I thought you guys might like to see this. Take a look at the size of this monster wolf. It was shot by Idaho Fish & Game Department officials not far from Boise, Idaho after being part of a pack that killed over 60 sheep in a single evening without consuming a single one!

Shot from a chopper, looks like? Probably fun, but not very sporty.

That's one heavy looking specimen indeed.

KG

Here boy. " Bang" good dead wolf!!!! I hope they shoot all that they put there. looks like he's been feeding well.

Hi dewman, looks like this was your first post, so welcome!

That certainly looks like a huge wolf to me.

Nice photo! Now that is one good wolf! A dead one! Who cares about the sport, like there was none for the sheep!

Maybe just a flock of old, sick sheep that needed culling.

Thanks for the welcome. The story I got was, the guy in the blue coveralls stood about 6'4" tall and weighed about 240 lbs., so it will give you some perspective on the size of the wolf. You see, the problem with the Federally mandated reintroduction of wolves in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and a few other states is the fact that they're not introducting the wolves that were indigenous to these areas, but rather reintroducing the Northern Canadian wolves which get much, much larger than the North American red wolf that used to roam these parts.

Anytime I venture into the woods near where I live, the photo shows one of my creations I never leave home without. A .45 LC loaded with 265 gr. JSP's at around 1,400 FPS, it's enough gun for just about anything that roams them thar hills!

1/14/08
From ID F&GD:

Fish and Game Director: Wolves are Here to Stay

By Cal Groen, Idaho Department of Fish and Game

The Idaho Fish and Game wolf management plan aims to maintain the gray wolf’s place on the Idaho landscape.

The plan is meant to manage wolves as other big game species are managed successfully in this state. One part of that success, once wolves are removed from the list of endangered species, will be to maintain Idaho’s control of the wolf population rather than allow it to fall to a point that places wolves back onto the federal list and under federal management.

Long experience teaches us that wildlife cannot be managed too close to a strict line. We do not do that with elk herds, where hunters typically take around 15 percent annually of a species with a natural reproduction rate of more than 25 percent.

Hunting is one of the primary management tools available to Fish and Game. Through effective management, healthy deer and elk herds in most of Idaho have supported wolf recovery well beyond levels specified by the federal government.

Fish and Game will apply the same professional wildlife management practices to wolves as those applied to elk, white-tailed deer, mule deer, moose, black bears, and mountain lions; all of which have recovered from critically low populations during the early 1900s.

What we can do, and fully intend to do, is monitor wolf populations intensively through hard work and solid science. If our work shows that, for whatever reasons, wolf numbers appear to be sliding toward a precipice, action will be taken to stop that slide. The key is using science to adapt our management to actual conditions at ground level.

To keep the record straight, the plan calls for careful and adaptive management of Idaho’s wolf populations. Wolf management will be a dynamic program that we will all continue to learn from. The point of wolf management will be to stabilize numbers, not to cut wolves to an absolute minimum. In fact, the plan recognizes wilderness area packs as “core†populations and as “source†areas for surrounding regions.

One other thing we know: Our public surveys show that once wolf populations are delisted and managed, animosity toward wolves will substantially decline. Our goals to manage wolves in Idaho responsibly, realistically, and according to our plan, will never fully satisfy those wanting more wolves, nor will it satisfy those wanting no wolves. But the state of Idaho has promised the nation that wolves are here to stay and we will manage viable and healthy populations.

The plan can be viewed on the Fish and Game website: http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/cms/wildlife/wolves/state/...plan/WolfPopPlan.pdf

I believe most people in Idaho will find the plan to be thoughtful and balanced.

Cal Groen is director of Idaho Fish and Game.


******

I saw a dead one in N.MN that was 140lbs, huge!!

Idaho fish and game is considering an open season on wolves, apparantly they forgot that wolves litter..Hopefully it will come about as the elk herds are really suffering, according to them.

KAMO GARI - "Shot from a chopper, looks like? Probably fun, but not very sporty."


K.G., when the U.S. F.& W. S. people, and Idaho F&G people decide to kill livestock killers, there's nothing about it that is "sport." It is purely "get the job done." Ergo, using a chopper to "get the job done."

The man in the blue jump suit is the pilot of the chopper. Another picture is out there that shows the shooter also holding the dead wolf, in which you can also see the chopper a few feet away.

For you Idaho boys and girls, that wolf was killed not too far north of the Danskin Station area off of Hwy. 17, between Banks, and Loman, Idaho.

That's about 50 miles north of Boise, but there are wolves working much closer to Boise and surrounding towns than that.

There are two large wolf packs working that area and a couple of the surrounding drainages.

FWIW.

L.W.

FWIW, here's the picture of the other man.



Enjoy.

Dewman, I use a 265 grains Beartooth Bullets LBT GC bullet in my Ruger Blackhawk. Nothing wrong with a good .45 Colt.

L.W.

That is the largest German Shepard I've ever seen.

Good thing they don't attack people. I only worry about coyotes when I'm outdoors.

I hunted Elk in the Boise River Unit 39 this past fall and Wolves were all over the unit. There were reports of sheep kills before the season and I saw freshly chewed sheep bones and wolf tracks.

Aside from the dumb idea to re-introduce a predator like the wolf into a fragile ecosystem, why are they still allowing sheep and cattle grazing on federal lands, including parks? Idaho had somewhere near 2.4 million acres burnt and I flew over a lot of area that is wasteland. What are the Elk and Deer going to eat?

No doubt the wolves are fat and big. As I understand it the alpha wolf/pack leader is usually an animal of about 200lbs. They have artifically been feed by the grazing sheep and expanded numbers such that if and when grazers are forced off the land, the wolves will decimate the Elk herds.

I hope they allow the wolf hunts. Like a lot of bumper stickers that I saw in Idaho say, "Save 100 Elk....Kill 1 Wolf."

Unfortunately, if will take a Sun Valley wolf eating Paris Hilton's little dog, before people wake up.
fwiw,
Dave

Damn big coyote......

quote:

Damn big coyote......

Hey, Kid, I understand from a friend up your way you have some of those "damn big coyotes" taking care of business in your area, too.

L. W.

I know they don't care, but I think a wolf hide in good shape is about $150 on the fur trade market.

Now there are 1500 wolves! So it is any ones guess. I believe the 1500+. Now for you pro-wolfers, with the liberal ideology, that the wolf has not affected big game populations in the west, answer me why such a rule would be proposed? And by the liberal feds? Could it be possible that maybe, just maybe, wolves are having or will continue to have a huge negative affect on big game? Surely not! Yeah right!

Associated Press Writer
Thursday, January 24, 2008 10:16 AM MST

BILLINGS, Mont. -- A new federal rule would allow state game agencies to kill endangered gray wolves that prey on wildlife in the Northern Rockies.

An estimated 1,500 Wolves in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana are scheduled to come off the endangered species list in coming weeks, which would allow public hunting of the predators for the first time in decades.

Today's federal rule is a separate action that would give the three states more latitude to kill wolves even if the delisting is delayed.

State wildlife agents would be empowered to kill packs of wolves if they could prove the animals were having a "major impact" on big game herds such as elk, deer and moose.

Environmental groups have pledged to challenge the rule and the planned delisting in court.

The new rule also allows you to protect your dog from wolves.

http://www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/species/mammals/wol...sRelease01242008.pdf

I don't understand the animus towards wolves. I have lived around them all my life and now I live 30 miles outside of Minneapolis and have wolves within 30 miles of my home. I hunt an hour north of home and there's wolves there. We can legally shoot five deer apiece there. We shot more like one apiece last fall and there's way too many to make it through a hard winter now. When I was younger, we'd lose a sheep now and again to them sure, but by and large they weren't a big problem.

Drive US 61 in the vicinity of Grand Marais in the dawn/dusk times and if you don't pay attention you'll hit deer, especially this time of year. Yet, that area is home to a higher density of wolves than probably anywhere in the lower 48 except Isle Royale. I do have to admit that dogs running loose are killed often enough, and sometimes even dogs in peoples yards, but that's not so often.

Even with as many wolves as we have, we still kill a whole lot more deer on the highway than we lose to them. I'd be willing to bet that we kill a lot more dogs with cars than the wolves do too.

Personally, I have no problem with shooting wolves. All of the wolves I have run across, without exception, have all been the most man shy critters I know of. Without reason to be man shy, they are just not wolves. But, that doesn't mean I see any purpose to trying to kill them all off.

quote:

Originally posted by dewman:
I thought you guys might like to see this. Take a look at the size of this monster wolf. It was shot by Idaho Fish & Game Department officials not far from Boise, Idaho after being part of a pack that killed over 60 sheep in a single evening without consuming a single one!

No comments by the Pro Wolf Experts on AR as to why these wolves killed over 60 sheep.

Interesting!!!

I don't consider myself pro or anti wolf, nor an expert, but the answer to Snapper's question as to why a pack of wolves might have killed 60 sheep without eating them is obvious to anyone to anyone with something other than peanut butter between their ears:

The damn fool sheep stuck around and didn't get the hell out of there like normal prey animals would.

You see the same reaction by kids in a candy shop, hunters/fishermen in certain situations etc. I have seen enough of dogs and wolves to know that they are not necessarily stupid All canids I know of cache food and return for it later. If they're smart enough to put something up (save it) for leaner times who are we to look at them as being more or less noble than us.

Wolves killing 60 sheep in a night are just being wolves. It's neither more nor less "moral" than a farmer running 260 sheep on land that will support 200 in a dry year. It just is in the nature of the wolf or farmer.