WHO'S AFRAID OF THE FEDERAL WOLF? NOT WY, ID, or MT

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Out here in Fly-Over Country, we're used to Eastern senators forcing edicts down our throats. If you write to those senators to weigh in on what he or she is doing outside their districts and inside yours, you get a politely-worded "F***-off. You're not in my District" letter, so you have no say in regards to what they are enacting upon you. Smacks of taxation without representation.

Anyway, the 10th Amendment of that pesky ol' Bill of Rights is rearing it's head again over wolf "management" in the "Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem". IIRC, when the wolves were re-introduced, the government and eco-fascists who signed on to the program agreed the goal was: "To remove the Northern Rocky Mountain wolf from the endangered and threatened species list by securing and maintaining a minimum of 10 breeding pairs in each of the three recovery areas for a minimum of three successive years." At one of the early meetings on the reintroduction subject, a dog-and-pony show where locals got to voice their opinions before they were ignored, I remember one old rancher's preemptive "I told you so."

"You watch." He said. "Every time we hit these agreed-upon number limits, they'll just raise the bar."

Ten years and a thousand wolves (official Fed.gov artificially very low number) after the initial reintroduction, they were still raising the bar, and Federal judges were still insisting that the wolf was "endangered". The pesky ol' States of the Union naturally have no say in what goes on with woofs in their own backyard.

Of course, it's not just Montana. In 1995, 66 wolves were reintroduced in Idaho with a goal of 10 breeding pairs to call the program successful and take them off the endangered list. Over a thousand wolves and around 50 separate breeding packs later, you guessed it, they're still endangered.

They do indeed breed like rats.
(NWMT=Northwest Montana, GYA=Greater Yellowstone Area, CID=Central Idaho)

These things breed like rats. Two packs in our valley have been "managed" by the government in our area for stock predation in the last couple of years, one just this past summer; another pack has already moved in. A friend whose family had outfitted guided hunts out of Gardiner, MT for three generations told me five years ago that his brother sold the business and quit. Hunters won't pay money to hunt elk where they no longer exist; he was talking three calves surviving per hundred head of elk. So much for "they improve herd health by taking only the sick, lame, and lazy."

An obviously sick, lame and lazy mature 5-point bull being culled for the good of the herd.

We once came upon a cow elk which strangely would not get up even as we approached; she could barely raise her head a bit to look at us. We took a closer look to see if she was sick or what. Turns out wolves had ham-strung her back legs, crippling her, and then had torn the calf fetus out of her stomach and eaten it, leaving her (barely) alive.

The head of the Fed wolf program (whose predictions thus far have been considerably less accurate than those of an Ouija Board), has been trying to dodge doing any predation studies during calving season because he knows what the results will be, but says not to worry. The wolves and elk will "regulate" themselves. When the elk numbers fall, so will the wolf numbers. Bullshit. When they wipe out a herd they just move to the next drainage and take out the next herd...and the next...and when the elk run out it's time to come down out of the hills and take out livestock...all the while reproducing exponentially, worse than registered voters in Chicago.

Life-long campers and visitors in my area, especially in the willow heavy drainages, have asked me, "Where are all the moose? We used to see them all the time up here. We could go out in the evening and always see several; now we haven't seen any all this summer."

The moose are now part of the hair you find in the wolf turds around the area. In the winter, when the snow gets belly deep on the long-legged moose, they can hardly move. Then the wolf packs help themselves.

A moose being killed by Global Warming.

Of course, the head of USFWS blamed moose declines in all wolf infested area on the ol' Global Warming boogeyman.

The fern-feelers insist that humans are the only animals that kill "for fun" and that wolves only kill just what they can eat and actually improve the herd health by taking only the unfit animals. Not knowing this, wolves have been known to lay into a herd of sheep (after killing the Great Pyrenees dogs or llamas protecting the herd) and slaughter 10 or 15 sheep but only eat 2 or 3. Or sometimes 41 sheep. Or perhaps 120 sheep in a single night. A pack can get into a killing frenzy, doing lots of "thrill kills", when it comes to easy targets, and they'll do this to any group of critters they can corner. All kinds of livestock and pets are popular targets, whether they bother to eat them or not.

Only kill what you can eat. If you're just after a tasty bunghole, leave it alive.

Of course, every time it happens the wolf lovers scream "wild dogs". Never mind the fact that no one has ever actually seen any of these roving swarms of escaped wiener dogs and black labs...but they have sure seen plenty of wolves. Never mind that plaster casts reveal footprints bigger than Great Pyrenees or Great Danes, leaving one to wonder just what in the hell breed it is of invisible wild dogs are swarming the ranchlands. An "unconfirmed" wolf kill means that everyone from the rancher's grandkids to the local game warden easily identifies it as an obvious wolf kill but then some big shot from the Feds comes down to investigate and says, "No, it must have been a renegade Chihuahua." The Oregon Stockman's Association claims only one in seven wolf kills is reported as such.

Meanwhile, while wolf "recovery" goals continue to inflate in excess of ten times the supposedly agreed-upon original number, the granola-crunchers and their pet Federal judges of the 9th Circus Court (based in California but having jurisdiction over our area) continue to keep the wolves on the "endangered" list and prevent the Rocky Mountain states from managing their own wildlife. Hard to believe Fed.gov not only fudges their figures, but they won't even stand by their own numbers...NOT.

As to those numbers, the government officially says there's 1,700 wolves in the northern Rockies. Just like unemployment figures, you need to double that to get an accurate count. Even Montana FW&P says real numbers may exceed official numbers by as much as 44%. Some sportsman's groups put the number closer to 5,000. As Will Rogers said, "There's liars, damn liars and statisticians."

People out here have had about enough. Wyoming has been telling the Feds to stick it for years. Idaho and Montana had a limited hunt last year, but the bunny-huggers got it tied back up in Federal court and shut down. With niceties and asking the Feds and eco-fascists to live up to their own agreements having failed, the states are fed up with Feds and telling Washington to go take a flying...telling them to bugger off.

So now, the state of Idaho said to hell with it. The governor told State game wardens to forget about arresting wolf "poachers" or even investigating wolf killings.

Now, Montana's Governor Brian Schweitzer is similarly telling the Feds to take a hike.

Hearteningly, this is but one of many instances of individual members of these United States telling the Feds to butt out of things far beyond their Constitutional reach...unfunded mandates, healthcare, sovereignty, firearms, law enforcement, and more. It's long overdue.