More On Wolves

[RetiredUSNChief]

A full-grown wolf is as big as a full-grown mountain lion. I know as fact that two attacks by mountain lions in Big Bend National Park were initiated against small children of the 6-to-10 age group.

I figure that a hungry predator will go after a "target of opportunity". If I have a small child who has to wait for a school bus and the wait is at a spot a fair ways from home, I'll arrange for some sort of protection. "Cage", sit in the truck, whatever.

Just because some event has not happened does not mean that it cannot happen or won't happen.

Children are "target(s) of opportunity" because they trip the stalking instinct in predators.

Wolf Park (Battleground, In) is where I learned a bit about wolf behavior. One of the first things we were told as a group before we went out to the fenced area as part of our tour was to watch what happens to the wolves as soon as one of the children in our group starts fidgeting, whimpering, or crying. Such behaviors flip the "PREY!" alert in the wolves and they'll start stalking the kid.

Sure enough, just as soon as one of the little kids started crying, every wolf in sight stopped what they were doing and focused their attention on THAT child. Then a couple approached the fence and started pacing back and forth along the fence in the immediate vicinity of the child, always maintaining eye contact with THAT child.

Most people (read: idiots who insist on thinking of wolves as dogs) think such behavior is "cute" and/or "caring", in the same fashion that they would for domesticated dogs. But our guide informed us that wolves are NOT dogs and everything we were seeing about their response to that child was STALKING. That child was telling the wolves loudly and clearly "I AM FOOD FOR THE TAKING".



People should NOT screw with predators and should NOT mistake them for something they are not. And they most certainly should NOT underestimate them.

 

[mnhntr]

This is the best kind of wolf, a dead one.

 

[another pake]

dook, I agree with much of what you said. The wolf is a hunter, no doubt about it. The wolf, as well as the grizzly, the lion and others are Apex Hunters, at the top of the food chain...

But so are you. Homo Sapiens, "the wise man", are also Apex Hunters. But you have a genetic advantage over other Apex Hunters in that you have within your brain the ability to assemble, categorize and interpret data...if you choose to. You can use that data to predict future events... If you choose to. You can process, plan and coordinate your actions with those of other like minded of your species.

Or you can sit around and tell tales of how it used to be.

Personally, I enjoy telling those tales myself. But I prefer to leave them for the bar after the hunt.

Respectfully,

 

[another pake]

mnhntr,

Nice wolf!

Good hunting opportunities there too, IMO.

 

[mnhntr]

Caught in a coyote snare and a less than a week later the mate was in the driveway. Of course I did not get drawn for a tag so this one had to go to the fish cops.

 

[DM~]

This is the best kind of wolf, a dead one.

In all the years I lived out in the bush, with wolves around, what I learned from MY OWN "personal experiences", you are exactly right!

DM

 

[dook]

Another pake, Wolves have far superior hearing vision and smell to humans. Our ancestors found that thinning them out by hunting them is an exercise in futility. All that accomplishes is removing the dumbest 5% from the gene pool. They had to resort to such tactics as infecting pups with mange and releasing them, poisoning dead deer and cattle and distributing sponge baits that clogged their intestines. No matter what you do to control them, they learn and adapt quickly.
It took decades to rid this country of those destructive pests and our rulers brought them right back. If this was a ploy to incrementally abolish hunting, it sure was successful.

 

[another pake]

dook, I was referring to your ability to figure out how to get elk.

But whatever.

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

It took decades to rid this country of those destructive pests and our rulers brought them right back. If this was a ploy to incrementally abolish hunting, it sure was successful.

Honestly, that's not really saying much. Wolves are totally unremarkable with respect to "decades to rid this country" of them. We've managed to do this with quite a number of species, nor more or less remarkable than wolves.

It took decades to nearly run the American Bison extinct. We managed to hunt them down to a few hundred in the 1800's before taking action to bring them back from the brink of extinction.

It took decades to kill off the Carolina Parakeet.

After decades of hunting, the Eastern Elk went extinct.

Passenger Pigeon? Extinct after decades of hunting/killing.

The Heath Hen prarie chicken? Hunted to extinction in a few decades.

Several other birds were hunted or otherwise killed to extinction in just a few decades.

We've even fished several species of North American fish and clams to the point of extinction over a few decades.

And we've been pretty efficient at killing off/endangering a variety of sea life in just a few decades, as well.


A wolf is just one of many apex predators. Like it or not, they have a place in the environment or they would never have evolved into that role in the first place. They are only a "pest" to man...whose status as the pinnacle apex predator on the planet is in direct conflict with any other apex predator whom he may co-habitate with.

 

[dook]

Honestly, that's not really saying much. Wolves are totally unremarkable with respect to "decades to rid this country" of them. We've managed to do this with quite a number of species, nor more or less remarkable than wolves.

As I stated earlier, we already had wolves in small numbers in Montana before the gummit brought in the larger, more agressive, faster breeding diseased foreign ones. Packs of wolves hate all other canines they come in contact with and kill them whenever they can. The introduced wolves predictably killed off all the native wolves. USFWS has hundreds of wildlife biologists so there is no way they could not have known this would happen.

There was no legitimate reason for them to do this. Yellostone elk overpopulations and resulting damages were overstated and even if there were too many elk, they could have relaxed a few hunting regulations and solved that.

Just as they kept the hydatid issue secret, they deceived us on many counts. Their behavior is indicative of a hidden agenda.

 

[Art Eatman]

We've pretty well drifted away from environmental concerns and the various complexities--and five pages oughta be nuff fer now.

Any new notions come to mind, charge right in!