One Less

[Bob Brown]

Stan’s post is a good reminder that predator control has a situational aspect to a person’s opinions. Even the same animal separated by a relatively small distance can make it a kill on sight or ignore situation. I’ll apologise for the long post now, but I wanted to add my thoughts.

A few weeks ago someone on this site posted a picture of a litter of wolf pups that he and his co-workers would pass daily on their walk to a mine site. It reminded me of a similar litter of wolf pups that I’d park and watch while coming home from work near where I lived. Another member took exception to my post when I called the person who shot that litter of wolf pups an A-hole. He said a guy told him that wolves killed dogs in rural areas. Called me an enthusiastic uncontrolled wolf population A-Hole and implied I was vehemently anti-hunting. Then some more nonsense about spotted owls and trees. I have to admit I never read his post to the end and missed the name calling until I searched for the thread today. No matter, back to my point. The area I lived in was about 1200 square miles of mixed farmland and bush surrounded by a large area of government owned forest, the vast majority that was first growth. You could add Pennsylvania to the 6 New England states and fit them all in that area. Few roads, two towns, a few Metis settlements, and some First Nations reserves. Less than 20,000 people total. I lived on the northern edge of the farmland and wolves hit my neighbors hard. One night a nearby neighbor kicked his door open and shot two wolves while they were dragging his dog off the porch. My next door neighbors each lost several dogs to wolves. One of them heard llamas would protect livestock so he bought one and put it in with his horses. The wolves ate the llama in less than two weeks. The ½ mile buffer of cleared fields I kept between the house and the forest didn’t prevent them from coming up to the house, but I brought the dogs in at night and never lost one to wolves. We did lose one to a coyote. I'm glad my wife wasn't looking over my shoulder when I had Dean's pic of the coyote with the dog in his mouth on screen. I posted a few times on this site about when our Jack Russel terrier was killed by a coyote in our drive way. My wife loved that little dog and hardly stopped crying for a week. She'll still shed tears if she sees a picture of him.

Like all my neighbors I kept a rifle and ammo handy in case I got a crack at a wolf or coyote in the yard. At any time in the 25 years I lived there if there were a pack of wolves in my yard I would have killed them all if I had the chance. Not only would it be legal, the county would have, and still would, pay a $200 bounty for each adult shot on private land. A policy I whole heartedly support. Losing our dog led to my dusting off my predator calls and taking my 223 WSSM out to kill as many coyotes as possible around the house. I’m aware of the hypocrisy of carving farmland out of forest and then killing any predators that come onto MY land to do me or mine harm. The wolf pups I posted about lived in the forest area far from any residences or private property. Out there the ratio of predators and prey stays pretty much in balance, regardless of human intervention. Just because I would shoot a wolf or coyote in season while hunting that area doesn’t mean I’d illegally shoot a litter of pups. My wife had gone from accepting to tolerating my hunting as she almost morphed from neutral to an anti-hunting leaning over the course of our marriage. About a week after our dog was killed I wondered aloud about the effectiveness of an electronic predator call on sale in the Cabela’s flyer I was looking at. A week later it showed up. It’s just all situational.