Crying Wolf

[pappy19]

This film is about an hour long, but every sportsman needs to watch it.

http://cryingwolfmovie.com/

Pap

[beenthere]

Pap
Can you (would you) summarize why sportsmen should view the movie?
thanks

[Clark]

First that struck me is that the filmmaker wanted to set out on a journey to find the truth.  Isn't that how all documentaries start?  I'd be willing to be that the script was written before the film started rolling.  I'm very skeptical that the maker was unbiased, especially since he grew up in SW Montana.  He did certain things that were...sketchy.  Such as quoting some settler who claimed the wolves killed more buffalo than the Indians and whites combined and not making any attempt to correct the quote.

On one hand there are the ranchers who do suffer from wolves.   We should make reparations for there losses but they shouldn't determine the management. The ironic thing is that most of them have been grazing federal forest land for decades at a cost that is almost criminal but now due to wolves are starting to bite the hand that partially feeds them.

On the other hand are guides, hunters, etc.  It's my opinion that they (and that includes myself) have been spoiled and over the past several decades enjoyed an inflated wildlife population and have no come to believe that anything less than that is not right.  We have the same thing happening in the upper midwest with deer populations.  Starting in the late 90's we had a series of mild winters, deer numbers exploded and now most hunters believe we should continue to have these inflated deer numbers. 

It was basically what I expected, the western rancher/hunter perspective but done with a bit more thought than is typically given to these arguments.  Biased?  Yes.  Unfair?  No.

Clark

[pappy19]

First off, I really didn't have a huge problem when the enviro's wanted to reintroduce the wolf to YNP, but(there's that word), they obviously have a much larger agenda than just the wolf. Not to mention that they lied about what the total number of "pairs" would be sufficient to take the wolf off of the ESA. We all know that the tree huggers have won the war on logging in the west, now we just watch our forest burn up. Same thing with livestock grazing on federal lands; livestock grazing has no impact on wildlife, and I'll tell you why. Livestock do not forage on winter range locations for big game and can never eat all of the summer range vegetation. In fact, by removing the livestock grazing, all you do is allow more of a chance of fire on the dried, uneaten grasses.

Back to wolves; in west central Idaho where I live, the wolves have taken our local elk herd from 2500 down to around 900. Even if the wolves don't actually catch an elk, they harrass them across the snow until they either drop or get so stressed, they die anyway. Idaho has pretty much opened up wolf hunting for sprotsman, but they will never keep up with the growing wolf population. I have a wolf tag but have been working in Texas so haven't had an opportunity to hunt them this year. It's going to get alot worse before it gets better; just think of your whitetail populations dropping by 50-60% and you'll get an idea of the impact the wolf has on our western big game.

[red oaks lumber]

you dont need to go west to see the problems with wolves. we are having a constant battle with wolves getting our livestock, just yeasterday feeding cattle came up over the hill  there stood a huge male wolf standing there at maybe 70 yrd. the biggest tragity was i didnt have a   rifle in the tractor.
say what you want but, a good wolf is a dead wolf
just for the record our deer numbers have gone from ok to down right non existant, and its not from increased hunter pressure.

[LOGDOG]

S.S.S.  ;)

[chevytaHOE5674]

just for the record our deer numbers have gone from ok to down right non existant, and its not from increased hunter pressure.

We have plenty of wolves and our deer numbers have done the opposite in the last few years. Years ago I was lucky to see a couple deer a year along side the roads in my travels, then in the last 18 months I've hit 3, and the other half hit 1. I rarely used to see deer out in my hay fields, then this fall I counted over 20 deer on many separate occasions.

[LOGDOG]

ChevytaHOE5674 ...I remember driving through Bruce Crossing growing up and there'd be literally hundreds of deer in the fields. It was really something to see. Is it still that way?

[chevytaHOE5674]

Yeah I was down in Bruce Crossing last fall and there was cars lined up on the side of the highway taking pictures and counting all the deer. It was very cool to see.

[Autocar]

My two cents kill all the wolves I rather hunt elk , I have a friend thats hunted in Idaho for 26 years and talk about seeing moose every day while hunting now he tells me theres no elk or moose.

[pappy19]

Moose are the first to go since they hang out more in the deep woods in the winter. Doesn't take a pack of wolves long to corral a moose up in deep snow. Elk are usually more on the open barren south slopes or down in valleys where there is less snow. Yellowstone is not the norm as the park gets alot of snow. The elk used to hang out near the hot springs and Firehole River, but the wolves chase them into the deep snow and are gone pretty quick as well. The elk in Idaho,Wyoming and Montana are pretty well doomed. When the wolves get into Colorado, Oregon and Washington. Probably the only safe states will wind up being Arizona and New Mexico for a few years anyway. Nothing will stop the spread of the wolf until they eat everything up.

Pap

[SwampDonkey]

My personal take is there is a whole lot of bias on either side of the fence. Heck I've herd for years that the moose and bison infect livestock with TB. When the truth is the opposite, it was the livestock that brought the disease. The trouble is we don't inoculate wildlife, so now it's their fault. That's just the start of all the half truths.  ;D

[pappy19]

I can comment about the bison STD's and cattle; along the Yellowstone borders, the rogue bison bulls would be run out of the park by his rival. The old bison bull(s) would breed with whatever was in heat and run off the livestock bulls. After the bison bull left, the herd bull would also breed the same cow and he then spread it all around. We saw this happen many times with the resulting STD's among the cattle. Lots of ranchers lost their shorts when this happened. Vibrio is especially bad, but brucilosis (bangs) is not much different.

Pap

[red oaks lumber]

eradicate the wolf  plain and simple ;) if some one needs some for their back yard or woods let me know i'll send the pack that is destroying everything out back. shipping free of charge.  :(

[chevytaHOE5674]

With this mild winter we had deer are everyplace I wish something would take them out. At this rate it won't be much use planting crops because the deer will wipe them out. We have plenty of wolves and they don't seem to have much effect on the deer population. The only thing that really keeps the road rats populations in check is a long, cold and very snowy winter. 

[SwampDonkey]

There is no doubt there are problem wolves because with farming your very business is raising food. The trouble is they don't buy the meat.  :

I worked on some remote areas and Islands on the BC coast and there were wolves, but never confrontations. You could sometimes see tracks from the night before near camp. I never as much even heard one bark or howl. I would suppose they ate sitka deer. But the deer were so darn thick you could hunt year round. Some of them Islands and coastal cliffs had goats to, I don't know if they hunted them or not. Would fly over some of them peeks in a chopper that a man could barely stand on and see a family of goats making there way on the very tip top of them peeks.  I wouldn't even climb up there with a rifle, both hands would be looking for something solid to hang on. :D :D That being said, I sure don't consider wolves as pet dogs.