IN THIS ISSUE...

• Range Rescue

• War with Wolves

• Wildlife Damage

• World According To Hooter

EDITORIALS

• TRAILS
• GAP

Ralph McCrea, who ranches near Leadore, Idaho, lost more than 20 calves during the past 2 years, and all his neighbors have lost calves. “Last year I didn’t notice losses until the cattle were on the range. This year they’ve been killing my baby calves here in the fields, coming into the cattle at night,” says McCrea.

This past winter a Fish and Game officer counted 9 wolves in the Leadore pack that’s been harassing and killing cattle. “The head female probably has a new litter of pups now,” says McCrea. The Fish and Game doesn’t have a workable plan for keeping the numbers under control, even now that the wolves are delisted and no longer protected under the Endangered Species Act, and ranchers are not always allowed to kill wolves.

Original protection was very rigid and wolves were not to be killed under any circumstances (even if they were killing your livestock)--until a certain number of wolves were established as a breeding population. Then the 10-J rule allowed for management of problem wolves. At first it allowed ranchers to shoot at them if the wolves were actually caught in the act of biting and grasping livestock that were still alive; but you couldn’t shoot a wolf that had already killed your animal. Then the rule was changed again, to where you could shoot wolves that were chasing or harassing your animals, but you couldn’t shoot a wolf on your place if it was not right in with the livestock.

“If I was in the far field changing water and wolves go through the hayfield where there are no cattle, according to that rule I couldn’t shoot any of them. They had to be in with the cattle, killing or harassing them. But in my opinion, if they are walking through my place, they are harassing my cattle. My cows are so touchy right now, just from the wolves being around,” explains McCrea.

“The other day I had the government trapper here. We watched a coyote cross the field at least a quarter of a mile below the cows, and the cows just went crazy. They were bellowing and gathered up their calves and were milling around in one big mob running across the field. With this kind of activity going on, my calf weights will be lower this year.” Young or newborn calves are often trampled and killed or injured when the herd stampedes like this.

“I had one run over this spring and rolled around. He now has a crooked neck, but he survived. I had another one chewed up by wolves, with his intestines hanging out. I had the vet come out and we put him back together and gave him antibiotics, but he only lived 2 more days.” The wolves often maim their victims and eat on them while they are still alive.
The trapper told him that residents at Sun Valley are observing this with elk herds. “Those people are calling the trappers and telling them to do something about the wolves, but the trappers say that’s out of their jurisdiction—if the wolves are eating elk.”

The ranchers can’t afford the losses, however, and a lot of the loss isn’t due to direct kills. An injured calf, like the one McCrea described, can’t be sold with the other calves in the fall. “I’ll have to haul him to the Blackfoot auction or raise him with my replacement heifers to butcher.” Other losses include less weight gain on calves because the cattle are being harassed and traveling a lot, or too nervous to graze.

“Animal Damage Control will be coming out here to try to trap some of these wolves, and get collars on one or two of them,” says McCrea. It seems more logical to just kill the wolves they trap, but they need to be able to keep track of them and find the pack when they are killing cattle. They need to know how large an area they roam and whether they are the same ones killing cattle across the valley.

“If it’s the same group that’s giving another guy havoc, we can figure it out. I know we have to put a collar on at least one of these. I don’t like it, but I know it’s got to be done. A wolf with a collar is easier to catch and dispose of.”

Difficult to Control
The USDA Fish and Wildlife Service personnel made numerous flights around the Lemhi Valley this spring to try to find wolves that were killing calves, but in the Baker area the wolves were hitting the cattle at night and going back up into the timber during the day where they can’t be seen from the air.

Allen Bodenhamer, who raises cattle at Baker (9 miles from Salmon) lost 3 calves. He first thought the kills were made by coyotes, then realized he was dealing with wolves. “On one calf there was not enough left of the carcass to tell, but the wolf tracks were there. The number of wolves coming down into our ranch during calving was astonishing,” says Bodenhamer.

USDA trapper Eric Simonson investigated the third kill and pointed out the tracks, telling Bodenhamer that those wolves didn’t just come yesterday; they’d been coming and going all winter. While examining the kill, Simonson showed Bodehamer several things that can help a person tell whether an animal is killed by coyotes or wolves.

“First of all, if there is blood everywhere, it was wolves. He told me that when coyotes kill a calf they get hold of the back of the neck and basically strangle it. They usually don’t start eating on it while it is still alive. Wolves grab it by the top of the back or just in front of the hips and are eating on it while the poor animal is still struggling around trying to get away,” says Bodenhamer.

There were no coyotes howling that night—just cows running and bellowing. He knew something was wrong and went out to check, and discovered wolf tracks. “I found the calf’s head and part of the neck. When Simonson came out he cut it down the top and showed me there were no marks down the top of the neck. These were not coyotes.”

They found the ribcage and backbone some distance away. “Right down the top of the backbone there were big punctures and bruises, and bloodshot areas where they had grabbed the calf by the back. Then we found a leg. Simonson said that after wolves kill an animal the first thing they want to do after they tear it apart is chew on the ball joints. We could see teeth marks all over those joints,” says Bodenhamer. In less than an hour, the trapper had confirmed that this was a wolf kill.

“Then the Wildlife Service hunters flew over our area 6 times trying to find those wolves. They also placed snares on the fence and gate where wolves were coming into my place, but were unsuccessful. They got me a special permit from Fish and Game to shoot any wolves on sight. But finding them is a challenge,” says Bodenhamer.

Tracks showed the wolves were going up into the timber on the mountain behind the ranch, several miles away. The wolves were coming down at night and then going back up into the timber where they couldn’t be seen. “One of my neighbors said trappers told him that when wolves hear an airplane coming they often lie right down under the sagebrush and won’t move, and are really hard to see. They’ve watched the wolves do that,” says Bodenhamer.
During calving season he and his wife were out checking cows every hour. “For those wolves to come in between our spotlight checks, they must have figured out our pattern. It certainly amazed me,” he says. So far the trappers have not managed to catch up with any of this pack. From the tracks, it looked like there were 5 wolves—one of them very large, and two juveniles.

“What’s scary is that we’re about to turn our cattle out on summer range and we’ll be sending cattle right up where the wolves are hanging out. I don’t know how we are going to get rid of them. I had field glasses and my rifle with me when I was out building fence, trying to see them, but never did.”

“You don’t often see them during the day; night is about the best chance you have, if you have a spotlight when you are out checking cows,” says Bodenhamer. But he is hesitant to shoot at night since there are so many close neighbors. “These wolf kills were not in a remote area. My calves were right down along the highway near Baker; these wolves are coming very close to humans,” he explains.

McCrea shot one wolf at his place at night. “We’ve bought bigger lights since then, to try to be able to shoot them at night,” says McCrea. Killing that wolf didn’t slow down the calf-killing activity.

In April the wolves were coming in at about 3 o’clock in the morning. “My calves were losing weight every night. I had to corral the cattle at night so they’d be close enough that I can get to them when the wolves come in. That costs me weight. I couldn’t leave them a mile and a half away where I had no chance to protect them,” says McCrea. And during summer he can’t protect them adequately when they are out on range pastures.

“I know we’ll have to put up with wolves from now on. But we have to be able to control them. If I lose a calf, the trappers should come in and control that bunch of wolves, or at least knock them back to one. They could leave that one collared and then be able to know where he is,” says McCrea.

That might be a compromise the ranchers could live with, along with full compensation for every animal missing when they come in from the range in the fall. “If they insist we’ve got to have wolves, then they should pay us for our losses,” he says. If the public wants wolves, they should pay the price.

In Idaho the rules have been relaxed to where a rancher can kill a wolf that’s killing or harassing livestock, but it’s difficult to catch up with the wolves. “Even when you do shoot one, and you know it’s legal, you’re still scared to death because of how it’s been viewed in the past,” says McCrea.

“Two years ago I shot one and told the Wildlife Service about it and when they came to investigate, they treated me like a criminal. But I had pictures of the tracks right in the cow tracks, coming through the mud out of the corral. I had all the evidence before they ever got here. They looked things over and said, ‘Well, she just flat made you do it, didn’t she?’ I asked them what was going to happen, and they said they were just going to throw the wolf in the truck and leave. So when I shot one this February they just sent a Fish and Game officer up here from Salmon. He took pictures of the dead wolf in the hay, right on the feed ground. He asked me to help him throw the wolf in his truck, and away he went. But if I shot one down in the far hayfield, with no cows there, I would be in trouble.”

McRea says you need to talk to your government trapper, first, before you shoot a wolf, so they know you have a problem if they are harassing livestock. “Right now, because of the kills this year and what I had last year, and the continual running of my cattle and fence repair I have to do, the game department issued me a shoot on sight permit, for up to three wolves. Now, if I am out in the far field changing water and they come into the place, I can shoot one on my property. If I go to my summer range to put out salt or check cattle and there are wolves with them, this shoot on sight permit will give me a right to shoot them on my BLM allotment. But you need this type of permit for this to be legal,” says McCrea. The permit is good for 45 days.

“People who are suing to prevent delisting of wolves are saying we need at least 5000 wolves to have a viable population that will sustain itself. Most people in the rural West are sure we already have more wolves than that. Fish and Game people are saying we only have about 1600,” says McCrea. But if numbers in Lemhi County are any indication, there are a lot more. Last winter the Fish and Game counted more than 90 wolves on one flight up the valley between Salmon and Leadore on one side of the valley. They didn’t fly the other side.
“You know they didn’t see them all. This pack up here was not counted in that flight. I would say that from Salmon to Leadore there are closer to 300 wolves. People are seeing them everywhere, even along the highway. If you are seeing wolves all the time, you know there are a lot more you are not seeing,” he says.

“There were at least two here when they chewed up my calf. At 3 a.m. I had them in the spotlight when I stepped out on the porch, and grabbed some shoes and a gun. But by the time I got out there they had chewed up the calf and left. We tried to save him but even with the surgical repair and antibiotics he just lay there and suffered and wouldn’t eat. I had to tube him. He was 30 days old, but he couldn’t make it.”

Threatening our Peace of Mind and our Way of Life
Several years ago, wolf tracks in fresh snow went right through the town of Leadore, heading out toward Big Timber Creek. For several years a wolf pack has been hanging around the town of Challis, Idaho, killing livestock and pets. This past winter wolves were lounging in people’s yards on the outskirts of Salmon.

“They are not afraid of anything. They will even kill grizzly cubs. A year ago bear hunters told me they found bear dens torn open and bears eaten by wolves,” says McCrea.

He no longer hikes around to fix fences without carrying a firearm. “You want to have your 4-wheeler there, or your horse, and you definitely want to pack a handgun. When you get up in the middle of the night to check cows, it’s horrible that part of your cow checking equipment has to be a rifle on your back,” he says.

“I was within 25 yards of this one I later shot—right in the cows, in the corral—with nothing but a flashlight. It really makes you think.” The wolves have destroyed our peace of mind.
“The same time we killed this one, our grandkids had been out sleigh riding on the hill. My son went out and picked them up to head for home about 6 p.m. At 9 p.m. I am going through the cows, and here’s the wolf standing in the cows--within 40 yards of where the kids were sledding. They had my old cow dogs with them, and my son has a lab.” If the wolf had arrived a little sooner it would have been attracted to the dogs and kids.

“Wolves will come right to a dog. Those 2 little kids, a 6 year old and a 9 year old, wouldn’t have stood a chance. That really gives you the creepers and the willies. You shouldn’t have to worry about kids out for a sleigh ride by your house. Next winter I don’t know if I can let them go play on the hill alone. It’s only 150 yards from the back door but I just don’t think I can let them go out there.”

McCrea has a 6 month old lab that stays in the house at night. “The night the calf was tore up, he came to life and lit up this house. Every time wolves are around, he goes crazy. I couldn’t spot them one afternoon, but he was going ballistic here in the yard. The lab we had before him alerted us to wolves that came in 2 years before, and also 8 years before that. He went nuts. We had to keep him locked up because he was ready to go attack the wolves.”
In 1999 McCrea lost 20 lambs to a wolf that came two different nights. “This wolf was collared and had been turned out of his kennel in Yellowstone Park at noon on a Wednesday. Thursday he was in Dillon, Montana, and Friday he was here, by Big Eightmile, killing my sheep. Road miles, it’s 70 miles to Dillon from here.”

Wolves can travel incredible distances in a short time. A rancher near Baker shot a collared wolf in his barnyard this past winter and discovered it was one that trappers had been trying to get. Bodenhamer says, “they’d chased that wolf through the Bob Marshall Wilderness, and down through Helena, Montana, before it came through here. It traveled that long distance in an amazingly short time.”

Ranchers are frustrated about how to cope with this problem. It’s not just a matter of dollars, and losing a calf now and then or calves weighing less than they should. Their whole way of life is being threatened. “The government trapper, when he was here, stood right where the wolf was shot, and took pictures of the sled marks in the snow on the hill. It was only 40 yards from the wolf. The trapper was just livid, because he knows those kids. It puts us right back to the 1890’s when everyone went around armed, for any kind of a predator. We’re being pulled right back there. We shouldn’t have to do that.”

DISRUPTING WILDLIFE BALANCES AND GRAZING MANAGEMENT
Ross Goddard, a rancher near Tendoy, Idaho says wolves are adversely affecting game populations now, and not just ranchers. “We are seeing wildlife reductions. On our Forest Service and BLM allotments we’re supposed to leave a certain amount of grass for wildlife, and there are areas that have been closed to cattle to provide winter feed for elk. But the wolves came in and are harassing those elk all winter. The elk are constantly on the move. The places where we left all the grass are not even being used by elk because they won’t stay in there long enough to use it,” says Goddard.

“The people making decisions about wolves need to realize it’s affecting everyone. The wolf advocates said we needed wolves here to create a balance of wildlife, but we didn’t need them. There are enough predators already to take care of whatever they thought the wolves could do,” he says.

Bringing wolves destroyed the balance. “There’s no balance now. It’s like putting a fox in the henhouse and saying we can’t do anything to control the fox.” In some areas game populations have plummeted so low that the Fish and Game Department is greatly reducing the numbers allowable for hunters.

“The elk herd behind our ranch is constantly on the move. This spring I was up there checking calves and a herd of elk came down the creek on a trot, with their tongues hanging out. They went right into the cow herd and just relaxed,” says Goddard. The elk were trying to get away from wolves and find a safe place to rest.

“I don’t think very many people realize how much our wildlife is being harassed by wolves. It’s taken us 30 years to build up our elk, deer and moose populations, and now, every year, it’s going the other way. We like to see the wildlife here,” he says, but that picture is changing. He thinks the expanding wolf population will soon outgrow their food supply.

Even though the wolves are now delisted and under control of the states, most people in the rural West don’t think the states will be able to adequately control their expanding numbers. Idaho plans to manage wolves as a game animal, selling tags to hunters so they can shoot a wolf during a specified hunting season. But how many hunters will actually catch up with one? And if you shoot one at any other time of year it will be a game violation (which could mean a major fine and/or jail time). There is speculation that even if there’s a hunting season for wolves, it won’t adequately control their numbers and they will continue to decimate big game herds. Selling wolf tags won’t even begin to offset the loss of revenue to the state game department from loss of their elk herds, for instance.

Wolf management will also probably be tied up in the courts if the people opposed to killing wolves have their way. Only time will tell, whether or not they stay delisted, and whether the states will be able to manage them.

Bruce Mulkey, a rancher near Baker, said that “wolf lovers on a panel discussion at Idaho State University this spring were saying that only 1 percent of livestock loss is due to wolves and that we lose more to disease and other problems. Even if that’s true, if you are part of the 1 percent and lose 20 percent of your calves, that’s a heck of a loss.” Ranchers can do various things to prevent or treat disease, but can’t do anything to prevent wolf attacks.
“I wish they would get them permanently delisted and start killing wolves,” says Mulkey. “I think it would help the wolves in the long run because it would make them wilder and they would stay back away from the ranches a little more. The wolves we are seeing are not wild at all. I shot at one this spring and he ran off about 250 yards and stopped to look back at me. My neighbor shot one in his cows, right in his barnyard and the wolves just kept coming back every night.”

Ranchers have been losing livestock, but a bigger loss may be the unseen things that are difficult to measure. “On our summer range the cattle are very unsettled; they are constantly nervous and on the move,” says Goddard. The cattle don’t graze as much and the calves are smaller in the fall.

“Our grazing use and management is under strict observation because of fish habitat. We have to keep cattle off riparian areas because of endangered fish, so we’re shoving them up into higher country into the wolf domain. The year we got hit with the most calf losses, we didn’t realize at first that it was due to wolves. We were putting the cattle right into the wolves. We had to pull the cattle out of there, and that really hurt our grazing management,” explains Goddard.

When there are wolves around, cattle become hard to handle because the cows become very protective and concerned about their calves. “If you try to move them somewhere all they want to do is gang up and bawl, and chase your dogs. If you put cows in a certain area where they are supposed to stay for 3 or 4 weeks, they may be all out of there 2 days later, and in the next allotment, and you can’t get them to go back. This disrupts the whole process for the season’s grazing management,” he says.

Many of these things are hard to document as losses, and the folks who think they can just reimburse ranchers for specific animals killed by wolves do not understand the greater losses. They will never reimburse the stockman for the total loss.

REIMBURSEMENT FOR RANCHERS
Bodenhamer says he will be reimbursed for the one calf that was a confirmed wolf kill. “We submitted to USDA the receipt from our calf sale last year, showing what we got for our calves. It is my understanding that they are now paying the full value of the calf, what you would have gotten for him in the fall, rather than just his value as a baby calf,” says Bodenhamer.

Todd Grimm, USDA Fish and Wildlife Service, says ranchers experiencing losses should contact the state fish and game department and/or the Wildlife Service as soon as possible. “Our guys answer their phones on the weekends and at night, and will come determine whether it was indeed a wolf problem,” says Grimm. If USDA officials decide it was a wolf kill, then the rancher can be compensated.

If it will be awhile before the government official can arrive, the rancher should preserve the evidence, such as tracks or the carcass, by keeping other animals out of the area. “If you can throw a tarp over the carcass, this helps a lot. Some ranchers have picked it up and brought it to us, or put it in a freezer until we can get there,” he says.

Sometimes there’s no way to preserve, or even find the carcass, as when cattle disappear on summer range. “In Idaho there’s a missing livestock fund, available through the Governor’s Office of Species Conservation,” says Grimm. Ranchers can obtain claim forms, and the committee (made up of county commissioners and state Fish and Game) will determine which claims are valid. Last year they paid 42 cents on the dollar, for missing animals.
“If wolves are known to be in the area, or there have been confirmed wolf kills, that helps validate a claim,” says Grimm. There must be firm evidence that the losses were due to wolves.

The Defenders of Wildlife still compensate ranchers for confirmed kills, and 50 percent for probable kills. To confirm a kill, Fish and Wildlife Service has to be involved. “We fill out a form on every investigation, stating whether it is confirmed, probable, possible or other (bear, coyote, cougar, etc.). We give the rancher a copy of that report, and contact information for Defenders of Wildlife, to let the rancher file a claim,” says Grimm.

USDA Fish and Wildlife Service has state offices that can help ranchers with wolf questions or depredation problems. The toll free number is 866-487-3297. Whatever state you are calling from, your call will be routed to the appropriate state office. Your local Wildlife Service representative can give you cell phone numbers for people who could help you at night or on a weekend. You can also contact the Fish and Game department’s Animal Damage Control or local game wardens, who can give you contact numbers for USDA personnel who can help determine if it is an actual wolf kill or not.

CHECK WITH YOUR STATE FISH AND GAME DEPARTMENT
Now that wolves are under control of the states, management may vary from state to state. In Idaho, for instance, there will be a hunting season, and ranchers will have to abide by game laws. If they have depredation problems, however, they can work with the game department and still get “shoot on sight” permits, which are usually valid for 45 days and can be renewed if wolves are still causing problems. This would be up to the regional Fish and Game supervisor.

Without a special permit, it is illegal in Idaho for animal owners to shoot a wolf unless it is actually in the act of attacking or killing livestock or domestic animals. You can, however, use non-lethal means to scare them away. An animal owner can shoot a wolf that is attacking his animals, but must report the incident to the Fish and Game Director within 72 hours. Wolves killed in these situations would remain the property of the state.