Wolves attack sheep in my bowhunting unit

[Michael Arnette]

SSS Shoot, Shovel, and Shut up!

[Ray Hammond]

It's like the biologist in Wyoming who while trying to explain to a group of disgruntled sheep ranchers at a town hall about how they were going to use rifles with the little hypodermic needles to inject wolves with birth control medicine- well one old rancher, who'd been listening very patiently for the better part of a half hour stood up and raised his hand-interrupting the biologist and said, " Son, I don't think you understand, these wolves ain't trying to mate with our sheep, they're KILLIN' EM!!!"

[Walt Francis]

FYI, the judge ruled in our favor yesterday, we have our wolf season.          

[Dave Bulla]

From a biological perspective. Wolves and predator more often than not go for the weak and sick. That lyme disease carrying tick infested deer that wolves eat in August won't infect you or me. That contagious blue-tongue infected deer is taken down before it can infect the rest of the deer population and cause a huge population crash.  

Also, contrary to popular belief, predator populations are controlled by prey populations - not the other way around. You can have deer with no wolves. But, if you have no prey species you have no predators. Habitat carrying capacity is what determines population levels. If wolves and other predators killed everything there would have been no deer, elk, bison, pronghorns, etc. 100,000s of years before recorded history. There are fewer game species today due to human activities.

Those two paragraphs hit on a couple things that the argument seems to center around.  I kind of question the normal belief that predators always go for the weak and sickly.  I've known dogs to refuse to eat an animal that had died of illness and have heard the same of wolves.  I'm sure it depends on what the sickness was and how hungry the wolves are but I wonder about it.  I've also heard of first hand reports of wolves taking down mature healthy animals like a bull elk or moose.  Usually by hounding it for days until it is weakened by starvation and lack of rest.  There have been photo and video documentations of this practice.  I believe that wolves certainly take advantage of an animal that lags, limps or gives some sort of indication of being easier prey but I also believe that if all the animals in a herd being checked out by a pack are equally healthy and mature, they might still pick one out for some unknown reason and go through the "hound it till it weakens, maybe for days, hamstring it and take it down" process.

As for the predator population being controlled by the prey population, not the other way around, well that doesn't quite add up either.  It is true to the extent that if prey is common, predators will increase in numbers but as predators increase in numbers, they will have an impact on the prey population.  It's already being reported in places where wolves are dense that elk and deer numbers have dropped noticeably.  Same thing supposedly has happened to sheep due to mountain lions but it's only what I've heard not seen for myself.  And what really happens when prey numbers drop?  I expect animals like wolves would disperse to new areas before they just up and died of starvation.  

Well, enough for now.  Gotta help my daughter with some homework....

[Precurve]

I'm glad I'm finding out all the deer in our area were weak and sick.  If the wolves hadn't been reintroduced I might have eaten one or two of them and become sick or weak myself.  Now all I have to do is wait for the natural process where these wolves die off of starvation and I can go back to hunting this land that's been in our family for the last 3 generations.

[Don Stokes]

Waxing and waning of prey/predator relationships is governed by birth rates, not starvation of the excess. If there are more rabbits, the foxes have bigger litters, and vice versa. If there are fewer rabbits, they have bigger litters because there's more food available. Populations expand and contract based on availability of food. The lynx/snowshoe hare relationship is the classic example. Both populations wax and wane in concert.

My main concern in these matters is the loss of fear of humans in unhunted predator populations. All predators should be threatened by humans in an overt way, to keep them in their place in our shared world. It's the natural way, the way humans have interacted with other large predators since humans developed organized societies and banded together against the competition of other predator species. Mountain lions never attacked humans, for all practical purposes, until hunting them was banned by people who thought we could "live in peace" with them. Predators that fear humans will be less likely to come near human habitation and kill domestic animals (and humans!). Those that do are wiped out post-haste. They want our food, and we kill them to keep it for ourselves. What's complicated about that? Hunting the predators and the prey flattens out the peaks and valleys of normal population fluctuations, and stabilizes the populations of both by keeping either from overpopulating.

I like to hug bunnies, while carrying them to the frying pan.

[nurayb]

2 confirmed kills here in Idaho yesterday

[newtradgreenwood]

FYI.  Dialog is good.  All of the following is intended as a friendly discussion.  


Walt,

Good news about getting the wolf hunt.

Dave,

See that you are from KC.  So am I.  Maybe we can go shoot some time. I have a membership in a local club that has a 3D range.  

"Predators follow prey populations" .... Some things are true even if they don't seem to "add up".  For example.  If you use common sense the world is flat.  Round, spinning, and flying through space.  Yea right (according to common sense) !  It took a thousand years after Copernicus first came up with scientific proof that the world was spinning and rotating around the sun for politicians, religious leaders, layman, biologists, etc. accepted that the earth was round, spinning, and rotating around the sun.

Population dynamics like alot of biological study is a tough science.  Science tries to look at a single variable to make conclusions valid.  Relatively easy most of the time when dealing with physics & chemistry.  For the most part nearly impossible with population dynamics.  Animals are mobile & specific ranges from year to year are hard to define.  Animals are like people, there are variations from one place to another.  Disease, drought, & other macro-environment variables complicate things. Example -everyone knows about food chains: acorns - deer - wolves, in that order. No acorns no deer, no deer, no wolves (# of acorns actually determines potential # of wolves).  Food chain would be easy to study if it was that simple.  It's a food web in the real world.  Deer eat a variety of foods, wolves eat more than just deer, there can be predators other than wolves, etc.  

Here is my conceptual take on predator-prey populations dynamics (food chain example for explanation).  Isle Royale island in Lake Superior was studied by one of my professors.  Isolated by water, i.e. ranges and populations easier to define.  Little to no in/out migration.  Moose got to the island first.  Wolves came several years later.  The average size of the Isle Royale moose herd is about 900 animals.  The average over a couple of decades nearly the same with or without wolves.  

Without wolves the moose population rapidly increases and keeps increasing until the carrying capacity was exceeded, habitat was significantly degraded, moose starved & became more suspectible to disease & population crashed.  Population of moose without predators would then rapidly recover to excessive levels, habitat would not have time to recover completely and be severely degraded & another big moose population crash.  Average population about 900 moose.  Population range over time about 900 to 2000 to 100 to 900 to 2000 to 100.... & over time the habitat could be degraded so badly that it would not support an average population of 900.  

Now we have wolves.  The moose herd is on it's growth phase.  Moose population increases slowly, then as more prey is available more wolf pups survive.  Size of moose herd increases first then wolf population increases (not the other way around).  Wolf population increases and slows down the growth rate of the moose herd. Eventually the wolf population catches up with the moose population and can actually cause it to decrease slowly (usually by killing moose babies to feed wolf babies). As the moose population decreases the wolf population decreases (a lag of year or two, but following the moose herd).  Population dynamics would be something like 900 to 1000 to 1100 to 1200 to 1100 to 1000 to 900 to 800 to 700 to 800 to 900...  Average about the same, but much smaller range of populations.  Severee habitat degradation less likely & crashes due to disease or starvation less likely & severee.  Wolves mediate population levels but do not control them.  Moose food and habitat control the moose population.                

Ray & Precurve,

I do not know any biologists that claim predators always go for the weak and sick.  Sometimes they go for the young, or stupid ones, or healthy & slow, or the ones at the wrong place & time.  Sometimes they go for healthy and adult deer just for fun.  Most of the time predators go for what is the easiest and least dangerous for them to take down.  Predator's often know things we do not.  Like dogs smelling cancer before anyone else knows anything is wrong.  

Biologists, like lawyers, have to learn how to get thick skin.  Biologist's like lawyers are a diverse group.  Same as hunters.  There was a hunter in IL about 35 years ago that brought a calf (domesticed cow calf) into the check station.  Another orange coated idiot to the local farmers.  All hunters are of course not idiots.  The professional biologists I know (& myself) think birth control for wolves or deer is a stupid idea (another good topic by itself).  

Precurve,

Not sure if you are joking around a little bit, being serious, or taking a saterical shot at me or biologists in general, or all of the above.  I'm a big boy & can deal with any of them.  Even use satire myself (ask the lawyer commenting on this string).

I don't remember using "all" or 100% or anything like that about anything we have talked about. The sick deer were just an example.  I still stand behind my opinoin that for the most part predators take young, weak, sick, injured.  If wolves are bad for taking healthy adult deer, what are we (humans) ?  Know any trophy hunters ?  70 lb. first year doe with a injured leg & 300 lb. 180 inches of headgear healthy whitetail buck standing side by side - which one would the majority of "meat hunters" shoot at ?  Most of the time, which one do you think a wolf would go for ?    

Doubt if all the wolves will die off due to starvation, maybe lead poisoning.  The wolves were surviving on your farmland a few hundred thousand years before any of your or anyone else's kin got there or anyplace else.    

I am a part owner of a family farm in IL.  Relatives buried on it that my Grandmother who died last year at 98 didn't remember.  Other side of the family is a farm that was in its second generation by the Civil War.  Kill every last wolf if you want on your land.  Kill every last deer, rabbit, squirrel, song bird, snake, etc. if you want on your land.  Don't shoot or hunt anything if you want on your land.

[Jeff Strubberg]

Old wisdom was that if you wanted to get rid of wolves, you killed rabbits...

Whether the wolves take sickly animals first or not is really moot when we are talking about a livestock population.  In the wild, predators kill the weak and sick first because that's the easy prey, and predators don't expend more energy in pursuit of calories than they have to.  In a tame population such as domestic sheep, every one of those sheep is easy prey and the predator is going to kill whichever one he can reach first.

Humans and wolves fill the same ecological niche.  Makes it darn hard to coexist.

[newtradgreenwood]

Jeff, good point about domestic livestock all being easy.  Gets us back to letting predators know we are dangerous and should be avoided, i.e., hunt them.  Or shooting them all.

[newtradgreenwood]

"Humans and wolves fill the same ecological niche. Makes it darn hard to coexist."

Another good point.  

Big difference is that we can wipe them off the face of the earth if we want.

[Jeff Strubberg]

Yup.  And I agree, the best solution is to keep the wolf wary of any human contact.

The reaction of a wolf crossing human scent should be to head for the next mountain.

[crossstickspro]

Originally posted by Precurve:
I'm glad I'm finding out all the deer in our area were weak and sick.  If the wolves hadn't been reintroduced I might have eaten one or two of them and become sick or weak myself.  Now all I have to do is wait for the natural process where these wolves die off of starvation and I can go back to hunting this land that's been in our family for the last 3 generations.

Three generations is a long time, probly settled it or maybee homesteaded it in the 1800s'. the animals, wolves and all others beat you there by centrys.
we should all think of things like this, my ancestors lived with the animals. and untill eastern civilization brought desease, guns and greed we were harmoniously, spiritually connected to the land. they all understood that without respect for nature there is no life.
all ecosystems existing outside of human control will reset them selvs. sorry guys, but Im on the wolves side for this one. If you want to help the elk and der numbers dont hunt where you are nat a resadent and speak out against people who come in to your state for a bigger, better animal. Im happy with the two deer I get every year, it feeds my family. and you will not catch me in Colorado,Wyoming,ect., nor will I ever pay a trophy fee.  we cannot own animals no more than we can own another person.
I think there are many things wrong with this discussion as well as many things right. such is free will. I only ask you hear my words and consider them.
thank you,
Larry

[Jeff Strubberg]

Not gonna touch that with a ten foot arra shaft...

[dragon rider]

Hmmm, looks like we're getting to the point in any discussion at which we're starting to come full circle, but of course that's not going to stop me from a couple of observations.

Wolves, when hunting, will generally take the easiest prey the can find.  If that's livestock, of course they'll take them - they're slow, fat and tasty.  If not, and whatever herd of deer, elk, etc. they're following has a weak member who falls behind they'll take that one.  If not, they'll run the herd until they create one if only from exhaustion.  Generally, only wolf pups do things for "fun" and then really as part of learning how to become real hunters.  Adult wolves hunt to eat and to feed their young.  It's not amusement, it's survival.  And of course, "fun" and "amusement" are human concepts that mean nothing to wolves.  They operate on their own rules, to which we attribute human characteristics.

Whether prey controls the predator population or predators control the prey population depends on where in the cycle you come in.  Both assertions are correct.  If prey is abundance, predator populations will increase.  If predators substantially outnumber prey, both populations will drop until the predator populations fall to the point that the prey begin to increase.  For both it's often a matter of survival of pups, calves, fawns, etc.  Without other forces, us among them, the predator and prey populations will oscillate back and forth around mutually sustainable levels.  

Personally, I'd love to see a few wolves or lions in Pennsylvania - maybe some of our forests would have some chance of still existing when my grand kids are old enough to hunt them.  We have far too many areas where anything that a whitetail can reach has been eaten.  If it continues, there'll be no forest in 50 years.  Now if we could only teach them to eat the deer, and not the livestock, pets, etc. we'd be on to something.

[onewhohasfun]

Sorry Dragon Rider but i have to disagree. These wolves are just another non-native species experiment gone wrong. They absolutely kill many animals that they never eat. Do a google search and you can find hundreds of photos of wolf kills left to feed the maggots. Ask the people that live in Idaho where the wolf has become much more than a nuisance. If they had their way they would reinstate the bounty. Thankfully someone has come to their senses to allow hunting them at the very least. Lets allow the residents of Idaho, Wyoming and Montana decide the proper course of action.

[chrisg]

This has been a very interesting discussion some of it has gone aroundThis has been a very interesting discussion some of it has gone around 'what wolves DO' or are supposed to do. some has gone around the farmers losses and then there is the circular debate about predator/ prey relationships. Newtradgreenwood gave a good illustration of the difficulty of pinning down exact cause and effect with the difference between food chains and food webs.

The last post by onewhohasfun mentions a non-native species experiment. Is the timber wolf substantially different to the other native wolves that existed in North America orginally? I do not believe they are what has changed is that there are a whole lot more humans and domestic livestock there now than four hundred years ago.I guess the wolves might see the sheep as a massive bounty right now.

From a South African perspective we have hugely complex predator prey relationships and what is remarkable is the fluidity of those relatonships. Predators are by nature opportunistic and soon work out the easiest way to get their food. Then we have prides of lions that specialise in hunting hippo! There is another pride that takes juvenile elephant up in Moremi, it was well documented by Derek and Beverly Joubert and broadcast on National Geographic some years ago. This does not mean that lions as a species ALWAYS HUNT HIPPO OR ELEPHANT, just that certain prides have figured out a way to do so and thereby obtain maximum protein from their efforts. In the Kruger park in SA the same is evident, some prides take marginally more giraffe than the norm and others wildebeest or buffalo. Sadly there are also lions that make a habit of tracking down refugees that try to cross into SA from Mozambique, so do the Spotted Hyaena in that area. This opportunism was noticed during the civil war in Moz. What was interesting is that the field rangers and trails guides very quickly found that lions and hyaenas did not move off when they encounterd humans which is a normal behaviour in daylight, far from it, the lions challenged the trails groups and the hyaenas would dog their footsteps. This also is not PROOF that lions and hyaenas are by choice maneaters, just that they were quick to learn that those particular humans wandering about in the reserve were easy prey, they were too, most were women and small children, sick or starving and unarmed, I had some come into my camp one time, it was a pathetic and miserable sight.

To go back to the wolves the re-introduction of wolves in their original range is going to be problematic, wolves are cursorial hunters and like canids have the capacity to range as far as they need to eat and they will continue to do so as long as there is prey, no physical barriers like large water bodies such as moose or caribou swim across and no resistance from larger or more powerful enemies, such as hunters. African wild dogs are the same, the size of their 'home ranges' varies enormously depending on what's available. Now if there happens to be a sheep farm right next door, the wolves will happily move on over. This is one reason why  introductions of freeranging predators are so hard to predict and to control, it is not a political thing and shouldn't become one. However if the evidence shows it was a bad idea (from farming perspective) then hunting them needs to come into effect.

African lions 'normally' have territories that are fiercely defended but it was shown by Mark and Delia Owens that in times of drought and stress all those territories fall away and the lions range hundreds of kilometres after food. Food is the bottom line determinant. Rain for grass and thus herbivores. Their numbers will determine predator numbers, if there is an abundance of food you don't get fat predators - you get more of them. In Africa there is also a variety of large predators that compete directly and indirectly for prey, thus complicating it further. It is a food web and the myriad variables make it a fascinating study. The Ilse Royale story was well documented far back as the late sixties if memory serves, it is a rare phenomenon becasue of it's linear nature the one to one relationship between large predator and large prey species.
 One thing though: Just because science cannot provide a perfect answer on demand does not make science wrong or inaccurate. Opinions are just that but good science allows for variation until further, better evidence comes along. This does not open the door for people to hold onto dogmatic ideas to explain a puzzle in the absence of new 'proof'. We know the world is not flat despite what it looks like from where you're at!
sorry for long post,
Chrisg

[newtradgreenwood]

Thanks for sharing Chris.

Impressed that you know about Isle Royale.  Did you live in the U.S. before South Africa ?  

You indicated that some lions learned to hunt humans & were not afraid of groups of people during the day.  Have you observed the opposite ?  Does hunting make it more unlikely that the lions would take down humans and their livestock ?

[JEFF B]

well i would have to agree with most people about the wolf even though i like em there has to be some sort of control and thats comming from someone who's spirit animal is the wolf.

[chrisg]

Hi there my mom was a Canadian, and told me about it first when I was in high school!I was born in SA. National Geographic has had a few articles over the years and I have been lucky to have seen them. No I have not lived in US but have visited couple of times and naturally Canada too.

Lions and their unsavoury habits. They are marvellously varied, some are bold and some are cowards, some are plain sneaky. The Reserve I worked in was to the west of the Kruger it borders the Kruger but during midwinter -July- the landowners hunt, there are other hunts either side of that time too. The lion in Klaserie are not too habituated to humans en masse like in Kruger and their contacts are sometimes unfriendly, i.e. there is hunting there. Not a lot an not enough to make them run off at first sight, I bumped a few and aside from a grunt or snarl they never contested the field, One of my colleagues had a rather scary bluff charge in the evening gloom when they were camping out, it turned out there were also cubs around. In the Kruger it was a different, lions living in areas that refugees passed through hunted them. The Kruger lions were used to humans in cars and their noise and smell and used to being left alone so they largely were not too purturbed by humans, IN GENERAL. Stevenson Hamilton noted the same in the years after predator control was stopped, the lions that had been actively supressed to allow other game to increase became bolder when hunting stopped.  In the nineteen nineties once starving and dieing humans appeared in their areas the lions took a closer look and soon killed some people. It was a tragic time and the trails guides still dislike lion contacts as they are rather more inquisitive than in the past. The same happened in former years. The Tsavo maneaters at Voi in Kenya were notorious, centuries of starving and discarded, dieing slaves passing through meant more easy prey. The lions there grew aggressive and actively checked out human activities. The cubs learning from their parents. Conversely Lion in stock farming areas of Botswana are actively hunted as vermin and are most wary of humans as a result. True wild lions, but they are not scared of humans just cautious. They make a canned lion look like a tabby cat. A mild and regular hunting pressure of freeroaming lions seems to keep a cautious distance between lion and humans.
chrisg