Tanner Colten Moad, 5 years old, is one of the coolest kids I know. The youngest of 4 children of mine, Tanner never stops moving.

Before gun season in central eastern Oklahoma, the traditional bow season usually takes priority. I had taken the first week of bow season off from work in an attempt to tag out early at the request of my wife Lori. In her mind, if I was to tag out early, my deer season would then be “dear” season, with lots of additional chores getting done that get overlooked during each year’s deer season.

As a bow hunter, I was able to harvest a doe pretty quick, and two days later, stuck a nice 8 point that only took two steps before falling over. I had watched that buck spare with a 9-point two days earlier, and was in hopes I could manage to get the edge on one of them as both were very big bodied deer. Well, upon getting the close up view of the 8-point I had just harvested, I realized that half way up one side of his G-2, his antlers were completely broken off. A few of his other tines were damaged as well, which led me to believe that the 9-point he had previously been sparing with, probably wasn’t sparing anymore.

With bow season quickly becoming gun season, my son Tanner, was getting pretty excited about going hunting with dad this year. I had to work the first day of the season, but promised to take him on Sunday. Sunday afternoon, around 3:00pm, I was off to the deer woods and had my little man right there with me on the 4-wheeler. We drove to a spot where not much hunting activity was going on, and climbed into the buddy stand that was located there. The buddy stand had the camouflage netting around its fall protective bars and I knew that if a deer did come in, that the anticipated movements of my son would go undetected.

To my surprise, Tanner, sat quietly in the stand with me, pulled out his binoculars, and commenced to scanning the woods all around. When a squirrel would drop an acorn from a tree, it would hit the leaves, and Tanner would turn quickly to identify what made the noise. He would whisper to me that he thought he heard something over there, or over there, and over there. I know this sounds crazy, but I loved every minute of watching him pay attention to what was going on in the woods around him. Now he was hungry, 15 minutes after we were in the stand. He pulled out a package of crackers and quietly munched on them while looking around. We switched positions about 10 times, so he could see everything. He would ask me questions about all kinds of woods activities and now sat in my lap to get a better view. About 1 and ½ hours in the stand now, Tanner started doing the chicken head. You know, when someone is trying desperately not to fall asleep, but their eyes roll back, and their heads starts popping up. Well, it wasn’t long before “Mr. Energy” was resting against my arm, quietly sleeping.

Soon as Tanner decided to snooze, I elected to stay in the stand since there was only about 30 minutes left of daylight. So I positioned Tanner so he could lay down across the buddy stand seat that was covered with a camouflage blanket, and I would stand up. After positioning Tanner towards comfort, I stood up in the stand, now facing the rear, and spotted a nice buck standing there watching me. I touched Tanner on the face and arm attempting to wake him from his afternoon nap. I whispered to him “Tanner, there is a deer, wake up”. No response. So I looked back up the deer was gone. I positioned my rifle across the stand bars and waited for the deer to exit the brush. Just as I thought, he walked right through the opening in the brush headed for the deep woods. I announced I was there with a mouthed made “grunt”. He stopped and “bang”. As soon as the shot rang out, “Tanner, jumped up, wide eyed and said “Did I GET HIM?. Excited now, he really wanted to know if he got a deer. I smiled at him and excitedly said yes son, you got a big old buck. He jumped up and down in the stand and hugged me, and said “Well, where is he? Let’s go get him.” His little voice was squeaking high and low with excitement. This was his first experience in the deer woods hunting, and man he sure loved it, as did I. We climbed down the stand together, and went to where the buck was standing. I showed him the blood on the ground and explained to him that he should walk beside the blood, not in it, when he was tracking a deer. He started to walk beside the trail when he squeaked again. “I found him, he is right there” pointing. All of these events happening so fast, I wanted them to slow down some so I could savor the enjoyment of watching him. I showed him the caution of approaching a wounded or dead animal, helped him count the points on the antlers, and hugs and pride just rushed through me. After all, this hunt was supposed to be all about him.

He helped me load the deer on the 4-wheeler, and away we went to show the family. Close to the house now, I walked beside the 4-wheeler and allowed Tanner to drive up to the house. Picture this, A five year old boy, dressed in a camouflage shirt and orange hat with vest, driving a ranch 4-wheeler with a rifle in the rack on the front, and a 140 pound 8-point deer strapped to the utility rack in the back, coming out of the deer woods and driving up to the house with his mother waiting for him with a camera. Wouldn’t you be proud? I know I was. Tanner will never forget his first deer hunt, but neither will I. I think Lori, my wife and his mother, took a million pictures that evening.
Not only that, but he beat me this year with his deer. Mine during bow season was 150 pounds, but his rack was bigger. It is good to start them off young.

Mac enjoys duck hunting in the Midwest.

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Todd Krater
U.S. Hunting Today
Managing Editor
todd@ushuntingtoday.com

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The first week of October was finally here.  The first three days were spent in my favorite stand watching 3 raccoons in which I had named Larry, Curly, and Moe.  The mother raccoon was slightly bigger than the two younger ones, and seemed curious to every movement surrounding them.  The days here in eastern Oklahoma in October were still in the 80’s with mosquitoes buzzing everywhere.  I was wondering if it were still to hot to hunt and questioned myself again over and over.  Each day so far, I had hunted morning and evening with only a few does showing up.

Our family is one of three families (all related) that live on the mountain with about 360 acres of land owned by our families.  Each year we hunt, we always establish the rules.  {8 Point or better for the husbands} {Wives and kids, buck or doe} Now last year I hunted all year and didn’t harvest one deer, but I had seen enough antlers to keep me excited.  Every time Bill and Grover, my brother in-laws, sure let me know how I got spanked on last years hunt.  Both are avid rifle hunters and tagged out the year I brought home nothing.  I was thinking about this already early in this season while elevated about 18 feet up in my climber.  I wondered, as every other hunter does, will this be my year.  As I looked down from my stand at the raccoons again on the 4^th morning of October 2007, I was once again thinking of how pretty they were and how every day I am in the woods, I look for the highlight of the day.  Whether this was the highlight of the day again, or was an owl going to sit on the limb next to me, a squirrel sitting on my boot, quail leaving a fast trail for a coyote, bobcats on the prowl, turkeys rustling, what was going to be the highlight?

Then, I saw movement directly in front of me.  I was a deer for sure, and no does were present yet.  I had placed my stand in what my wife calls the quiet spot.  High cedars with no brush, not to thick, but perfect for a good bow shot.  A well used doe trail to my right, and another trail coming in from the left, thicker trees to my front.  I could see about 40 yards around me with a creek bed behind me on a down hill gentle slope. The deer in front of me wasn’t spooked or aware of my presence as it slowly made its way directly toward me.  Sun to my back and the breeze in my face, finally, I could see him completely.  “Very nice buck” I was thinking.  As he moved closer and closer, I could count 4 on one side and 4 on the other.  Not sure if I wanted to take the shot just yet, I moved into position just in case.  Standing now and ready to draw, I used the bow as if I was hiding behind its small limbs.  The buck was much bigger than I originally thought the closer he moved to my stand.  20 yards and still coming, 10 yards and still coming.  He stopped, head concealed by a large cedar tree.  I came to full draw and picked my shooting lane.  As if knowing I was now ready to shoot, the 8 point stepped from behind the cedar and moved closer, directly into my shooting lane.  7 yards, I picked my hairs on the buck, just behind the shoulder and quartering down.  I could sense the raccoons to my right and felt a sense of calm, took a large breath, let it out half way, became steady as a rock and released.

{‘Wham”}  I dropped him in his tracks.  I intended to penetrate spine, heart, and lung if possible for a deadly and swift kill.  My broadhead did exactly that.  I stood for a moment and watched the buck lie still and quiet.  Larry, Curly, and Moe were nowhere to be seen.  I called my wife using my cell phone and quietly whispered I had a good buck down, her response to me was “why are we whispering”.  Laughing a little I said, I am in the quiet spot.

After checking the buck in and heading to the processors, I continued to hunt the evening in another stand.  Each day I hunted, I elected to use my climber instead of pre-placed stands used each year.  October the 7^th, 3 days after my first buck of the year, my 14 year old son was ready for action.  This would be his first year bow hunting, and he practiced every day for the last two months.  He was actually quite good shooting the pillow target and 3D’s, in which I was very proud.  Sunday after church, he would be in the woods with me for the evening hunt.  Everything seemed to go wrong.  I found out he was afraid of heights the hard way, but patiently, I assisted him into a lock-on stand with steps, explained the safety belt, strapped him in and climbed down.  I hooked his bow on the bow string and up and away the bow went.  While the bow was being pulled up by my son, I was watching all around me, trying to quiet down the woods, when {Wham}!!!!  My right hand was numb.  I looked at my hand and there was a deep cut to the bone on the top.  My son had almost had the bow in his stand when the bow string slipped.  The bow caught me square across my hand.  Seriously nervous and seeing the blood, my son asked if I was alright and maybe we should just go home and get the hand took care of.  He said he was so sorry and it just slipped, and…………  I assured my son everything was fine, helped him get the bow up the stand, and assured him he was ready to hunt.  “Don’t worry about me son, you just keep your eyes out for the big one.  I will be about 100 yards straight across the creek.”  I pointed with my other hand where I would be, wished him good luck, then started walking away from his stand. After crossing the creek and out of sight from Chase, I stopped and looked at the top of my right hand.  I was hurt pretty good, and I still couldn’t make a fist yet.

Not wanting to leave the woods with my son still in a stand, I elected to set up on a trail I knew of and wait it out.  I pulled off the climber from my shoulder and worried a little about if I could even use the stand to climb or not.  After setting up the stand at the bottom of the tree I picked out, we were going to find out if I could climb with one hand.  It actually wasn’t that bad.  Up the tree I went, got situated, smiled a little at how stupid I was to stand directly under my sons stand when he was raising his bow then shrugged it off as “my stupidity, my fault.” Now situated and seated in my stand, I wondered if I could even draw my bow back with the bum hand.  So, I stood up quietly, drew the bow and wow, man did that hurt.  I sat back down and thought once again, I hope a big buck goes by my son instead of me this evening.  Not real sure I could even draw again.

45 minutes later, about 6:05pm, I caught movement from over my right shoulder.  Yep, you guessed it.  It was a buck, but a very small buck.  Knowing that early in this season the bucks were still traveling together, I stood, turned and prepared.  Sure enough, 5 yards behind the 4 point, was a small basket 8 point.  Immediately I decided not to shoot this small 8.  To my surprise, directly on his heals was a really nice 8 point.  Now I was getting excited.  By the way, the first buck in front had walked directly under my stand and was now in front of my stand.  I drew slowly, aimed center mass of the shooting lane in a gap in the brush.  The small 8 point buck walked through the gap, and then “There he was”,  A fine 8 point standing in the gap.  Once again, I picked my area of hair behind the shoulder, quartered down, controlled the breathing, paused, and slowly squeezed the trigger release.

{Wham} I dropped him in his tracks.  I intended to penetrate spine, heart, and lung if possible again and sure enough, the broadhead did the work.  Can you believe this, 6 yards, another nice buck on the ground, just laying there.  I stood in amazement, I was shocked.  This was a really nice buck, pretty wide and may score as well.  The odd thing about this was, “dropped in his tracks.”  The very thing every hunter hopes for is to find the deer, or even better a swift and clean kill.  Well, not only did I find the deer three or four days ago, I found this one too.  I was like a dream.  Two 8 point bucks, both bow kills, both in the same week, both dropped in their tracks. I realized after a brief moment of silence, that my hand did not hurt anymore, and to make things even better, my son was on this hunt with me only 100 yards away. The two bucks that were in front of this one, there would be a good chance Chase saw them or even may get a shot.  But what will always cross my mind is how big was the buck that was still coming in from behind the buck I harvested.  I saw him jump when I released.  I climbed down and walked to Chases stand, walked cautiously up to the side of him and told him we had a good buck down.  Excited, he said he saw two bucks running and asked how big my buck was.  I told him, “well, I don’t know really, maybe you should help me track him”.  Chase was so excited when he walked up to my tree, buck in plain site.  “Man, I’m gonna get me a buck like that” I went to retrieve the 4-wheeler, we loaded the deer and headed to the house.  I was kind of in a hurry as the darkness was starting to set in, and I still needed to check this buck in too.  Arriving at our home on the mountain, my father stepped out on the deck and observed our approach.  My father had just come in from out of town that day to visit us for a week, so that was kind of cool him seeing me bring in another deer.  He was a big deer hunter with hunting skills that I always admired.

As far as the wife goes, she was so excited.  Not so much that I had gotten a nice buck, but that I had gotten two nice bucks with a bow in the first week of hunting season.  She rubbed it in real good to her two brothers whom still hadn’t harvested anything.  The next morning, as I watched the brother in laws roll out to the woods to deer hunt, I told them the same thing I always told them.  “Good luck and I hope you get a big one” Every bit of this is true, and I honestly believe this will be hard for me to beat next year.  After all, now my season just went from deer season, to “dear” season.  Being tagged out in the first week of bow season is a sure sign that honey-do’s will be a major part of the rest of my season.

This is a warning to outdoor users about a potentially deadly biological event that could result from one’s curiosity to poke at and kick through scat from wolves, coyotes and foxes. Of course not everyone knowingly does this but many hunters, trappers and simply the curious, want to know what these animals have been eating.

Back in the end of November I gave you a link to a story, “Of Wolves and Worms”. That story introduced many of us to the subject of worms being found in wolves in the Greater Yellowstone area.

According to a new study out in the October issue of the Journal of Wildlife Diseases, three-millimeter-long tapeworms known as Echinococcus granulosus, are documented for the first time in gray wolves in Idaho and Montana. And the authors didn’t just find a few tapeworms here and there… turns out that of 123 wolf intestines sampled, 62 percent of the Idaho gray wolves and 63 percent of the Montana gray wolves were positive. (Ew!) The researchers wrote: “The detection of thousands of tapeworms per wolf was a common finding.” (Again… Ew!!) This leads to the interpretation that the E. granulosus parasite rate is fairly widespread and established in the Northern Rocky Mountain wolves.

There is discussion about how some think the worms ended up in the wolves in this region but the article tends to downplay any serious concerns people should have from coming in contact with these tapeworms and the eggs they leave behind.

In the comments section of the article, Will Graves, author of the book “Wolves in Russia: Anxiety Through the Ages“, left his thoughts on his own research discoveries about the dangers to humans of these parasites.

In the first paragraph in my letter to Mr. Bangs dated 3 October 1993 on the DEIS (Draft Environmental Impact Statement) which was titled “The Reintroduction of Gray Wolves to Yellowstone National Park and Central Idaho,” I warned about the damages and problems wolves would cause to Yellowstone and other areas by carrying and spreading parasites and diseases over larger areas. Some of these parasites are damaging not only to wild and domestic animals, but can also be dangerous to humans. One of these parasites is Echinococcous Granulosus and Echinococcus M. Since 1993 I have been working to tell people what I have learned from about 50 years of research on the characteristics, habits and behavior of Russian wolves. From that research I came to the conclusion that one of the most serious consequences of bring wolves into the US would be the wolves carrying and spreading around damaging/dangerous parasites and diseases. I did my best to explain this in my book titled, “Wolves in Russia – Anxiety Through the Ages” edited by Dr. Valerius Geist. Details about my book are in my web site: wolvesinrussia.com.

After several years effort, I finally recently obtained help from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Parasitic Research Center in Beltsville, MD. This research center will try to conduct research on the blood taken from wolves in our western states. Oneparasite they will be researching is to determine if wolves carry and spread the parasite Neospora Caninum around. It is established that coyotes and dogs carry this damaging parasite.

I remember that about two years ago there was a report about one wolf carrying Echinococcus Granulosus in Montana.

Much more research is needed about the danger wolves bring to our environment. Some of the parasites carried by wolves are dangerous to humans.(emphasis added)

Around this same time that Will Graves posted his comments, he contacted me by email and asked if I could somehow be of assistance to him in obtaining blood samples from wolves taken during the Idaho and Montana wolf hunts. The word went out quickly and hopefullyGraves gets what he needs to help him in his research. This can become extremely valuable information for all of us.

In the meantime, Dr. Valerius Geist, professor emeritus University of Calgary and Dr. Charles Kay, of Utah State University, who holds degrees in wildlife ecology, environmental studies and wildlife biology, exchanged thoughts on the discovery of worms in Yellowstone wolves in emails I received.

Well, Charles? What else is new? What did we warn about, how we were censored as alarmists………………………
And yes, a colleague assured us that all that is not a problem for us, but for some native types. Nothing to worry about, really. Remember how, early on, we put out a warning – do not kick dry wolf feces or poke about in such looking for evidence of food habits. Do not handle wolf feces as it will disturb the tiny Echinococcus eggs that float up like little dust cloud to envelop you, and you are very likely to ingest some of that “dust”. This know-how, which we older Canadian types carried away from our parasitogy lessons was poo-hood by some American colleagues. Wolves are after all, harmless! Remember the question we posed: is it really such a great idea completing ecosystems when the progression is herbivores, carnivores, finally diseases and parasites?

It is not my intention nor that of Drs. Geist and Kay to attempt to instill unnecessary fear in people but to educate, as it was back in the day before wolf reintroduction. There are very important lessons and warnings that all should heed and take into consideration when in the woods or maybe even in your own back yard.

Dr. Geist emailed me the other day and asked me if I would be kind enough to post this information so that anyone and everyone will be aware of the potential for some very serious health issues.

Urgent: could you make a point of it that now, that we know that the majority of wolves are infected with Echinococcus, that all hunters control their curiosity and not poke about in wolf or coyote feces to find out what these predators ate. these feces are saturated with tiny, lightweight Echinococcus eggs that rise like dust plume from the disturbed feces and envelop the poking hunter. If the air-born eggs are ingested, the an infection is possible, and having Echinococcus cysts grow inside oneself is not a desirable condition. Trust me!

He followed that up with more information about the dangers.

As to the pathogenicity of Echinococcus granulosus: Yes, I noticed that Foayt, leaning on Raup’s research in Alaska, toned down the dangers from this northern form. My understanding based on what we learned from an old, experienced parasitologist at the University of British Columbia is that it’s nothing to fool around with. It’s serious! In my career as a biologist in touch with the north, I have heard nothing else. I have not, however, done a recent literature search. Foayte’s assessment may be on even though it conflicts with mine. Either way, getting an Echinococcus cyst of any kind is no laughing matter as it can grow not only on the liver or the lungs, but also in the brain. And then it’s fatal.

There is however, another much more alarming angle. Echinococcus multilocularis is a nightmare, and much more virulent than Echinococcus granulosus of any strain. We cannot encapsulate this cyst, and it grows and buds off like a cancer infecting different parts of the body incessantly. Were some of the wolves infected with multilocularis? Coyotes and foxes carry it and it has been spreading. Do canids in Idaho, Montana, etc. have it? It’s found in Alberta. Regardless, now is the time to send out an SOS to ALL outdoor users. Hold your curiosity in check, do not poke into the feces of wolves, coyotes and foxes. If you do you will release clouds of Echinococcus eggs which will envelop you, and you may ingest the eggs, bring the eggs home and endanger your family. This is nothing new to me and I have lived with this constraint on my curiosity for over 40 years. This is just a know how that maintains your personal and your family’s safety. Also, never feed uncooked offal to your dog as it may become infected with Echinococcus and infect you and your family. Echinococcus cysts love to be in lung and liver, and if consumed by dogs you have a health hazard on your hands. And such cysts now grow in deer and elk where you live. Somebody should take a second look searching out Echinococcus multilocularis.

You and I probably have no idea in the world whether these worms exist in the woods we hunt, trap, hike, etc. but good advice given by Dr. Geist should tell us it’s not something we should mess around with. Squelch the curiosity to dig in the poop and just assume there could be hidden danger.

I want to take a moment to thank Will Graves, Dr. Val Geist and Dr. Charles Kay for caring enough about the rest of us to be willing to share their findings and experiences.

Whether hunting public or privateland, the fundamentals of calling elk remain the same.

By Michael Waddell

We heard the bull bugle at first light and snuck into his core area. When I hit a lick on my bugle, the bull simply came unglued and stormed our position like a tank, crashing through brush and small lodgepole pines like they were atchsticks. Before we could react he was in our lap and we were pinned down, myself hiding behind a camera, too afraid to even touch the tripod for fear of my shaking hands would run the footage. All I could see of my partner edged against a stunted pine was the tip of his undrawn arrow shaking uncontrollably on the rest. Before a shot presented itself, the bull smelled a  rat and disappeared as quickly as he arrived.

While this experience didn’t result in a dead elk, it did hopelessly addict me to calling them. It seems that in all walks of life, be it the animal kingdom or humans, communication is a key ingredient for all social interaction. However not all living things communicate to the same degree. If you ask my wife, I am sure she will tell you I lack in the communication department, in fact I am sure she believes I don’t listen to her at all, but when it comes to communicating with animals I can barely shut up. Of all the animals I love to communicate with elk rate right at the top. By nature elk are very vocal. The uninitiated often simply think of bulls bugling, but cows, calves and bulls make all sorts of noises year around. If you encounter a larger herd of elk while you might not hear a thing from a distance, if you get close you will hear lots of subtle vocalization. Most of the time these are sounds of contentment, but depending on what’s happening the vocalization reflects it. Elk can convey contentment, danger, curiosity, or a cow in heat. Bulls for instance only bugle primarily in the rut, but they also communicate to establish a pecking order. After spending a considerable amount of time chasing the mighty wapiti, I’m convinced every elk in the herd knows each other by sound alone. This happens with the cows as well as the bulls and based on my evaluation somewhere in this mix is the deadly secret to calling elk archery-close.

Imitation Is The Sincerest Form Of Flattery

It seems that the more vocal a herd the better the odds are for success at calling them. Some cows call subtle, while others are loud-mouth ladies actively looking for a date. By listening it gives you a better opportunity to imitate the particular tones and intensity of the herd. By calling we are automatically intruding into the social club without an invitation. The closer we can sound to a known elk, and match that intensity the better the odds are of filling a tag. Even though we may sound like an outsider to the herd, luckily for us, love crazed bulls are not looking to be intimate with just one or two cows they are looking for all the love of every cow in the world, so taking advantage of their sexual frustrations and promiscuity is what we aim to do. It doesn’t take a world champion elk caller to trick bulls within range. By simply paying attention to the herd and understanding simple elk rhythm, tone and more important volume when calling, a hunter can depend on an elk call to be a valuable asset to dulling broadheads.

Public Versus Private Land

Since I started hunting elk 16 years ago, on private as well as public ground, I have realize that comparing these two different types of ground are like comparing night and day and it is all about the amount of pressure each receives. Generally speaking private ground bulls are way easier to call than public ground animals, but this is not always the case. Some private land does get a lot of pressure, which can make for some pretty tough calling duels with elk that can serve you up a humble pie every time you bust out a call. While conversely some public land either through sheer remoteness or hard-to-get tags is like calling the best private land in the nation. Hunting un-touched land and cow calling to bulls that have never heard a Hoochie Mamma would obviously be nice and it wouldn’t take long working over these uneducated elk to start feeling like an elk calling pro only to be deflated the first time we went to the national forest and mixed it up with bulls so well-known by local hunters that they have knick names. However, regardless of where you hunt the basics of calling remain the same. Start with mastering the cow call and all its various inflections. Your basic reed type calls are the easiest to learn as well as get proficient with. You will find two kinds; both are bite down reed-type of calls, one being enclosed and the other having an open reed or reeds. These calls make a very realistic sound and before your wife can run you out of the house you will master the basics.  I rely heavily on the cow call and think most of the time hunters are better off sticking with it over a bugle no matter where he is hunting. But learning how to make a basic bugle is important, especially for locating bulls at a distance before getting close and working him with your cow call. In addition, sometimes it is the bugle that finally provokes a dominant bull to commit, especially during the early season when bulls are still sorting out their peckin’ order.

Earning Your Public Ground PhD

Lets face it, unless you have deep pockets much of the private ground in the West is pretty much off limits, so you have to learn to hunt public land. This is not a bad thing as public ground comprises millions upon millions of acres across the West and happens to have some of the biggest bulls found anywhere. While it can be tougher than private, once you learn how to hunt it you won’t be disappointed. Over the years, one of my favorite places to hunt is the Gila National Forest, in New Mexico, and even though this is a trophy area tags are fairly obtainable through application. In the Gila, the trophy potential is off the chart, sporting some of the biggest bulls in the country, but just because the big ones live there doesn’t mean thatyou automatically make one call and they come running to get in the back of your truck. These mature jokers have a PhD in avoiding hunters. Over the last six years I have hunted this area religiously and have had the opportunity to shoot some nice bulls all by using elk calls as an aid to close the coffin. Notice I said, “as an aid”, meaning the call was just one thing in a bag of tricks to help smoke these monarchs. My biggest bull that came out of the Gila was a 378 P&Y bull that had earned the name Professor because he always seemed to take you to school when you applied too much pressure. However, this bull was vocal and would bugle his butt off. He also seemed to be fairly easy to find, not only by his gnarly, raspy bugle that set him apart, but frequently he could be found early in the morning in a large meadow just south of a particular water hole that always attracted a large herd. The Professor was not the only bull in the area that had large headgear, but it was The Professor that seemed to call the shots. I had caught this bull in the open several times, but calling seemed to really make him uneasy when you were in close. The Professor however would bugle hard to distant cow calls and seem to be whole heartedly interested, but had a sixth sense when you moved in for the attack. Final we decided to have a caller stay behind as we worked him coming off the meadow at daybreak. By doing this we could keep him interested and bugling as we stalked in closer. The caller always was no closer than 80 yards behind me. While the caller kept him occupied, I slid within 50 yards and gave him a G5 Tekan right behind the shoulder. This hunt was really a stalk, but the call and caller had a big part to do with his demise. Once we started quartering the bull up, we found a piece of an old arrow lodged just below the backstraps, so obviously someone had him in close before and gave the Prof and education, which explained why he was so wary.

The Double Team

As this old bull showed, hunting with a partner can work extremely well. It not only puts the hunter out in front of the call, but it gives the hunter a chance to move and adjust the angle based on where the bull might be approaching. Likewise, the caller has the flexibility to move as well and apply a lot of different calling techniques. The double team plan worked again on another hunt. It had been hot and the bulls were only bugling early and late. As soon as the sun would rise the elk woods would turn in to a ghost town.
Just after daybreak on the fourth day of our hunt we heard this bull bugle. He hit it only two times, both very weak and he sounded like the littlest rag horn in the land but with no other game in town we went after him. Getting as close as possible to where we thought the bugle came from I eased up and sat down by a pine stump while my buddy moved back and to my right about 40 yards. Neither of us were very optimistic about our chances. My buddy made one or maybe two very soft cow calls on a two reed diaphragm then he started raking a tree and rolled a few rocks. We sat there for possibly 10 minutes in silence, then out of nowhere appeared a wide 340 inch 6 x 6 coming directly to us, at 25 yards the bull let out a soft chuckle, looked over his surrounding and kept walking in the direction of where the last rock had been rolled, which led him 16 steps from my pine stump. By now I was at full draw waiting for a broadside shot. When the arrow left my bow, I knew we had killed a call shy monster by keeping it low key and staying patient. Needless to say, I was never convinced by the two times he had bugled earlier that he was a shooter. This was a lesson in itself. Never judge a bugle until you can see what is making the sound.
The most exciting way to bag a bull elk is to get him in close, and the best way to do that is with a call. Confidence in your call is critical, because if you’re insecure about using your call there is a good chance you will spook elk. Have confidence in your calling ability and become just another elk in the herd where you are hunting. Find a call that works for you and not what works for some else. Think like an elk and do as elk do. Realism, rhythm, and volume control can make the difference between bringin’ them in or running them over the next ridge. And remember its not always about calling, it can be just patiently listening to the sounds around you and applying minimal calls, while practicing good woodsmenship, and stalking skills that could help you put that monster on the back of the truck.

By Michael Waddell

Things I am looking for, but not limited to.

• Gear: Clothes, utility tools, ATV’s…
• Favorite weapons: guns, bows, sticks, stones…
• Best Duck Blind or Hide…
• You, family or friends dressed for the hunt…
• Where you hunt

All I need is a digital picture in any PC compatible format and a description of the picture. You can make the description as long or short as you would like. If there is a story behind the picture we would love to hear about it.

Send Pictures to:

Todd Krater
U.S. Hunting Today
Managing Editor
todd@ushuntingtoday.com

Note: If you want a picture posted and do not have a digital copy I would be willing to scan it for you. Please contact me for details.

US Hunting Today reserves the right to refuse any picture for any reason as well as edit it where appropriate.

In the early 1980s the 197-page unpublished research report, “Wolves of Central Idaho,” surfaced. In it, co-authors Timm Kaminski and Jerome Hansen estimated that elk and deer populations in six of the nine national forests in the proposed Central Idaho Wolf Recovery Area could support a total of 219 wolves without decreasing existing deer and elk populations in those forests.

They based this on an estimated 16.6 deer or elk killed by each wolf annually, and on estimated increases in elk and/or deer populations from 1981-1985 in the two-thirds of forests where they had increased.

But even if their estimated prey numbers and calculations were accurate, their report said only 17 wolves could be maintained in the Salmon National Forest, five in the Challis NF, and none in the Panhandle, Sawtooth and Bitterroot Forests. Yet the obvious question of what to do when the number of wolves in any National Forest or game management unit exceeded the ability of the prey base to support them was not adequately addressed.

Relocating “Problem” Wolves in Idaho Wilderness

Although there were increased reports of sightings of single wolves or pairs in Idaho during the late 1970s and early 80s and credible reports of at least two wolf packs with pups, no confirmed wolf depredation on livestock had been recorded for nearly half a century. Realizing that livestock killing would occur as wolf numbers increased, Kaminski and Hansen recommended relocating livestock-killing wolves into the central Idaho wilderness areas.

That was written more than 25 years ago yet the recommendation was still followed by FWS and the Nez Perce Tribal wolf managers even after wilderness elk populations had been decimated by severe winters, excessive hunter harvest and excessive wolf populations.

In September of 2001, Idaho F&G Commissioner Alex Irby complained that FWS relocated two breeding pairs of “problem” wolves from Montana to the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness despite the fact that the number of elk hunters there had “been capped for several years due to declining herds.” But Tribal Wolf Recovery Leader Kurt Mack responded that these and other livestock-killing wolves probably wouldn’t remain in the wilderness very long and were released there “to keep them out of trouble temporarily until they relocated someplace else.”

Wolf Impact on Big Game Populations Ignored

Tribal, FWS and State biologists all ignored wolf expert David Mech’s warning that relocating wolves that killed livestock did not stop their killing livestock. Transplanting even more wolves into areas like the Selway and Lolo Zones, with inadequate elk calf survival to support any wolves, guaranteed an accelerated decline in the elk population and the exploitation of alternate prey.

At a Predator-Prey Symposium in Boise, Idaho on Jan. 8, 1999, the featured speaker – North America’s top wild ungulate authority Dr. Valerius Geist – spent two hours explaining to federal, state and university wildlife biologists why wolf populations must be carefully controlled to maintain a healthy population of their prey species. Idaho biologists and members of the Idaho Wolf Oversight Committee appeared to listen carefully – but later invented excuses not to follow his expert advice.

“New” Wolf Plan Prohibited Hunting Wolves

In the 2002 Legislative session, Idaho Senate Resources Committee Chairman Laird Noh introduced legislation to approve his Wolf Oversight Committee’s seventeenth version of a proposed Idaho Wolf Plan. Previous similar versions had been rejected by both Idaho legislators and several former Wolf Committee members but alarming increases in wolf numbers convinced some groups that a state wolf plan that offered no solution was better than no plan at all.

The Wolf Plan promoted by Sen. Noh would not have allowed wolf hunting until five years after delisting occurred and Idaho assumed management. It included the statement, “The plan must satisfy the USFWS, wolf advocacy groups…and a diverse public,” and gave IDFG full authority to update the plan solely at its discretion without Legislative oversight or accountability.

Two reviewers of the Plan, each with several decades of wolf research experience (Mech and Boertje) both predicted that Idaho wolves would multiply far beyond the alleged management goal of 10-20 packs before delisting. Boertje added that conflicts with too many wolves was probably the greatest threat to the responsible future conservation of wolves in Idaho and said pre-wolf prey data was vital to estimate wolf impact on elk and deer.

Major Wolf Plan Flaws Corrected in Senate

Despite the pressure to pass the Plan that was written explicitly to please USFWS and pro-wolf extremists, a motion to amend it succeeded. Senators Bartlett (Judy Boyle), Brandt and Hawkins re-wrote parts of the Plan to shift the emphasis to protecting Idaho big game herds, livestock, property rights, and the physical and economic well-being of Idaho citizens as spelled out in the Idaho Constitution.

The Plan, which became official on March 15, 2002, directed the Idaho F&G Commission, with assistance from the Governors Office of Species Conservation (OSC), to: “begin immediate discussions with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to define unacceptable levels of effect on ungulate populations by wolf predation; specifically, they will define how these effects would be measured, and will identify possible solutions.”

Even before amendment, the Plan directed the Idaho Fish and Game Department (IDFG) to conduct annual census of selected important prey populations to include at least total population estimates and age-sex ratios, along with the annual census of wolf populations. As Alaska wolf researcher Rod Boertje emphasized in his review of the Plan, comparison of that prey data with data from pre-wolf introduction was of paramount importance in estimating the impact of wolves on prey.

Increased funding was approved by the Idaho Legislature for annual deer and elk census flights yet they were not conducted every year. Instead, IDFG biologists continued an unsuccessful effort to prove that declining habitat – not wolf predation – was the primary reason for both declining elk numbers and unhealthy calf-to-cow ratios in a growing number of elk units.

Idaho Is Allowed to Kill Wolves Impacting Elk

In 2005 the Department of Interior announced that all of the criteria for delisting wolves had been met in December of 2002. On February 7, 2005 FWS promulgated a new version of the 10J (Nonessential Experimental) Rule which allowed states with approved wolf plans to take over management of wolves under the new provisions until wolves were delisted.

On January 5, 2006, four years after the Idaho Wolf Plan was adopted, Interior Secretary Gail Norton and Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) giving Idaho broad powers to manage wolves including the following:

“The State will begin to implement its federally approved Idaho Wolf Conservation and Management Plan of 2002 to the extent possible as permitted by the 10(j) rule.

6. Implement lethal control or translocation of wolves to reduce impacts on wild ungulates in accordance with the process outlined in the amended 10(j) rule.”

Before the Wolf Plan was adopted in 2002, the Idaho F&G Commission had already significantly cut the number of elk hunters allowed to hunt in the Lolo Zone, the Selway Zone and the Middle Fork Zone by placing caps on the number of tags that could be sold in those three elk zones. Total elk numbers and the percentage of surviving calves were severely declining in the Lolo Zone by the end of 1997 and the Commission capped the number of B-Tag (rifle) hunters for the 1998 elk hunting season at less than one-third the previous seven year average.

Sales of both “A” and “B” Elk Tags were capped beginning in 2000 and 2001 in the other two Zones for the same reason. That is why the 2002 amended Wolf Plan required the F&G Commission, with help from the OSC, to immediately obtain any requirements from FWS to reduce the impact of excessive wolf numbers on elk.

Later IDFG Big Game Manager Lonn Kuck told the Commission and the media that a specific decline in an elk herd over a five-year period was the IDFG criteria for removing wolves. Although some Idaho big game hunters and their elected officials saw the 2006 Agreement with DOI as the answer to halt declining deer and elk populations, IDFG Large Carnivore Coordinator Steve Nadeau continued to insist IDFG had no evidence that wolves were causing the elk declines.

The following FWS charts of minimum fall (end-of-year) wolf population estimates and minimum breeding pairs by FWS provide facts to refute Nadeau’s claims:

The July 1993 Wolf EIS predicted limited impact on elk from a recovered wolf population in the Central Idaho (CID) Recovery Area (estimating a maximum 10% reduction in cow elk hunter harvest and no reduction in bull harvest). This was based on a recovered wolf population of 10 breeding pairs – about 100 wolves.

It was also based on a post-hunting season CID ungulate population of 241,400, including 76,300 elk and 159,500 deer; and on 100 wolves killing only 495 elk (only one elk killed for every 2.36 deer killed). But, instead, the wolves killed nearly four times as many elk as they did deer and that was only one of the flaws in the prediction.

As the FWS charts clearly show, by 2001 there were already twice as many wolves just in known packs as were supposed to exist in a recovered wolf population. And by 2005 there were at least five times as many wolves as were supposed to exist in a recovered population.

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If 100 wolves would have required a 10% reduction in cow elk harvest as predicted, five times that many wolves – each killing three times as many elk as had been projected – would methodically destroy the elk herds. And 15 times as much wolf killing of elk as had been predicted in the EIS is exactly what happened while IDFG officials continued to claim wolves were having no impact on elk.

What about the 10J Provision to Remove Wolves Adversely Impacting Elk and Deer Populations?

The 1994 10J Nonessential Experimental Wolf Rule allowed the States to capture and relocate wolves if wolf predation was having an unacceptable impact on wild ungulate populations. The States – not FWS – were responsible for determining an unacceptable level of predation (still in the current rule).

The only FWS criteria for having the wolves relocated were: a) the State must have a wolf plan approved by FWS and b) FWS must assure that removal would not inhibit wolf population growth toward the 10 breeding pair recovery levels. In 2002 Idaho and Montana Wolf Plans were approved by FWS and Idaho had been forced to severely limit the number of general season elk hunters in all nine back country elk units – yet neither state F&G made any effort to reduce elk killing by wolves.

In 2003, FWS changed the 10J Rule to provide for automatic relocation of wolves depleting elk herds on a simple request from either state. Although the minimum estimated wolf population in Idaho was now increasing by nearly 100 admitted wolves every year, the Idaho F&G Commission was ignoring its mandate to preserve, protect and perpetuate Idaho’s billion-dollar wild game.

Jim Peek’s Fantasy

Wolf Oversight Committee member Dr. Jim Peek, who helped write the five-year-no-hunting Wolf Plan Draft No. 17, frequently publishes selected bits of scientific information mixed with personal opinion suggesting that wolf control is futile. As a University of Idaho wildlife professor, Peek taught future wildlife managers that habitat is always the real cause of declining prey populations regardless of how many are killed by predators.

In 2005 when FWS changed the 10J rule to allow Idaho and Montana to kill wolves, Peek followed the announcement with a media article suggesting that cow elk numbers should be reduced to only 50%-60% of biological carrying capacity. He cited red deer research on a tiny island off the coast of Scotland as proof of his claim that killing off half of the females will produce more and larger newborn male elk calves that can avoid predators and also provide more adult bull elk for hunters to harvest.

Peek’s academic credentials establish him as an ungulate and wolf authority, regularly quoted by the media and by wolf advocates who repeat his false claim that wolves have not limited elk harvests in Idaho. Until recent events forced wildlife biologists in Idaho and Montana to admit part of the truth, hunters’ lack of success was blamed on the change in elk habits rather than fewer elk.

Decline of the Clearwater Elk Herds

For nearly half a century, more than 45 percent of the elk harvest in Idaho occurred in the north central part of the state in the Clearwater Region. Large forest fires in 1910, 1919 and 1934 replaced timber with brush fields, providing additional winter range in the Clearwater, and this was credited for maintaining the bountiful elk harvest.

But following the end of World War II, the Wildlife Management Institute told the Idaho F&G Commission they must invite nonresidents to harvest excessive elk and deer herds that were damaging the forage in remote back country areas. Although there were some areas that were heavily browsed by abundant mule deer during severe winters, the WMI recommendation was part of a nationwide publicity campaign to create a new market for big game hunting and fishing following the economic slump after the War ended (IDFG Biennial Report).

By advertising in other states and creating several special cheaper classes of nonresident big game licenses, IDFG increased the number of non-resident big game hunters from fewer than 500 in the early 1940s to more than 15,000 in 1968. From 1951-1968 nonresident big game tag/license sales increased by 1,100% while resident big game tag sales remained virtually unchanged.

From 1960, to 1976 when all elk seasons were shortened and cow/calf harvest was halted, the total Idaho elk harvest declined by 75% (Thiessen 1977 Western States Elk Workshop). During that same period calf-to-cow ratios declined to only 25 calves-per-100 cows or less in the Clearwater (Schlegel 1977 Elk Workshop).

The 1964 Clearwater Elk Ecology Study

By 1963, thirteen years of unlimited either-sex elk hunting seasons lasting from the rut in September through the deep snow in December was decimating the back country elk herds. But IDFG biologists insisted that advancing plant succession (transition from brush back to conifers) was causing underweight elk calves that could not survive to be born.

In 1964, F&G initiated an elk ecology study to determine the best method of restoring the land to reproductive forage. According to the research reports, the area studied represented more than half of the elk harvest in the state.

After five years of careful forage evaluation, the researchers found that only 25% of available forage was utilized yet the elk population continued to decline. In the primary elk study area between the Lower Selway and Lochsa Rivers (portions of Units 10 and 12), post-hunting season elk numbers dropped from 457 to only 60-80 in that five year period.

More research from 1968-1972 revealed high conception and calf birth rates but very poor post-hunting season calf survival. In 1973 an intensive study was begun to determine the cause of all elk calf deaths in that study area during the first six months of life.

Elk Calves Were Not Born Underweight

Over the next five years, average calf birth weights exceeded the minimum required for 90% survival (Thorn) by 6% and the newborn calves gained about two pounds per day. Yet two-thirds of the calves were killed by predators – 84% of those during the first two weeks after birth when they are most vulnerable.

Of the five predators documented as killing elk calves, black bear killed 75%, mountain lion killed 15% and the other 10% were killed by golden eagle, coyote, bobcat or unknown. Most of the killing was done at night and because black bears were the major predator, with a calculated bear density of two per square mile, it was decided to relocate some of the bears in 1976 to see how it impacted the post hunting season calf-to-cow ratio.

Removing Bears Tripled elk Calf Survival

The elk calf-to-cow ratio was 21-to-100 for the three years preceding the bear removal and it increased to 61-to-100 in 1977 after the bear removal. The 1978 ratio was 51 calves per 100 cows and that reflected the increased number of 1977 female calves that had survived to become yearlings and thereby increase the number of cows.

Researcher Mike Schlegel asked IDFG Director Joe Greenley to authorize incentives for increased bear harvests by hunters and the average elk count in the study area increased from 358 in 1977 to 605 after 1979. Schegel continued his portion of the research through 1985 and, despite bear densities returning to pre-removal numbers, the 1989 aerial census of Units 10 and 12 (later designated as the Lolo Elk Zone) totaled 15,270 elk.

If Prey Numbers Decline Predation Prevents Recovery

The 22-year-long Elk Ecology study concluded that bears and elk had always existed in the study area but in the early 1900s ranchers grazing sheep controlled bear numbers. After the sheep were removed both elk and bears increased but the window of opportunity for black bears to kill newborn calves is limited to two weeks and there were enough calves to offset the impact of spring bear predation.

But once F&G allowed too many cow elk to be harvested, the same number of bears killed the same number of newborn calves which severely impacted the now much smaller elk herd. Schlegel’s study cited numerous similar long-term studies that reached the same conclusion (i.e. once the ratio of predator to ungulate becomes excessive, there are no longer enough surviving juveniles to replace normal adult death losses).

Even wolf researcher David Mech published the same long-term research conclusions for Isle Royale moose and Northeast Minnesota whitetails in 1985 and denounced the “Balance of Nature” myth that he helped promote as a graduate student. Yet Jim Peek and his followers in IDFG continued to ignore science and promote reducing cow elk numbers to allegedly increase bull elk numbers.

The Truth about the Decline in Lolo Zone Elk

When IDFG Fisheries Biologist Herb Pollard was appointed as Clearwater Region Supervisor in 1992 the Lolo elk herd was declining and he continued to deplete it by harvesting too many bulls. For several decades, Idaho biologists’ justification for continuing to overkill a big game species has been to point out continuing abundant harvest numbers to “prove” the herd is not being depleted.

Lion hunter/logger Rob Donley explained to them that a forest manager with 10,000 harvestable trees in a forest can let loggers cut 1,000 trees each year for 10 years and all looks well from his desk. But in the 11th year there are no mature trees left for the loggers to harvest.

However the concept of sustainable annual harvest appears not to be a part of the biologists’ agenda and in 1995 the phone survey reported that Lolo Zone hunters killed a record 1,759 male elk and 168 females with a quota of 150 antlerless permits in Unit 10 and 200 in Unit 12. Local residents were complaining vigorously about the Region-wide decline in elk numbers and the Commission promised to create a study committee to find solutions.

Meanwhile Pollard left the general bull elk season unchanged for 1996 and tested Peek’s theory by increasing the number of antlerless elk permits in the Lolo Zone from 350 to 1,900! The phone survey reported only 599 male elk harvested that year plus 638 females.

F&G Denied Winter Losses – Increased Cow Permits

The following winter (1996-97) was very severe in north Idaho and as the snow began to melt local outdoorsmen reported finding heavy winter elk losses along the Lochsa River in Unit 12. They asked Clearwater Wildlife Manager Jay Crenshaw to eliminate the 400 Oct.20-to-Nov. 13 Unit 12 antlerless elk permits to save female breeding stock to rebuild the herd.

Instead, Crenshaw responded in a May 29, 1997 Lewiston Tribune article with the claim that IDFG biologists had been monitoring the Lolo Zone elk since January 1997 and said total losses did not exceed the normal 5-10% winter loss. He increased the 400 permits in Unit 12 to 450 beginning Oct. 20 and ending Nov. 24, and kept the same 1,500 permits in Unit 10, with 375 of them good through Nov. 30.

These and similar antlerless controlled hunt elk permits in other Clearwater units could not be justified biologically so all were listed as “Research Study” in the 1997 Big Game Rules. And when hunters in Unit 10 and other Clearwater units complained about the lack of elk, a Dec. 4, 1997 Tribune article said: “Aerial and ground surveys of elk in the northern units of the Clearwater Region last spring showed no signs of unusual winter kill.”

As I explained in the April 2008 Outdoorsman, I obtained the “raw” (actual) 1997 and 1998 winter aerial elk counts from the Lolo Zone and other Clearwater Units and noted they were dramatically lower than the previous counts that were conducted in 1989. However Regional Biologist/Statistician George Pauley simply shrugged them off as “an anomaly” (an unexplained deviation from what was expected), and the media was not told the truth about the declining counts.

The Clearwater Citizens Advisory Council (CCAC) was formed and presented it recommendations to the F&G Commission in January 1996 yet no one made an effort to halt the breeding cow elk slaughter in either 1996 or 1997. Despite the increased opportunity in 1997 to harvest up to 1,950 adult female elk and their calves late in the season when they were more vulnerable, both male and female elk harvests took another nose-dive.

IDFG Lolo Zone Elk Harvest Statistics

1994 1995 1996 1997 1998

Antlerless* 223 166 638 277 7

Antlered* 1268 1759 599 316 264

Total 1491 1925 1237 593 271**

* includes calves

** continuing phone survey (mandatory report showed only 194)

Between hunters, predators and not enough surviving elk calves to replace natural adult losses, by the end of 1997 the Lolo Zone cow elk population had been reduced by 35%. In February of 1998 when IDFG finally admitted the massive elk decline, the CCAC demanded the Commission cap the number of Lolo Zone rifle elk hunters at one-third of the average over the preceding seven years.

But as the following comparison of 1989 and 1998 Lolo Zone elk counts shows, calf survival was down to only 6-1/2 calves per 100 cows compared to 28-1/2 calves per 100 cows in 1989. Capping the number of rifle hunters was a band-aid solution comparable to closing the barn door after the horses have already gotten out.

IDFG Lolo Zone Elk Population Surveys

Survey Year Cows Bulls Calves Total

1989 10113 2265 2890 15270

1997 & 1998 6529 743 433 7746

And despite the cap and an end to antlerless permits in the Lolo Zone, the adoption of the A-B Zone Tag system of elk management beginning in 1998 allowed unlimited numbers of general season A-Tag archery hunters to kill elk of either sex in a 32-day Aug-Sept general season during the rut. Archery hunters immediately began killing large numbers of six-point bulls as well as a few cows during the rut and their success ratio jumped well above that of the October rifle bull hunters.

The ~3,000 Lolo Zone elk hunters who could no longer hunt with a rifle had several options: (a) buy an archery stamp and archery equipment and learn to hunt with a bow; (b) hunt in another zone such as the Panhandle Zone and create hunter congestion there; (c) apply for a limited number of special privilege permits for a reasonable chance to harvest elk elsewhere in hopes of beating the poor drawing odds; or (d) give up elk hunting.

Colorado warned members of the Idaho Elk Team that Colorado’s A-B-(C) Tag system was not intended to manage elk and deer but was designed solely to add revenue from 200,000 additional nonresident elk hunters and distribute hunters equally in three (now four) separate seasons to prevent overcrowding. Yet IDFG and the Commission adopted the system and used it immediately to mismanage Lolo Zone elk – increasing the harvest of scarce breeding bulls and cows by hunting them in the rut for the first time in decades.

While Idaho encouraged hunters to buy an archery stamp and deplete the remaining breeding stock, Colorado halted antlerless elk harvest for a period of time and used antler point restrictions to increase its elk herds. Both state agencies were money-hungry but Idaho sacrificed its elk for a quick buck using Peek’s theory as an excuse while Colorado rebuilt its elk herd to the point where it harvested three times as many elk as Idaho did in 2008.

Did A 35% Reduction in Cows Improve Calf and Bull Survival As Peek Suggested?

Following the extreme 1992-93 winter elk and deer losses south of the Salmon River and the 1996-97 winter losses north of the Salmon River, Idaho biologists pretended the 1980s adult male and female populations were excessive and used the depleted adult female numbers to establish elk cow objectives in their 1998-2003 Elk and Deer Plans. Instead of admitting their failure to mitigate the losses, they could show the depleted adult female populations were meeting new management objectives.

The Lolo Zone objective for adult females was set at 6,100-9,100 with 1,300-1,900 for bulls (a ratio of ~20 bulls per 100 cows). When I asked the Elk and Deer Teams why they did not establish a minimum surviving calf/fawn objective, biologists responded that this varied so much from year to year that they paid little or no attention to it!

Did reducing cow elk numbers by 35% produce more and larger bull elk calves that could avoid predators and thereby provide more mature bulls for hunters to harvest as Professor Peek suggested? The short answer is “No”.

Annual elk harvests in the Lolo Zone in the 11 years since then have averaged only 272 and the 2003 and 2006 helicopter counts each totaled only half of the minimum 6,100 cow objective. Yet IDFG has thus far accomplished nothing to correct the problem.

Despite the fact that predators have killed 30-80% of radio-collared elk calves in F&G studies since 1997 (Zager 2001, 2008), Clearwater Elk Researcher Pete Zager, Regional Supervisor Groen and, of course, Professor Peek continued to claim that declining habitat was causing the declining elk herds. For nine years as Regional Supervisor, and continuing as State Director, Groen has used the media to promote his “Clearwater Elk Habitat Initiative” which was supposed to restore healthy elk populations to the Clearwater regardless of predation.

New Idaho F&G Revelations about Wolves

In 2008, Groen announced the Department’s intention not to reduce the number of wolves and to keep Idaho’s wilderness areas saturated with wolves to provide more wolves in surrounding areas. But on Feb. 5, 2009, Groen told the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee (JFAC) that, because of wolves, Idaho’s deer and elk populations are decreasing at the rate of 15% per year!

He also told them that without wolves the herds would be increasing at seven percent per year. Then he said that wolf packs have become overcrowded and wolves are beginning to kill each other. On Feb. 18, 2009, Lance Hebdon and Assistant IDFG Director Sharon Kiefer answered a request from Senate Resources Committee Chairman Gary Schroeder with a report stating that wolves are costing Idaho up to $24 million per year in lost revenue from elk hunters.

On May 6, 2009 Pete Zager told a Western States and Provinces Deer and Elk Workshop in Spokane that the number of elk harvested annually by hunters in Idaho has been declining, from around 25,000 in the mid-1990s, when wolves were reintroduced to the Northern Rocky Mountains, to roughly 15,000 last year. That represents a 40% decline from the average harvest and even more from the 1994 harvest of 28,000 just before Canadian wolves were released into Idaho.

New Facts Do Not Alter 20 Years of Mismanagement

The sudden admission of these facts about the impact of wolves on elk and deer does not alter two decades of ignoring science and mismanaging the elk. Jim Peek and wolf preservationist allies in IDFG had already given all the information I have discussed in this article to Defenders of Wildlife’s Suzanne Stone and others who are using it to oppose reducing the number of wolves.

When IDFG issued a draft proposal on Jan. 24, 2006 to kill a maximum of 43 wolves in the Lolo Zone it cited cow elk numbers below objectives in Units 10, 12 and 17 (Selway Zone). Stone responded correctly that F&G – not wolves – had deliberately caused the decline by increasing the cow harvest in these units “in order to increase calf recruitment” (implementing Peek’s theory).

She pointed out, as I and others have, the statistically inadequate sample size of the radio-collared cow elk (less than 2%) and said correctly that the plan still implied that habitat is the root cause. She cited Groen’s Clearwater Habitat Initiative statement, “It will likely take a decade or more of habitat treatments to make a detectable difference on a basin-wide (or herd) scale,” as further “proof” that killing wolves now is not justified.

Peek: Wolf Predation “No Big Deal” to Elk Hunters

Stone and others also quoted Peek in both their 2006 and 2008 objections to IDFG killing wolves: “Elk populations across the upper Clearwater apparently peaked in the late 1980s, after which surveys of numbers and of cow-calf ratios showed declines. This occurred well before the introduction of wolves…there is very little evidence that the presence of wolves has caused a decline in elk numbers anywhere, especially in Central Idaho.”

These quotes by Peek were also printed in a Jan.12, 2007 Idaho Mountain Express report of a teleconference with regional wildlife experts hosted by Defenders of Wildlife. According to the article, Peek said it’s too early to tell how much wolves will influence elk populations in the long run and while there may be “some lower levels of elk, it won’t be a big deal from the standpoint of a hunter.”

New Montana FW&P Revelations about Wolves

After eliminating the sale of over-the-counter female deer tags in Montana’s Region 2 earlier this spring because of declining whitetails caused by wolves, in June Reg. 2 FWP Wildlife Manager Mike Thompson announced the lowest surviving calf-to-cow elk ratios they have ever counted in the Bitterroot. Thompson said that a reduced elk harvest last fall, a very mild winter and substantially increased wolf numbers all indicate that predation was the probable cause of poor calf survival.

Why Admit the Facts They Have Been Hiding?

Hunters and their elected officials who interpret these revelations as a change in management philosophy may not understand the agencies’ real reasons for admitting the truth about wolf predation. Because Idaho and Montana agreed to act as agents of FWS for at least the next five years in managing wolves for FWS, they have inherited several serious problems including how to address the loss of hunting license revenue caused by wolves depleting the game herds.

As wolf experts predicted in 2001, wolf numbers have expanded beyond their carrying capacity and are quickly decimating their wild prey base in both states. There is not adequate federal funding to monitor them and their prey – much less pay the cost for Wildlife Services to investigate the rapidly increasing livestock losses and locate and kill the offending wolves.

The animal rights groups that FWS and the State agencies have embraced for two decades have no intention of allowing wolves to be controlled in the lower 48 States any more than they did in Alaska. They have already won the battle to reverse wolf delisting in the Western Great Lakes and even if they fail in their request to the Missoula Judge for an injunction to halt wolf hunting, they have promised to appeal it to the Ninth Circuit which has also been friendly to their cause.

A Benevolent “Mother Nature” That Balances Wildlife in Ecosystems is a Figment of Disney’s Imagination

After “being in bed” with animal rights preservationists and sharing their “far out” philosophies for their entire careers, too many state wildlife biologists lack the ability to embrace science and facts. In Idaho, Groen continues to ignore decades of undisputed scientific wolf research and blames too many wolves killing too many elk on human interference with “Mother Nature.”

When Mike Schlegel conducted the Clearwater Elk research in the 1970s he truthfully reported that Clearwater elk had been overharvested and concluded that spring bear predation prevented the elk from recovering because there were too few elk for the number of bears. Although Department biologists were as opposed to predator control then as they are now, Director Joe Greenley eliminated extended seasons, special privilege hunts and antlerless hunting and increased bear harvest until the Lolo Zone elk herd recovered.

Yet 20 years later SW Region Supervisor Al VanVooren referred to Schlegel as “a traitor” and criticized Greenley’s elimination of special privilege hunts. Today no one in the agency will admit that the Clearwater elk were overharvested again, which created a predator-prey imbalance (predator pit) from which the animals cannot recover.

Several years ago Utah’s Deputy Director told the Idaho Fish and Game Commission they must stop killing adult female elk or deer in order to justify controlling predators that are killing those elk or deer. Yet these basic principles of scientific wildlife management have been replaced with an irrational form of ecosystem worship which holds that if native predators and native vegetation are preserved and protected, ecosystems will “balance” themselves.

IDFG Refuses to Control Predators of Big Game

For several decades these dedicated “wildlifers” who call themselves “professional wildlife managers,” have refused to control predators of any big game species unless the killing can be classified as a scientific experiment, or the control is being accomplished to protect human life livestock or other property. Allowing hunters to kill a few extra bears, lions or wolves is somehow acceptable but arranging for Wildlife Services to control those same predators or pay a bounty to hunters in order to restore healthy elk populations is not.

Although game fish are a valued form of wildlife, Idaho wildlife managers readily pay bounties on them to increase populations of other species. For example in the world famous rainbow trout fishery in Lake Pend Oreille F&G currently pays a $15 bounty on all lake trout and on all rainbow trout over 13 inches long.

As an added incentive for fishermen to catch even more rainbows to reduce predation on kokanee, on June 5, 2009 F&G announced it had implanted special tags in the heads of 100 Pend Oreille rainbow trout that are worth from $50 to $1,000 each. Biologists know bounties work but they have elevated large carnivores to a status comparable to humans and use excuses not to control them.

F&G Sells Opportunity to Harvest Scarce Females

The basic requirement for managing elk and deer is to establish an optimum population level consistent with the forage that is available during a normal year, and retain enough adult females, mature breeding males and surviving juveniles to maintain that population level. Minimum objectives were carefully established for adult male and female deer and elk in 1998 yet they are being ignored in order to increase income.

For the price of an archery or muzzleloader permit or a controlled hunt application fee, the agency charged with perpetuating wild game allows hunters to kill scarce female breeding stock that are vital to perpetuate the herds. How can F&G convince a judge that wolves must be killed because they are killing adult female cow elk whose numbers are below the minimum management objective, when F&G is allowing hunters to kill those same cow elk instead of protecting them?

Idaho Resident Elk Tag Sales Declining

The IDFG report sent to Senator Schroeder on Feb. 16, 2009 states: “From the perspective of the Department’s budget, sales of big game tags have been relatively constant over the past 10 years.” While the revenue may be constant due to fee increases, no change in the nonresident elk tag quota and a 1,500 increase in the nonresident deer tag quota, the following graph included in the report indicates significant declines in resident elk tag sales:

A sharp decline in resident elk tag sales occurred in 2000-2001 when several thousand more resident elk hunters were prohibited from hunting in seven more of the back country elk hunting units. As the impact of wolves on elk increased, another decline began in 2008.

Opinion by George Dovel

George Dovel is Editor and Publisher of The Outdoorsman.

In 2003, North America’s foremost wildlife scientist, Dr. Valerius Geist, made the following observations:

“The miracle of North American conservation is that it is basically a blue-collar system, grounded in the political and financial support and the active participation of large numbers of middle-class citizens who bring their basic honesty and decency to bear on important issues. This is just the opposite of the elitist system that has existed throughout Europe for centuries and is spreading like cancer around the world today, even right here at home.

“Because of the democratic nature of American hunting and wildlife management, and the demands for accountability it implies, our system has worked miracles in returning wildlife to a continent that, just a hundred years ago, saw the near-extinction of most big game animals and other wildlife. In my mind, this represents the world’s greatest environmental achievement of the last century.”

In 2006, representatives of the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (WAFWA) adopted and agreed to fund the “Public Trust Doctrine in Fish and Wildlife Conservation.” This was essentially a doctrine reaffirming that wildlife is the property of the people, held in trust and managed for them and by them, and that hunting shall remain a democratic process available to all of the citizens who own the wildlife – not just the wealthy.

Yet WAFWA and the state wildlife agencies are exploiting the wildlife by selling it to the wealthiest hunters and excluding less affluent families from equal opportunity to harvest the wildlife they jointly own. The so-called “North American Model of Wildlife Conservation” is ignored in their rush to promote wolves and agendas that destroy the wild game sportsmen spent more than half a century restoring.

A week or so ago, in an exchange of emails between scientists and other concerned outdoorsmen like me, Dr. Geist wrote the following observation:

“I may be permitted to take this opportunity to comment on another matter, namely the futility – in the long term – of narrow conservation efforts such as those of the Wolf Recovery Foundation.

Best regards
Val Geist

Whether you are a hunter or fisherman, a natural resource manager, or just a citizen who is concerned about the ongoing depletion of our valuable wildlife resource and our way of life, I urge you to contact your State legislators and express your concerns to them. Write letters to the editor, call in on talk radio, and do whatever you can to energize your fellow citizens.

Remember English philosopher Edmund Burke’s warning, “The only thing necessary for the triumph (of evil) is for good men to do nothing.”

And when your efforts are criticized I urge you to remember this:

“He who fears criticism is hopeless. Only those who do things are criticized. To hesitate for fear of criticism is cowardly. If our course is right, be not afraid of criticism; advocate it, expound it, and if need be, fight for it. Critics always have been and always will be, but to the strong-minded, they are a help rather than a hindrance. Take your part in life’s stage and play your part to the end.” Thomas Jefferson

Posted by Tom Remington

Trophy hunting, as used in this post and related articles, can be best described as the effort of hunters to select an animal for harvesting that has large antlers/horns in combination with big body mass. The theory is that this type of harvesting selection is creating weaker and smaller species because hunters are culling out the best of the litters to hang on their walls. This simply is not true.

The study conducted on Ram Mountain is long and varied. Much of this controversy began in 2003 when Nature magazine published an article, “Undesirable Evolutionary Consequences of Trophy Hunting”. This link will take you to Nature.com but you have to pay a fee to obtain the whole article.

As I said before, Newsweek referenced the study on Ram Mountain and one of the junior scientists on the project.

Ram Mountain in Alberta, Canada, is home to a population of bighorn sheep, whose most vulnerable individuals are males with thick, curving horns that give them a regal, Princess Leia look. In the course of 30 years of study, biologist Marco Festa-Bianchet of the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec found a roughly 25 percent decline in the size of these horns, and both male and female sheep getting smaller. There’s no mystery on Ram Mountain: male sheep with big horns tend to be larger and produce larger offspring. During the fall rut, or breeding season, these alpha rams mate more than any other males, by winning fights or thwarting other males’ access to their ewes. Their success, however, is contingent upon their surviving the two-month hunting season just before the rut, and in a strange way, they’re competing against their horns. Around the age of 4, their horn size makes them legal game—several years before their reproductive peak. That means smaller-horned males get far more opportunity to mate.

Whether intentional or not, Newsweek didn’t do their homework. Had they, they would have discovered that much controversy followed the Nature article and the Ram Mountain study. It seems that a good chunk of the science community vehemently disagreed with the assessments printed in the Nature piece. Some of those scientists submitted rebuttals to Nature but their work was refused. I have copies of some of the rebuttals.

Dr. Valerius Geist, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science, The University of Calgary, Canada, was one of the scientists who disagreed with proclamations of the Ram Mountain Study that trophy hunting was producing “undesirable evolutionary consequences”. Dr. Geist submitted the work I’ve provided below to Nature but was denied. (For the complete text of his work, including cited references, click this link to a pdf file.)

TROPHY MALES AS INDIVIDUALS OF LOW FITNESS (DRAFT)

VALERIUS GEIST, Professor emeritus, Faculty of Environmental Design, The University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

While wildlife trophies get a lot of attention in modern times in North America and Europe, such infatuation has a long and instructive history. Already in the Upper Paleolithic, cave painters invariably chose to paint large, complex antlers on male deer and long horns in ibex, bison, and wooly rhinos1. The trophy mania hit its high point in medieval central Europe when huge red deer antlers were used as gifts of state, when hunting records of nobility were recorded in exquisite detail and antlers were venerated objects of display in castles built to house trophy collections2. Such castles have survived into modern times, i.e. the castle of Moritzburg close to Dresden, Germany displays red deer of unequaled size3. These have, naturally, raised the question, “How might such antler growth be duplicated?” Moreover, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the vagaries of treatment of wildlife in central Europe led to declines in the trophy quality of antlers which lead to an early “Quality Deer
Management” movement4. This movement reversed the decline within about a quarter century, and generated an intense interest in how to produce huge trophy antlers. We see, currently, in the United States the birth of a similar “Quality Deer Management” movement5,6. Some of the most interesting experimental deer management for trophies was carried out during the Third Reich on the Rominten Heath by Walther Frevert7. There is, consequently, a rich historical background on the biology of “trophy males,” but this is currently poorly known.

The recent study by Coltman et al.8 which demonstrated declines in horn and body size in bighorn rams with hunter selection for large-horned males, confirms the findings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries on European cervids9,10,11. The ongoing removal of males with superior antlers led to a severe shift in sex ratio in favor of females. This imbalance was primarily addressed by the culling males with inferior antlers, while sparing males with good antler growth. Wildlife eugenics, the culling of undesirables, was made popular by Ferdinand von Raesfeld’s “Hege mit der Büchse”12 (husbanding with the rifle) which subsequently was institutionalized in Germany’s 1934 wildlife management legislation13. One thus suspects that, contrary to Coltman et al.’s fears, the declines in horn and body size in bighorn rams are not permanent, but can be reversed by similar means. Even if merely left to themselves, the selection pressures favoring horn size in bighorns14 would return normal horn growth in time. Moreover, the rehabilitation of formerly strip-mined bighorn habitat in Alberta15, as well as the reintroduction of bighorns to former ranges throughout the United States has not merely
increased the wild sheep population of the continent by nearly 50 percent in a quarter century16, but has also resulted in the growth of many rams with record-sized horns17.

In central Europe, management for trophy deer also led to deliberate population reductions, habitat improvements, and the introduction of males with superior antlers from other regions18. The latter, however, was considered a failure19. The interest in improving trophy quality led to research into the nature of body and antler size variations in red deer, with the aim of reproducing antler sizes such has been seen in medieval times 20,21,22,23,24. This illuminated the “biology” of trophy males in clinical detail and led to surprises. One can summarize the findings as follows: Deer varied in body size along a peadomorphhypermorph axis, so that small-bodied deer retained juvenile proportions compared to largebodied deer25,26. Body size was plastic, but slow to shift and it took some five generations for medium-sized deer to reach maximum body size27. This finding, rediscovered three decades later, was labeled the “maternal effect’28,29,30. Continuous access to highly digestible feed rich in protein calcium, and phosphate was a necessary condition for large antler and body size. However, trophy stags were exquisitely sensitive to shortages in food quality31, which indicates that medieval foresters must have been very concerned about the possibilities that their treasured and pampered stags might move off somewhere else. It explains, in part, the brutality with which these foresters treated peasants who disturbed deer. While a high plane of nutrition was a necessary condition for exceptional antler growth, it was not a sufficient condition in itself. Optimal results were achieved by artificially preventing males from rutting33. Males that did not rut had no need to heal the severe rutting wounds suffered by rutting males33, and were thus able to shift their body resources from
repair and re-growth into increased body and antler growth. Moreover, the absence of wounding would lead to the desirable symmetrical antler growth.

However, stags that reached maximum antler development were severely handicapped by their unwieldy antlers in fighting and tended to lose out to normally antlered males. Not infrequently trophy stags locked their complex antlers and died34. Large trophy antlers conveyed no apparent benefit to their bearers, quite the contrary. This suggests that in freeliving populations, male deer with exceptionally large antlers may be non-breeders, and thus individuals of low fitness35. During eight years of field work with habituated mule deer in Waterton National Park, Alberta, Canada, I was fortunate to closely observe three bucks with exceptionally large antlers. All three became “shirkers” during the rutting season. They avoided other deer, bucks especially, and thus failed to court and breed females. They merely fed and rested in seclusion. However, one of these bucks had a surprising history. He had been a normal rutting buck up to three years of age. During a fight with an old buck, he was flung upward and landed on his back in some wind-blown aspen trees. He quit rutting that
year and for two more years. By then, he had grown to a very large body and antler size. The next rutting season he reversed and became a fully engaged, breeding master-buck. He continued as such for three rutting seasons. Hence, “shirking” is potentially reversible. Nevertheless, managing populations for trophy size remains highly questionable, as do the stated concerns of Coltman et al.

In addition to Dr. Geist’s rebuttal efforts, Wayne Heimer, Sheep Biologists for Alaska Department of Fish and Game (1971-1997), Director Foundation for North American Wild Sheep, put together his own rebuttal to the Coltman et al study. He enlisted the expertise of other fish and game experts and scientists for their contributions.

The complete text of “Inferred Negative Effect of “Trophy Hunting” in Alberta: The Great Ram Mountain/Nature Controversy”, can be found by following this link (pdf). Below I have chosen to publish selected pieces of interest.

Wayne Heimer made the following notes and comments:

Compiling Author’s Note and Comment: The wild sheep community is diverse. Specialties within this community range from focus at the molecular level of life increasing in complexity through the cellular level of disease mechanisms and the physiology of life leading to individually adaptive whole-animal behaviors we define as autecology. In animal groups, these individual responses to environment are first defined as “population biology,” and ultimately, synecology. When modern humans interact with mountain sheep synecology, the integration of these diverse disciplines, with the goal of producing human benefits while conserving wild sheep, produces the overarching effort we call “management.”

For optimal management, complete and rational integration of information the diversity represented within the wild sheep community is required. This almost never happens because few “basic researchers” understand the complex nature of management, and few “managers” appreciate the imputed significance of some “basic research.” In the words of actor, Stroether Martin’s prison-warden character in “Cool Hand Luke,” “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” Whether we are “basic researchers” or are working in management at the political level, all of us exhibit the human tendency toward thinking our specialty is the touchstone of successful wild sheep conservation.

The “Great Ram Mountain/NATURE controversy” illustrates this common human weakness compounded by sensationalized communication efforts. Dave Coltman and his co-authors applied molecular genetic analysis to the Ram Mountain (Alta.) data, and published an interpretation which others in the wild sheep community did not find particularly helpful. If the “Nature Science Update” (an electronic digest) hadn’t emphasized Coltman et al’s more extreme suppositions as fact, and if the “NATURE Publishing Group” has not made much of the hunting management- critical interpretations, Coltman et al.’s “Letter to NATURE” would have probably gone largely unnoticed. However NATURE’s radical representation of hunting management criticisms in the tabloid press was interpreted as “anti-hunting,” and was, thus, impossible for other researchers and managers to ignore.

The following collection of essays was produced by way of critique, commentary, and rebuttal. Their “target audiences” vary from the “deeply scientific” to the “popular.” The Frisinas review the contributions hunter-funded conservation has made to wild sheep welfare and cite data which appear to refute the broad “hunting/genetic-harm” claims attributed to Coltman et al.. Rominger points to the unacknowledged variance between the Coltman et al. letter and previously published conclusions where the “et al.” were senior authors. In these unacknowledged papers, density-driven nutritional scarcity was the common rationalization for observed declines in horn and body size on Ram Mountain. Geist discusses the history of “trophy selection” in Europe and suggests alternate (non-genetic) explanations for the changes in horn and body size reported from Ram Mountain. Geist’s essay was submitted to NATURE a rebuttal. It was not accepted for publication. Finally, Heimer and Lee answer Coltman et al.’s allegation that managers have not considered genetic factors in regulation of wild sheep harvest management. They also place the arguments in the unique context of resource management politics in the USA.

If there is any value to recording this event, it is probably simply as a case study where academia and management collided. If there’s a lesson in this history, it may be that “academics” no longer live in a sequestered world. Hence, it may be helpful for everyone in our community to understand what “managers” learned long ago from bitter experience: “Be circumspect in communications with the press because what ‘comes out’ isn’t going to look very much like what you ‘put in.’”

Perhaps more importantly, the wild sheep community, from the loftiest academic to the lowest manager, should realize that scientific data, their interpretation, and the inferences drawn from them have considerably less influence on the decisions that drive management in the “real world” than publicity in the tabloid press. That said, it is perhaps worth noting that, in spite of this spate of creative controversy in the wild sheep community, the world seems to have pretty much forgotten this ever happened…and it’s only been three years. Nevertheless, this “scientific finding” is “out there,” and it would be naïve to presume politically partisan publicists will not resurrect it for use as it suits the anti-hunting agenda. I may be paranoid, but my experience at all levels of involvement in the wild sheep and management communities suggests a high probability it will pop up again…it’s just a matter of when. [WEH]

Michael R. and R. Margaret Frisina, Biologists, Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks, offered their own contribution. Here is a portion of it.

It is obvious that genetics plays a role. If male, you are likely to end up with the hairline of your mother’s father. Still, it is common to overlook how much genetic diversity there is within a specific animal population. Remember the forgotten 50 percent. Ewes contribute half of the genes determining individual sheep characteristics. It is also true that it isn’t only the biggest rams that do the breeding. A recent study of Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep found that although a few larger-horned rams (age 8+ years) had a very high reproductive success, younger rams sired about 50 percent of the lambs. Mating success was not restricted to a few top-ranking rams each year. When all is said and done, the potential for horn size may be set by genes, as are other horn characteristic such as curl tightness and overall shape (probably influenced by both parents), but achieving that potential is limited by the environment occupied by the sheep population. A favorable weather cycle may have contributed to the recent bonanza in huge bighorns harvested, but could not have done so if the genetics for large horns had been previously compromised by harvest management.

Eric Rominger, New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, submits a critique of the letter submitted to and published by Nature. The scathing opening paragraph chastises the authors of the Nature piece as going against their own scientific conclusions.

The conclusions of Coltman et al. (2003) in their recently published NATURE article contradict nearly 20 years of analyses published primarily by two co-authors of the manuscript (i.e. Jorgenson and Festa-Bianchet). After asserting, in a series of refereed scientific publications (e.g. Jorgenson et al. 1984, 1993, 1998, Festa-Bianchet et al. 1997, LeBlanc et al. 2001), that reductions in body mass and horn size of rams from the Ram Mountain population were the result of density-related decreases in forage availability, these authors have either chosen to ignore or recant their previous work. They have not acknowledged their apparent changes in perspective. Apparently these authors now conclude that, in fact, trophy hunting has induced the declines observed in ram body mass and horn size on Ram Mountain. In confusing contrast, a paper published in BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY shortly after their NATURE article reports that 77.2% and 86.8% of the variance in body mass and annuli base circumference were explainable by a liner mixed effects model describing the effects of resource availability and age (Festa-Bianchet et al. 2004).

Wayne Heimer and Raymond M. Lee, coauthored their own work, “Undesirable Consequences of Unqualified Speculation on the Negative Effects of Trophy Ram Hunting”. Raymond M. Lee is President/CEO, Foundation for North American Wild Sheep.

Status-enhancing, but highly speculative, publications such as Coltman et al.1, may compromise wild sheep conservation. Such research communications encourage emotionally driven anti-hunters to contravene biologically sound management programs, particularly in the United States. Coltman et al.’s1 letter grossly exaggerated hazards to wild sheep populations resulting from managed human harvests. It’s secondary references to “sport harvesting” as “one of the most pervasive and potentially intrusive human activities that affect game mammal populations globally2, and the statement that “little attention has been paid to the potential evolutionary consequences, and hence the sustainability of harvest regimes3,4” are incorrect and damagingly expansive. The letter reported larger-horned, larger-bodied rams sire more lambs than smaller individuals; and made much of the fact that human harvesters prefer the largest rams available. These findings are not new. Reproductive success was quantitatively linked to dominance three decades ago5. Modern “sport harvesting” management of wild mountain sheep has typically limited harvest to 3-10% of available rams for more than 40 years. In Alaska, the most prolific and harvest-friendly wild sheep jurisdiction in the world, harvest strategies have been specifically designed to foster social order among rams for almost 20 years6. Alternate rutting strategies among thinhorn sheep resulting from differing ram mortality levels were identified and factored into sheep harvest management in Alaska beginning in 19847,8. Coleman et al’s failure to acknowledge these facts was compounded by sensationalized reporting of these non-revolutionary findings by the “NATURE Science Update” and the NATURE Publishing Group9,10. Similar under-researched and over-sensationalized “scientific communications” are often used by animal rights groups and “anti-hunters” to orchestrate politically saleable, but biologically counter-productive ‘corrections’ in management programs through so called “citizen’s initiatives” in the United States. These actions serve neither science, conservation, nor the managed species will in the longer run.

These are only selected parts of the completed piece put together by Heimer. I apologize for the length of this writing but I feel that it is important, not only to educate interested readers but to clearly and scientifically refute articles such as has been published in Newsweek magazine. It is this kind of media that not only damages the decades of work done to save and conserve our game species, through time and fees from hunters, but it also puts the very species we work to protect in danger.

As I concluded at the end of yesterday’s post, I am left only to conclude that the author’s objective in penning the Newsweek article is strictly political.

For more information on wild sheep and goats, visit the website of the Northern Wild Sheep and Goat Council.

I would also like to thank, Dr. Charles Kay, Dr. Valerius Geist and Wayne Heiman for taking the time to respond to my requests and unselfishly giving of their time and expertise. It is because of people like these that we can, at least for now, be assured the hunting and wildlife community has the right people working for us all.

Tom Remington

Valerius Geist, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science, The University of Calgary
Calgary, Canada.

We pay close attention to large predators. We do so because we evolved as prey. It was our ancient fate to be killed and eaten, and our primary goal to escape such. Our instincts are still shaped that way.

There is thus a reason why the bloody carnage on our highways is a mere statistic, but the mauling of a person by a grizzly is news. It’s not only that so many fossilized remains of our ancient ancestors are meals consumed by large predators in secluded caves or rock niches, but also that we speciated like large herbivores. That is, our pattern and timing of forming species, of adapting to landscapes, mimics and coincides with that of deer, antelope or cattle, but not that of large carnivores. And that despite our fondness for meat, despite “man the hunter”, and despite the fact that at least on species of humans, Neanderthal man, grew into a super predator.

Large herbivores readily form new species and show a pattern of strong speciation from the equator to the poles, terminating in the cold, glaciated latitudes as “grotesque ice age giants”. Large predators do not. They evolve no grotesque ice age giants comparable to the woolly mammoths among elephants, or the massive-antlered giant deer among deer, the giant sheep, or anything else for that matter as grotesque as ourselves. Is there a more grotesque animal than man? And we did it twice, once as Neanderthal and once as Modern Man. Moreover, herbivores readily form dwarf species under poor ecological conditions such as in rainforests, deserts or predator-free oceanic islands, and they differentiate rapidly into new subspecies as they disperse geographically into new habitats. Predators form no dwarfs, on islands or otherwise. Nor do they segregate sharply into swarms of regional subspecies. Large herbivores do that – and so do humans. Also, Our bursts of speciation coincide in time with those of African antelope.

Humans grow small canine teeth, not the large combat-canines typical of apes. Canine reduction is a signature of a common anti-predator adaptation, called the “selfish herd”. In such unrelated individuals cluster together in the open as protection against predation. Herbivores form “selfish herds”, predators do not. Herbivores may “evolve away” huge combat-canines, as shown not only by us, but by deer, horses, rhinos and half a dozen extinct families of large mammalian plant eaters. Carnivores reduce no canines!

Our ancient herbivore root is still reflected in our taste preferences, for when we eat meat we flavor it liberally with plant poisons (pepper, chili, sage, thyme, curry etc). Apparently meat does not really taste “good” till it tastes of “plant”! We also have the herbivore’s craving for salt. So, watch what you reach for next time you get a sizzling steak!

While we may have evolved as hunters, we did not evolve like predators.

We have a very special relationship to large predators because of all the primates we are the only species that is able to survive large predators on the ground, away from trees. All other primates are tied to trees to escape predation. We alone can face predators on the ground day or night and we have done so despite being all but blind at night, despite snoring sleepers, crying babies or lusty lovers, or all that bone debris we collected in our campsite from scavenging and hunting. And we did this despite being loaded down with babies or with game we hunted. And we did this for over two million years. And without the ability to defy large predators on the ground there would have been no human dispersal into the treeless steppe where so may of our attributes were formed, there would have been no dispersal “out of Africa” or the incredible phenomenon of human civilization we currently experience.

Without being able to survive large predators on the ground we would never have tapped into the huge protein biomass of large herbivores. There would never have been “man the hunter”. Moreover, a species can only be as abundant as the amount of protein in its food. Gorillas can never outnumber humans, as the protein supply in their plant food is very limited.

There is excitement in anthropology about the great leap forward by humans globally about 40,000 years ago, and there is indeed much to be excited about. However, the miracle of human evolution began about two and a half million years ago at the edge of the African savannah were the trees give way to the treeless thorn-steppe, when our first ancestors, small, weak, defenseless and blind in the darkness outwitted large predators on the ground. Surrounded by nocturnally active lions, leopards, hyenas and saber-toothed cats they lived to see the sun rise. From then on hominids began to loose the morphological adaptations in our shoulder girdle for climbing, although we are still pretty good at it, as I can vouch for personally, having been treed by a grizzly bear. Developing a security strategy radically different from that of other large apes was the first step towards becoming human.

We are great killers, of course, but note: we do not kill like predators with tooth and claws. We kill with tools specialized as weapons. That is unique. And so is the mental and emotional psychic structure that flows from that. With weapon in hand we are brave, daring, dangerous. Without it we may be not. And predators sense that. United with others in bravery we become frightening, especially since we can do something no other primate can. We can mimic sounds and adjust such to the occasion. We can roar, growl and scream, and match our voices to the occasion, to the predator confronted. And mimicking sound is the biological root of language and music. It came first, courtesy predation!

It helps being big and black. Large herbivores that confront predators are notoriously big and black! And Homo erectus, our parent species, was as big or bigger than we are and almost certainly as black as any African today.

Large predators are hypochondriacs – and need to be! They cannot afford wounding as it decreases their efficiency in hunting, and may also trigger an attack by a pack member followed by a cannibalistic feast. A realistic vocal threat, consequently, impresses, even more so a blow with a weapon, but also the touch of thorns. African predators are very “thorn-shy” as we now know from some beautiful experiments. They avoid thorns. And that’s the secret to nightly survival: a thorn covered ground-nest. It helps to reinforce such with a growl, and if worst comes to worst with a sharp jab with a stick. However, the ability to form a covered thorn nest on the ground, a “booma”, requires a long history of building tree-nests in ever smaller savannah trees, till such formed a part of dense thorn bushes. It requires beyond that considerable manual and tool-using skills to build a sturdy, densely-thorned shelter. It requires close observation of elders and visual mimicry to succeed, which also came courtesy of predation. The rise of humanity depended first and foremost on survival in sea of large, hungry African predators – in the absence of trees.

It affected our psyche. During the day, one needs firm discipline when sighting a predator, as running away is suicidal! We cannot outrun predators! One must fake supreme fearlessness, especially when “man the hunter” bagged and carried home a prey. How does one discourage hungry predators at that time, as predators readily abrogate prey from one another? There would have been no “Man the Hunter” without an ability to successfully defend the prey we killed and brought home without a string of predators following! And we had to be good enough at intimidating predators so that women and children could go out foraging. And we had to be good enough to spook off predators despite meat and bones at the campsite at night.

Enter big brain, enter “planning” based on foresight, shared experiences and imagination. One must use one’s experience, as well as that of others, to minimize encounters with predators. One learns to avoid times and spaces where predators congregate and cannot be readily defeated, and one needs to pass this on to family. One needs to exploit opportunities to chase away a predator, and teach it to do likewise next time. The next step is to develop systematic harassment and punishment of predators so as to instill in them an aversion to anything human. The next step is to know when to systematically kill their helpless young so as to keep down their numbers. All this is still practiced in Africa and elsewhere, and it has been effective enough as over two million years of human history demonstrates. We did not escape being prey, we merely changed priority. We went form being a tasty, defenseless morsel, to a nasty creature of very low priority, in fact, the last in line. And that, given a rich array of prey species, is not all that bad! We thus became a prey that was smarter than the predators, which happens to be unique! Normally, it’s the other way around!

There have been failures, even massive ones!

When our lineage came “out of Africa” it spread westward along the coast of Asia and colonized Australia, repeatedly, some 60,000 years ago. That could only have been done by people possessing boat technology, and it happened quite rapidly. And then it took almost 50,000 years before North America was colonized!

What prevented us from entering North America in that enormous time span?

Humans even entered South America before North America, judging from the antiquity of archeological dates. The undisputed fact is that human colonization coincided with the collapse of the unique North American native megafauna beginning about 12,900 years ago. As long as North America’s native megafauna remained intact all through the late Pleistocene, there was no human settlement of North America. However, once the megafauna crumbled there were repeated humans entries. Moreover, other members of the Siberian fauna also moved into the ecological vacuum here, such as grizzly bear, gray wolf, wolverine, elk and moose.

How could this be?

North America’s megafauna differed substantially from that of Eurasia and Africa. It was characterized by a multitude of highly specialized, often gigantic predators and prey. Moreover, the fossil record shows a surprising amount of crushed, broken, but healed bones in the predators, as well as excessive wear and breakage of teeth. Injuries in current African predators are minimal by comparison. North American native predators were thus confronted by herbivores that were exceedingly able to defend themselves. Not only the broken bones, but the very specializations of the predators speak of the demanding life they experienced. So do the extreme anti-predator specializations of the herbivores. North America during the Pleistocene was thus a predator hell-hole compared to Eurasia or Africa! There was a predacious bear about seven feet at the shoulder, the short-faced bear, Arctodus simus. And it was assertive and not very clever, as its numerous remains in natural trap sites testify to. If a camel or horse fell down a natural hole, all sort of short-faced bears jumped in after – and perished! Grizzly bears and black bears did not do that! There was the common lion, only it was twice the mass of the African one. So was the American cheetah, compared to the Old World species. There were three species of short-faced bears, there were dire wolves larger than gray wolves, there were massive saber-toothed tigers and large, elegant, speedy dirk-toothed cats and large panthers, as well as black bears, cougar, red wolf and large coyotes. Life was hard for these predators, and they were all too willing to take risks for a meal, as sadly testified to not only in natural trap caves, but also the tar pits at Rancho la Brea.

If you were to land on the shores of North America, spear in hand, what would you do when those big, assertive predators approached you for a closer look? And how would you hunt the scarce, highly alert gigantic prey? The herbivores were not only highly specialized in evading predation, but their organs of food acquisition and processing remained exceedingly primitive. That means that the fierce predation kept them way below the potential carrying capacity of the land, so that they were able to feed only on the best, most digestible, low-fiber vegetation. There was simply no selection for more efficient feeding organs. And that means that prey populations were kept at very low density. And if you were able to kill a large herbivore, how would you defend it against these diverse, huge predators?

Our abilities to deal with African and Eurasian predators were thus likely much too limited to deal with the full array of native North American predators. They kept the continent free of humans for nearly 50,000 years, till – for reasons still disputed – America’s megafauna declined, and over about 6000 years went largely extinct. Even then the increase in humans, as tracked by the number of hearth discovered per 1000 years, increases very slow. Moreover, it is inversely related to the number of genera of megafauna still alive. It thus took some 6,000 years of hard, very dangerous living by human colonizers to create in North America a landscape reasonably safe for people.

The few remaining native American species show to this day the predation pressure of the past. White-tailed deer, great experts at hiding and rapid escapes are totally incompetent food competitors, and do very poorly in the presence of Old World deer – which are food competitors! Ditto for mule deer and elk. Pronghorn still run faster than anything on Earth! And native predators such as black bear, cougar, coyotes and raccoons are thriving in our presence, compared their Siberian counterparts which migrated into North America in the Recent, the grizzly bear, gray wolf and wolverine. The Americans are very adaptable, the ex-Siberians are not. It’s about the ex-Siberians we happen to worry most.

We may be the clever, industrious prey that turned the table on carnivores, but our relationship to large predators has remained precarious. Our ability to co-exist depends on us exploiting their fears – and woe if they call our bluff! The man-killing lions of Tsavo are but one example of predators learning how easy it is to hunt man as prey. Jim Corbet’s tales of man-eating leopards and tigers, or of lions preying on modern-day refugees in Krueger National Park or Somalia are others. Native people had quite sophisticated means of keeping safe from predators, but ultimately made recourse to killing offending predators should one transgress against humans. Still, high-density populations of big grizzly bear in California kept native people out of productive low-land sites, till Spaniards killed off the grizzlies. On the Pacific coast natives designated certain salmon streams for the use of bears and harassed such away from others. In Greenland early this century areas occupied by wolves were free of native people, and attempts to provision weather stations by dogsled failed because of wolf attacks. I was told that traditionally wolves were kept down in numbers by destroying dens, a method praised as most effective in Russia.

The history of wolves is deeply troubling, even though to all appearances grizzly bears, black bears and cougars are more dangerous having killed far more people in recent North America. In order to understand what wolves can do, provided the conditions are right, we have to go to Eurasia. It’s conditions that count! We must know these well as we have already enacted legislation here and in the European union that are based on false biological premises. And such arose from errors in scholarship. And we must know these errors, as the prestige of science and scholarship are again and again invoked to push flawed conclusions about wolves as well as flawed legislation.

The problem in North America is that specialists in wolf biology did not recognize how to use historical Eurasian information about wolves, but dismissed such as irrelevant to an understanding of wolves. They equated all such information as a result of ignorance about and malice towards wolves by an ignorant populous. It escaped them that as scientists they were ill equipped to research such matters, as this field of study resides squarely in the academic domain of history.

We can know historically of the peoples’ plight through the centuries only indirectly as we are dealing in Europe and Asia largely with illiterate populations. Illiterate people cannot leave first-hand accounts of their troubles! They can at best convey their concerns to their masters. Consequently, we have to look for summaries of their problems, be it in church records or administrative accounts. Unfortunately, tracing church records or administrative accounts can be less than fruitful as such have been usually burned by the unending warfare of centuries past. This leaves summaries of such matters, as well as the evidence for actions taken by the rulers to deal with large predators, most often with wolves. An example is the detailed encyclopedic work on hunting and wildlife management by Friedrich von Flemming published in Leipzig, Saxony, in 1719 and addressed to his Mighty Sovereign and Master, Friedrich Augusto, King of Poland, followed by a second volume in 1724. It’s sobering! The depredation by wolves led in some regions to great efforts on the part of feudal rulers to rid their land of this menace. The rulers may have been less concerned with plight of their subjects tan with concerned about taxation and the welfare of their wildlife. Miles upon miles of netting were strung to corral wolves. Special horse carriages and sheds were required to transport and house the netting. Several villages at a time were forced to drive wolves and other wildlife into nets. Professional hunters and trappers were employed to trap wolves. However, recurring wars brought back wolves, and when people are helpless, large predators are quick to know and to exploit such logically.

And it’s not only the central European experience that is sobering, so is research into this matter in Russia, Finland, France, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, India and Korea. Tragedy results again and again from political systems that disarmed and disenfranchised its citizen. Wolves exploited that helplessness. Compared to bears, wolves were hated and that with excellent reason. Not only did they destroy livestock in the fields, but they found means and ways to break into stables in villages and kill the precious family cow or sheep indoors. Children are a primary target of wolves. Rabies was not uncommon, and a rabid wolf running amuck biting horses, cattle, people and in modern days machinery in rapid succession was a death angel if there ever was one! The bite by a rabid wolf is lethal and the bitten person died of rabies. A bitten person could only be cured since the rise of modern medicine. Before that any bite by a rabid wolf was a death sentence, and such an animal could bite dozens of people before it was killed or ran off and died.

Wolf packs came out of the “wilderness” which was detested as source of evil. The frequent wars brought wolf troubles. After the 30 year war in central Europe it took decades before some landscapes were resettles – courtesy wolves. The fairy tale by the brothers Grim of Little Red Riding Hood is thus not based on ignorance and malice towards wolves but on very real and desperate experiences. This experience drove the costly and wearying attempts to exterminate wolves through out the ages right into the last century in Europe. We may decry today the extermination of wolves in the American west, but there was reason for it and modern studies confirm how efficient wolves can become in killing off livestock. And that confirms the European historical experience. Even in modern times Wolves have been a trouble to disarmed populations and most recently in areas where they are again re-colonizing such as in Finland, Sweden and even modern Germany. Ditto in New Mexico where wolves are legally protected! Historically there is no place where wolves and people have coexisted, except where wolves were kept under strict control and were hunted, and prey was, consequently, abundant. And that’s one lesson from the North American experience we need to take very seriously. Modern research has shown that wolves switch to alternative prey species only very slowly, and that they do not target humans as long as there is prey or livestock between them and us. Moreover, wolves targeting humans and urban coyotes targeting children do so in the same manner. Surprising? Hardly! Surprising is only the argument that wolves pose no danger to people, a myth that has killed here highly educated persons that trusted science. It is timely to reassess conservation of large predators and make such safe for them and us. And that will be the subject of a future essay.

Geist, V. 2008. Large predators: them and us! Fair Chase. Vol. 23, No. 3. pp. 14-19

E-mail: kendulf@shaw.ca

Draft 6th of July, 2008

Essay No. 1, Fair Chase – as submitted.