. That essentially makes that cost and hound hunting prohibitive. If you spent all winter doing it, you couldn’t run dogs.
I think most of these dog-wolf interactions occur when the hunter doesn’t know there are wolves present or a lion travels much further than the hunter anticipates. This gives the wolves a chance (there are a lot of times in this BIG country, even the best athletes simply could not stay with dogs moving a lion track) to move in on trailing dogs as they trail by the wolves (most the wolves bed during the day) and triggers a prey instinct in the wolves to protect their territory. I don’t think we probably want to know or think about how many time wolves have come towards trailing dogs during a race and we never know it.
People also have to understand that their isn’t a lot of common sense here with LEGAL wolf control. We winter feed elk and deer but turn around and let the wolves come into the feeding stations. This habituates them to humans and makes their lives fairly easy.
We have taken up much of the winter range with development. This has changed since the 1930’s. I think wolves probably have an easier time to make a living now. The elk and deer can’t come down on their historic winter range in a lot of areas. It is all tilled under with pivots and canals. They have been forced to stay higher, in more snow (mostly in closure areas) and I believe this makes hunting easier for wolves. I believe this is one of the main reasons some areas have been decimated by wolf reintroduction. I also believe that our elk, who didn’t really have a main predator, were easy pickings for the first few years. They probably lost the art of avoiding and eluding wolves.
Also remember, we have only had two seasons in Idaho and it looks as though our wolf population may be on the decline. Although most of the data shows that the overall number is down, the dispersal of the wolves seems to be over a larger area and in smaller numbers. I’m not sure this is better for the hound hunters. We have only had two LEGAL seasons (well 1 ¾) that we could educate wolves. It wasn’t too long before that that a hound hunter couldn’t even shoot, harass, pursue…. a wolf coming into his own dogs and livestock owners had to call fish and game before they could shoot a wolf harassing cattle It is estimated that Idaho alone (this doesn’t include border packs) has around 750 wolves. I believe the number is probably 50% low. See, I am actually a guy with a Masters degree in Natural resources and I have read most of the wolf and lion studies available. I also know that Idaho Fish and Game has pursued and tried to prosecute a pile of poached wolves.
There are a ton of factors here at play that make this situation difficult. To have everyone in other states criticize and judge all of us here in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming and act like we are a bunch of idiots just turning around and pouting every time we see a wolf track is ridiculous and offensive. There are a lot of guys who do spend a significant amount of time, energy and money trying to hunt and educate these animals. In the areas where I hunt, there has been less than one year of legal wolf hunting. That isn’t a lot of time to try and educate an entire wolf population. The interaction between wolves and dogs is fairly low. It isn’t like we have wolves coming every time we turn loose. I believe this is because guys are conscious of their dogs safety and try to find areas where wolves are not as active. In bear season, unless you have a camera and are hunting over bait, you don’t even know if a wolf ran across the road five minutes before you turn loose. It’s a huge gamble. Obviously we all want to do what is best for our dogs and best for our wildlife in the long run.
I am telling you, guys are trying every legal way possible to do what you’re saying. It is going to take time, more than two shortened hunting seasons, to even begin to dent the population. And it will never be a problem that is fixed. Even in Alberta where for the most part, they have awesome roads and liberal seasons, the hound doggers still have to watch out for wolves.
Stop acting like we don’t know (or that you know better) how to deal with this problem. It is going to be a calculated risk in our states for any hound dogger to turn loose. It is just the reality we will have to live with. Hopefully, the government can get some sense and do more aggressive control to knock their numbers back to an appropriate level. It won’t be long until wolves do get back to Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Washington, Oregon and California are already seeing it. We will see then how you guys will deal with the problem. We are trying, we are educating and we aren’t turning and hiding from them. If that’s what anyone thinks, you need to take your time (like I have done) and get educated and get realistic about this situation.