Coyboy and Others,
I just finished reading most of these posts...Some what entertaining....This subject has hit a sore spot with me for years and I have felt like there was nothing I could do about..So now I will vent a little....Man has tried to eradicate wolves for centuries....They are just the same as rats to me....No one needs them and it will almost be impossible to make them extinct...In most of Europe they are under control and luckily on some islands they are gone completely....It took early settlers in this country almost 200 years to bring them under control to where man could get the most out of his resources to make a living.....This earth by design has a population that is growing exponentially and to make room for more humans that means there will or should be less room for rats and wolves and other "vermin".....Either that or we have to start eating them instead of beef, pork and venison.....Who wants to take the first bite....
These tree huggers, greenies, elitists, and other liberal minded groups have to wake up out of their green smoke filled rooms and learn what real life is....First of all get a real job that produces a product that someone can use (an export would be real nice)......
wait back to the subject...most of them couldn't get a real job when they got out of college so they thought they would become "environmentalists".....
wait back to the subject
I too live in Hibbing, MN and thought you should know that your assessment per the 2008 DNR wolf report is pretty much 100% correct...There is about 500 square miles in a band approximately 10-15 miles wide across the Iron Range of MN from Grand Rapids to Virginia where wolf reports are rare...Including the Hibbing city proper and most surrounding area...
Hibbing is not timber wolf central.....Deer populations remain fairly stable in these semi-populated and semi-cultivated areas consisting of several small towns and cities and mostly private land....(There really isn't much agriculture up here anymore, only the remnants of our forefathers homesteads and a few hobby farmers)...The vast iron mines also are a part of this dead zone....
I see many deer and would love to hunt in this "wolf dead zone" but I have only been up in the Hibbing area for about 12 years and the smaller areas of public land have their "resident hunters" and it would be an infringement to move in on them....I do quite a bit of shed hunting on the public parcels and see many winter kills each spring....They are not wolf kills but natural causes and some coyote depredation.....(wolves leave only the hair and skulls most times...they eat most of the small bones....Coyotes chew on the bones and scatter them)....
I happened to have lived in MN & Northern WI all my life and have been in the midst of the timber wolf propagation in WI since the onset in the early and mid 70s....I lived 2 miles from the Moose Lake pack, about 12 miles from the Bear Lake pack and 25 miles from the Black Lake pack (Black Lake borders MN and WI in Carlton & Douglas Counties about 30 miles south of Duluth)....These collared and heavily protected packs were "planted" contrary to the propaganda always published by the WDNR and MDNR....I believe this is true because I talked with the biologists face to face back in the day.....The WI DNR would like you to believe they "migrated from MN"...These were the three packs that allowed the wolves to circumvent the Duluth/I35/Cloquet metro area blockade.....After that the no coyote hunting during deer season and the hefty $10,000 fines kept us from......
you know....Wish I knew then what was going to happen because I have had many, lets say, opportunities over the years......
After the introduction of the three packs that I know of (and lived near) then the spread in Northern WI went like wildfire....Then over to the UP of MI just a few years later and merged with any packs that came from Canada....
I hunt mostly on public land including 1 national forest and 3 state forests in four areas of MN in three counties...In WI I hunt county, state and national forest...Everywhere I hunt there is plenty of wolves...I own land in two MN counties and one county in WI....All the public land as well as my own has seen major improvement to deer habitat in the past 20 years because the timber age class pretty much had all came "ripe" at the same time......The deer populations that should have exploded with the timber cutting have actually been dwindling every year mainly because of wolf & yes bear depredation...One area that I love to hunt north of here out of the "dead-zone" saw a combination of winter kill and wolf kill last winter....I hunted there several days this past year and felt it would not be prudent to shoot any deer there at all...Subsequently I moved to one of my other areas to harvest a buck.....
In Douglas County, WI where I have also hunted for over 50 years we have seen major devastation of deer populations as some are well aware due to both over harvest and wolves (bear & bobcat are also hard on the fawn crop)...examine bear scat the first two weeks in June you will be hard pressed not to find "fawn fingernails"....We see wolves every deer season and usually multiple sightings.....But hear them every night (and sometimes in broad daylight)....That's one thing you don't hear anywhere near Hibbing because there are no packs nearby.....I live within the city limits (the geographical city limits of Hibbing used to be and might still be the largest in the state[larger than MPLS]) but am in a rural area (yes I can hunt and shoot on my land)...I hear coyotes nearly every night (and see them frequently) but have yet to hear a T-wolf at home or anywhere near hear....He very well may have seen wolf scat (if he knows the difference between that and a coyote) in the dead zone because loners do pass thru from time to time and in some areas with even more frequency.....
Enough history back to my thoughts.....I also hunt Wyoming & MT and SD from time to time and would like to hunt ID someday.....Most everyone I meet out there is down to earth and sensible....I share most of your feelings and feel your pain....I would hate to see the common sense reputation of everybody that lives in Hibbing, MN to be tarnished by one young fellow's visions of "world peace"...Most everyone in northern MN knows that the T-wolf has never been endangered here...The area along the Canadian border has always had some and it really probably would have stayed that way if the Feds hadn't intervened....
One last thing the guy made fun and called WI the "bait hunt state" or something to that effect.....50% of the hunters in WI do not bait and do not approve of it and I am in that 50%....It is legal in WI and I will not knock anyone for practicing it there.....I personally do not agree with any kind of baiting and
in my opinion it is not fair chase.....That includes "food plots".....So when he mentioned they have a farmer till up or leave standing crops or whatever he was talking about I would call that baiting....
I have a sneaking hunch that he and his group may have shot a few deer on or near that field....gun)who's the baiter now....
That's all I have for now hope you westerners will accept me back because I do not share many of the views of the other Hibbing hunter or where ever he is from (he actually may hunt in a different area and didn't want to give up his honey hole).....
Randy
