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Man! The Wolves In Idaho Sure Are Big!

Tom Remington — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 22:21:52 +0000

Idaho Panhandle Man Bags First Wolf

Tom Remington — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:38:45 +0000

The pictures below I received in my email. It is my understanding that these pictures are of the same wolf written about in the Coeur d’Alene Press and the same wolf IDFG biologist Jim Hayden nearly blew a gasket over. In the email I received it said the wolf weighed 175 pounds. The CDA Press article said that Brett Pitcher got what he “estimated” to be a 180-pound wolf. Hayden went half out of his mind to think the CDA Press would write that when the wolf was not “officially” weighed. Who cares? It’s a big wolf.

The photos show the wolf complete. When Pitcher took the wolf to IDFG headquarters, where Hayden inspected it, it was only the head and fur, as is only required for inspection.

Congratulations on a marvelous kill and I’ll say it again. I don’t care how much it weighs, it’s a big wolf.

Tom Remington

Maine Guide Recalls Coyotes’ Destruction Of Deer. Calls For Action

Tom Remington — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:41:48 +0000

*Updated with more Photos Below*

*Editor’s Note* This story was submitted by trapper and Maine Guide, David Tobey of Maine. It has been edited by Tom Remington. This story goes hand in hand with yesterday’s article on reinstating of the snaring program that Maine needs to help rebuild the lost deer population. Follow this link for that story.

~~~~~

The morning started like many others. I was sitting, peering out the window hoping for a coyote to come to the bait. This cabin my grandfather bought in 1928 for the purpose of deer hunting, a cabin that has slept six generations of deer hunters in my family, along with countless numbers of others that rate the times spent here as being an important part of their lives. The cabin is in a County that boasted for years the highest deer kills in the state. An area where all hunting camps in the region have memories and pictures of full game poles. In a county where for years famous bounty hunters and trappers, such as Wilbur Day and George Magoon, kept the bear numbers very low. Then there were the famous bounty hunters for bobcats such as Ash Peasly and Lloyd Clark who along with many others kept the cats as scarce as hens’ teeth. This all contributed to the healthy deer herd.

At this time the IF&W [Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife] was made up of folks with practical experience who made their decisions based on common sense and input from the guides, trappers and woodsmen that lived their lives in and around the woods and on the waters of Maine. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of the past and how well things worked, and ask myself why can’t folks like those in the past surface and once again make it happen for the sake of the deer?

As I scanned the shore past the bait, barely seeing with the aid of binoculars in the predawn darkness, I saw a coyote come around the point headed for the bait. After sliding open the window and positioning the 22-250, I saw that the first coyote had behind, her mate. It took about twenty minutes for the the coyotes to make their way to the bait. The fifteen or so ravens now there acted as a fear eliminator. As the first coyote, the bigger, got within a few feet of the bait the birds flushed making the coyote freeze in its tracks.

With the gun in a vise, I gently squeezed the trigger dropping the coyote. To my surprise the other “yote” ran about fifty feet, turned around and waited for its mate to leave with him. Unlucky for him the next 55-grain bullet flattened him too.

Of course I was beside myself scoring a double on the wily coyotes, but was happier then a dog with two tails when I discovered the first one was a 43-pound female with half-inch long black teets, along with worn teeth. This told me she was an old breeder. Her and the 40-pound mate of her’s would not be raising 5-7 young this spring in the same deer fawning grounds they have in the past. As a passionate deer hunter, I had done my part to help the whitetail this morning.

After hanging the coyotes, I got the sled ready for a forty-mile loop to the west, checking beaver traps. This trip is the same course I’ve taken for 35 years either trapping beaver or snaring coyotes. Even though the ride gets old the signs and things you see are always interesting.

The first several miles never showed a coyote track in the fresh inch of snow, but now I was nearing Gassabias Lake where I’d found a deer kill the trip before. The “yote” tracks were becoming more numerous. This got my dander up because for years I was able to snare this area to protect a very large intact deer yard on this lake. I still remembered back in the early 80’s being deployed to this area by warden Pratt from Enfield. The first day there I found eight coyote-killed deer. I remembered how helpless I felt because I only had 10 snares with me to set because I already had twenty of my thirty snare limit out in other areas.

My thoughts changed as I turned off the logging road onto the old carry trail, the same carry trail that Manly Hardy used 150 years ago as he traveled the area. In the snow covered trail ahead of me showed the running tracks of a 170-pound buck. I knew this wasn’t good. After a few feet, two coyote tracks showed up following the deer. I knew the outcome. I’ve seen it a hundred times before.

Photo by Dave Tobey

I sped up following the chase hoping I could intervene and save the deer to live at least another day. The deer ran to the lake, crossed a cove and onto the east shore, bare of snow maybe where he could get better footing to fight off his attackers.

They drove him back onto the shore ice. I saw for the first time where they took him down. There was blood and hair; not a lot. I turned off the sled and walked the track knowing well what I was going to find. The buck had made his way to a granite boulder, big as a truck. The giant boulder had gathered enough sun to melt the shore ice out ten feet to where the water ran a depth of 12”-16”. Here the buck took his last and best stand.

The deer was laying in the water. He stood up as I neared. At first I thought maybe I got here in time but then I saw why the deer wasn’t leaving. The buck had used the vertical rock as protection for his back while he put the hooves to the coyotes while standing in water. The two coyotes though were relentless.

After almost tearing his scalp and hide from his face, they weakened the buck enough that he just laid down in the water while the two yearling 20-pound coyotes ate about ten pounds of meat from his hind quarters.

As I watched the deer lay back down never to get up again, I thought what a way to go. Lay in ice water and watch and feel two coyotes rip, tear, and eat one-third of your hind quarters. At first I was mad at myself. If only I was here sooner. If only I had trapped this area last fall I could have caught these two pup coyotes, that biologist think aren’t important enough to kill and believe pose no threat to a deer.

Then my anger turned to the IF&W. If Commissioner Martin, Governor Baldacci and others hadn’t ended the snaring program, I could have prevented this. I realized this area where I was standing is in the shadows of the Bangor office when the sun sets every day. How many times have I called there inviting biologist to accompany me on my trap line? And to just think, the large mammal group leader and state’s deer biologist are trapped in cubicles, not thirty miles away.

Folks, our government will never be the ones to save the whitetail deer in Maine. The sportsmen can fix this problem though; by supporting a private bounty system for coyotes; by donating and fund raising for conservation easements on Deer Wintering areas; and supporting the bill I will introduce next year to take the coyote off the list of fur bearers and allow year round trapping of coyotes.

David Tobey
Registered Maine Guide

P.S. Hope the following photos aren’t to offending or gross for the viewer, but this is happening every day and night in Maine.

Scalp almost torn from his head as he used his hooves to defend himself – David Tobey Photo

Imagine alive and standing after loosing this much flesh. Wish those that took my snares were there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! – David Tobey Photo

Notice blood soaked water and hair – David Tobey Photo

Copy, Print, and post in every corner store in Maine. This is whitetail management at its best!!!!!!!!!!!!! – David Tobey Photo

How Pristine Were Our Ecosystems Before Western Exploration?

Tom Remington — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:49:44 +0000

Oh, if only we could return to the days before man got into our wilderness areas and destroyed everything. Imagine how wonderful it must have been. Nature doing a fine job all on its own and then all of a sudden man expands his reach and destroys it all.

This is what I hear all the time. Even our education factories teach our kids this inaccurate history. Few have ever heard of what it was really like. I know I have had many discussions with people about the Lewis and Clark Expedition. I admit I was one of those who dreamed about how wonderful it must have been. What could be more exciting to a man who loved the outdoors than to be a member of the Lewis and Clark troop? This would provide a participant the opportunity to see the forests, the plains, the rivers, the valleys, the birds, deer, moose, elk, bison, mountain goats, wild sheep, tons of beaver, muskrat, mink, lynx, bobcat, mountain lions, coyotes, wolves, oh, my. What am I forgetting. I might have been in for a rude awakening had I been there.

Lewis and Clark mounted their expedition from around 1804-1806 and their journey was quite well documented. We know that they took along “professional” hunters and trappers to provide food for the members. Logs show Lewis and Clark spent much of their time trading with Indians for dogs to eat because there was no game.

During the years of 1825-1860, Jedediah Smith, Peter Skeen Ogden, Milton Sublette, Joe Meek, John Fremont, Charles Preuss, Captain J. H. Simpson, and Howard Egan, explored all over the West, both on foot and horseback. They kept diaries and logs of their adventures and these accounts describe a much different picture of what it was really like before man moved into this region and settled.

Jedediah Smith is believed to be one of the first explorers of this region. In 1827, Smith and what was described as two of his best men, set out up the American River, through Central Nevada and ending up at Lake Lake, Utah. Smith’s log describes this trip accordingly.

After traveling 22 days from the east side of Mount Joseph, (Sierra Nevada’s) I struck the Southwest corner of the Great Salt Lake, traveling over a country completely barren and destitute of game. We frequently traveled without water, sometime for two days, over sandy deserts where there was no sign of vegetation and when we found water in some of the rocky hills we most generally found Indians who appeared the most miserable of the human race. When we arrived at the Salt Lake, we had but one horse and one mule remaining, which were so feeble and poor that they could scarcely carry the little camp equipage which I had along. The balance of my horses I was compelled to eat.

This expedition originally began with 14 men and 28 horses.

In 1828 Peter Skeen Ogden led an expedition into North Central Nevada. In an area that is now near Winnemucca, Nevada on the Humboldt River (Marys River), what was seen is described this way.

From clumps of sage on the hillsides, scrawny, brown-bodied men peered out upon their passage. Down in the Valley, now and again, the Indians scurried into the brush ahead of them. They were clothed, if at all, in twisted rabbit skins; They had no horses. They lived on seeds, and what wild fowl they could bring down. Ogden had never encountered a race of animals less entitled to the name of man.

The following year Ogden returned to the same area to do some trapping on the river. He describes the river as being very “unwholesome” and says the antelope, which during this time would be near the rivers are scarce. He declares, “woe to them who depend to them for support”.

In 1832 Milton Sublette led a group of trappers into the Marys River (Humboldt). There was no game and the trappers had to eat the beavers they had been trapping. His reports stated that there was not much for what wild animals there were to eat and that they were forced to eat wild parsnips, which poisoned them. The group had to leave this area and head north where they hoped to find something to eat.

Because of this it became necessary to at once abandon the river, and strike across the country towards the North, where after being four days with almost no food, and several weeks in the state of famine they reached the Snake River above the fishing Falls, they were forced, as they passed through the country, to subsist upon ants, crickets, parched moccasins, and the pudding made from the blood, taking a pint at a time from their almost famished animals.

Joe Meek recalls holding his bare hands in an anthill until they were covered with angry ants and then licking the ants off and eating them like a hungry animal.

Joe Walker later traveled through this same Marys River area and continued on into California near the Truckee River down the West Slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Having left Salt Lake and traveling 14 days into California, the expedition had not seen any game to eat and instead lived off horses they were compelled to kill to ward off starvation.

One man killed a deer, which he carried to camp on his back. The animal was dressed, cooked and eaten, … in less time than a hungry wolf would devour a lamb. This was the first game larger than a rabbit that they had killed since leaving the Salt Lake two months ago. For fourteen days they had lived on nothing but horseflesh …twenty four horses had died in crossing the mountain, and seventeen of these had been eaten.

1825 and 1826 found Ogden covering much of what we all know as Oregon today and not only did his group not find any game but the horses were starving because they couldn’t find even any decent grasses for the horse to feed on. It wasn’t just the explorers finding these wastelands. Ogden relates a story told of an Indian woman in Oregon.

The winter before had been so severe, she said, that her people had to resort to the bodies of relations and children. She had killed no one herself, but had fed on two of her children who died.

Things are pretty harsh when anyone has to resort to cannibalism but to first have to kill somebody to eat them, is unfathomable.

John Fremont and Charles Preuss covered areas of Southern Wyoming west toward the Bear River and then South toward Salt Lake. Things were tough. Game was missing and grazing grasses for the horses were non existent as well. Explorers tried trading with the Indian for food but soon discovered the Indians were starving to death themselves. It was only upon finding the Shoshone camped out along the Snake River, were they able to find a tribe living well from ample supplies of smoked Salmon.

Fremont’s party traveled the Columbia River north into Vancouver finding much the same. They even had to buy firewood from some of the resident Indians. Heading south toward Nevada, local tribes warned Fremont there was nothing for his horses to feed on. They were right.

… They had found nothing but dry, shallow basins, their way “broken by gullies and impeded by sage, and sandy on the hills, where there is not a blade of grass.”

Later Fremont would find Pyramid Lake and gorge on trout.

In all of the travels that are documented by many of these explorers, in what is now the state of Nevada, only one time is there mention of someone sighting an elk, but it is believed the person saw a mule deer and mistook it for an elk.

The Indians in this region mostly lived terrible lives, with little clothing, food or sufficient shelter. They ate mostly rats and insects and what few other birds or small game they might be fortunate to find and kill. We have visions of Indians having access to ample game animals and utilizing the hides for clothing and shelter. Such was not the case in most of the Great Basin.

Howard Egan, Sr. was the first Mormon explorer into the region of the Great Salt Lake. As a matter of fact he traveled there with Brigham Young. Egan covered much of the area between the Salt Lake and west into California as he was in the business of driving cattle there.

Egan recounts for us how the Indians crafted these remarkable corrals they would use to trap antelope. The entire episode of putting on a drive required all the men, women and children of the tribe. One had to question whether the effort put into the building and driving was worth the 24 antelope they trapped in twelve years. But when you’re hungry, some antelope is better than none.

The Indians did a similar thing conducting a cricket drive. No, I’m not kidding. Trenches were dug of about 1 foot wide by 1 foot deep and covered over with a thin layer of stiff grass. All the tribes people would begin pounding the ground with tufts of straw in a concerted effort, to drive the black crickets toward the trenches. Once the trenches contained all the crickets they could drive, they set the grass they had placed over the trenches on fire, killing the crickets. They then used the crickets for food, mostly grinding it up and mixing it with other things to make a concocted kind of flour.

These and more accounts certainly paint a far different picture of how things actually were than what we are often taught about how balanced and bountiful our forests and wilderness were before man arrived. Man certainly made his share of mistakes in being good stewards of the land but in time we figured out what we had to do to sustain game populations and to control the predators that destroyed those.

With the presence of man and bringing with him agriculture and the knowledge to plant and grow crops and tend the land, this began to create a better habitat that would support a heartier and healthier crop of game animals. We controlled the predators so people could harvest the game to feed their families and over time devised a pretty decent wildlife management plan that many around the world now envy.

Sorry, but Mother Nature didn’t really give us a “balanced” ecosystem, at least one that is the most productive. These accounts above I believe more accurately depict Mother Nature’s idea of a balanced ecosystem. There’s nothing wrong with that but I don’t think it is in the best interest of humans to have it that way, nor is it what I think people really want or are thinking about when they speak of “natural” wildlife management.

Tom Remington

W.I.S.E.: Human-Habituated Wolves In Idaho

Tom Remington — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 13:53:44 +0000

Photo from fOTOGLIF

Dr. Valerius Geist, a Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science at the University of Calgary, has years of studies in wildlife, including wolves and personal encounters with them. In a republished article I did two years ago, Geist provided for us the seven stages of behavior by wolves leading to an attack on a human. These seven stages are well documented throughout history and yet mostly misunderstood or misinterpreted until Dr. Geist was able to piece them all together.

1) Within the pack’s territory prey is becoming scarce not only due to increased predation on native prey animals, but also by the prey evacuating home ranges en mass, leading to a virtual absence of prey. Or wolves increasingly visit garbage dumps at night.

2) Wolves in search of food began to approach human habitations – at night!

3) The wolves appear in daylight and observe people doing their daily chores at some distance. Wolves excel at learning by close, steady observation. They approach buildings during daylight.

4) Small bodied livestock and pets are attacked close to buildings even during the day. The wolves act distinctly bolder in the actions.

5) The wolves explore large livestock, leading to docked tails, slit ears and hocks. Livestock may bolt through fences running for the safety of barns. When the first seriously wounded cattle are found they tend to have severe injuries to the udders, groin and sexual organs and need to be put down. The actions of wolves become more brazen and cattle or horses may be killed close to houses and barns where the cattle or horses were trying to find refuge. Wolves may follow riders and surround them. They may mount verandas and look into windows.

6) Wolves turn their attention to people and approach them closely, initially merely examining them closely for several minutes on end. This is a switch from establishing territory to targeting people as prey. The wolves may make hesitant, almost playful attacks biting and tearing clothing, nipping at limbs and torso. They withdraw when confronted. They defend kills by moving toward people and growling and barking at them from 10 – 20 paces away.

7) Wolves attack people. These initial attacks are clumsy, as the wolves have not yet learned how to take down the new prey efficiently. Persons attacked can often escape because of the clumsiness of the attacks.

I have summarized the information above as provided by Dr. Geist in his publication. Please follow the link and read the important information about this 7-step process.

Yesterday I posted an article that appeared in the Missoulian in 1916 about wolves killing 113 people and 2,000 animals in one year in Korea. One thing in that article that I failed to point out to readers was an account of how wolves would attack people.

In attacking a man it will follow him for a time and occasionally leap over his head, seeking to unnerve him and cause him to fall to the ground, when it will immediately attack and kill. Oftentimes it will summon its mates to assist in attacking.

Compare that account of nearly 100 years ago with Dr. Geist’s stages 6 and 7 above.

The Western Institute for Study of the Environment posted more of this same information yesterday, along with real life accounts in Idaho of the implementation of these stages by wolves taking place there in the state. WISE also provides links to several articles dealing with human habituation by wolves and coyotes and the consequences that can follow. (required reading)

In a newspaper account of the Lewiston Tribune, January 15, 2010, Eric Barker describes what an Idaho outfitter experienced while waiting for a school bus to arrive and pick up his children.

Popp took his children to their bus stop Monday morning and sat in his jeep while his 6- and 8-year-olds had a snowball fight. The bus pulled up, stopped and flashed its lights. The kids got on and the bus driver pulled into a driveway to turn around. When the driver backed up, the bus emitted warning beeps. After it pulled away, three wolves came out of the woods and walked down the road toward Popp.

He started his jeep and drove toward the animals. They left the road and Popp followed their tracks to see where they had come from. He said it was clear they were sitting in the woods about 30 feet away from the road prior to the arrival of the bus.

“While we were there at the bus stop and those kids were snowball-fighting I know they could hear, and they just sat there,” he said. “They are really becoming habituated to all the sights and sounds that are out there.” …

Dr. Geist responded to this account by saying:

This is absolutely classic! Wolves targeting people sit and watch people. Unlike dogs, wolves and coyotes are refined observation learners.

The a) to h) steps [seven stages] you published below are my addition to Will’s book [Wolves in Russia: Anxiety Through the Ages] (Appendix B.my authorship was left out by oversight); the original paper given in 2005 is now in press, belatedly. A very similar progression was reported in 1999 for urban coyotes targeting children in urban parks by Bob Timm and Rex Baker. Over 200 attacks on children are reported. We are currently co-authoring a paper on this. So, wolves and coyotes target people in an identical manner!(emphasis added)

It is imperative for people venturing into the outdoors and/or living in wolf and coyote populated regions to understand the entire seven stages of behavior. Separately each stage is quite innocuous, with the exception of the final attack. This isn’t an attempt to try to scare people. This information could save a life.

If one will recall documented accounts of encounters with wolves and coyotes, you’ll find that some or all of these stages have been documented. Because the seven stages are spread out over time, what we as humans witness are often just one of the seven stages. Aside from the actual attack itself on humans, livestock and pets, the rest of the stages seem somewhat harmless and as Dr. Geist describes them as “almost playful”.

If we can understand the seven stages and learn to recognize them, it might save a life. The next time you read about or witness an encounter with a wolf or coyote, think about the seven stages and see if you can make a determination as to which stage of behavior is being displayed. This behavior might also give you an indication of the health of the pack and the ecosystem near you.

Tom Remington

Uncle Sam As A Destroyer Of “Varmints”

Tom Remington — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:33:24 +0000

Photo from fOTOGLIF

*Editor’s Note*In doing research, I came across this article that appeared in “The American Review of Reviews”, Volume 66 by Albert Shaw, page 550-551, dated 1922.

I found it interesting for a few reasons and thought it would be worth sharing. One reason is that it reveals written history of man’s encounter and struggle with predators as he tried to “tame” the West. Second, it reveals things that people even today deny as common habits for wolves and coyotes in particular – surplus kills by both wolves and coyotes. To be forthcoming, it should be pointed out that often in historic writings of wolves and coyotes in the United States, particularly the plains area, the two names were sometimes used interchangeably. Without knowing exactly the species of canine we are talking about, prairie wolves were often called coyotes.

A third interesting feature written about in the article was a repeated comparison of what these predators were costing citizens, ranchers and the United States Government.

~~~~~

It may be a bit difficult for the average citizen—especially if he happens to live east of the Mississippi—to realize that one of Uncle Sam’s important and difficult jobs recently, has been the hunting down and exterminating of wild animals—wolves, coyotes (prairie wolves), bobcats (bay linx) mountain lions (puma), bears, and like predatory beasts. Yet so much so has this been the case that the subject has been considered in the serious and scientific “Year Book” of the Department of Agriculture, and the article (by W. R. Bell, assistant biologist of the Biological Survey) recently has been republished by the Survey in a special pamphlet. The title of the article is “Hunting Down Stock Killers,” which sounds like the name of a motion picture film, but the process, as conducted, is far more serious business.

On the first page of the pamphlet is shown the reproduction of a photograph of a big touring car, loaded with dead wolves, while a hunter stands alongside holding up a dead wolf, by a hind leg. It doesn’t look much like a picture of a “joy-ride”; and Mr. Bell remarks:

In man’s introduced herds of cattle, sheep, goats, colts and other domestic stock, the original rangers of the country found a ready supply to be preyed upon day after day and night after night. What more natural than for the hungry wolf to draw upon the ever-replenished reservoir discovered in the stock corral or the open range? The nature of the business upon which the predatory kind were engaged was no secret, of course, and gun, trap, and poison were resorted to by the early ranchers, each man for himself, with now and then a community hunt as the needs were more pressing. Learning that they had to contend with protectors of their new-found food supply, the prowlers became more and more wary in approach and kill, until what originated in a mere matter of satisfying a craving for food, has developed into a war to the death.

Uncle Sam, tired of the drain on his resources of $20,000,000 to $30,000,000 every year through the slaughter of domestic stock by predatory animals, now keeps constantly in the field a force of hunters who are instructed to wipe out these nonproducers. In their place, and safe from their depredations, it is the aim to populate the range country with flocks and herds, and in this way to lower the cost of production of live-stock and of meat that goes on the family table.

In some persons the picture of that motor car, full of dead wolves, and the picture elsewhere of the heaps of pelts of dead predatory animals, will arouse a twinge of pity and something very like indignation, that these creatures should be slain because they had eaten when they were hungry; and they will wonder what good Saint Francis of Assisi would have had to say about it. Another point of view, that of Mr. Bell, and his kind, he expresses as follows:

The average destruction of these animals is estimated to be for each wolf and mountain lion about $1000 worth of live stock annually; each coyote and bobcat $50 worth; and each stock-killing bear $500 worth. Statistics may leave the stockman unmoved and uninterested, but a vivid, lasting impression is made when he finds one of his valuable steers pulled down by a wolf, one of his colts struck down by a mountain lion, the scattered carcasses of several of his sheep killed by coyotes for a sheer lust of killing, or a valuable cow maimed or with skull crushed by a blow from the powerful paw of a grizzly.

If, indeed, the world is to be turned over to the human species, and a certain number of them choose to occupy our Western plains and mountains as herdsmen, like those of the pastoral age, it is small wonder that Uncle Sam should come to their rescue, provided there is no other side of the story of their present struggle against the predatory animals, whose natural home has been invaded. Says Mr. Bell:

The following typical cases are illustrative of the destructiveness of the predatory animals, and of the importance of operations for their control: In Colorado a single wolf took toll of nearly $3000 worth of cattle in one year. In Texas two wolves killed seventy-two sheep, valued at $9 each, during a period of two weeks. One wolf in New Mexico killed twenty-five head of cattle in two months; while another was reported by stockmen in the same State to have killed 150 cattle, valued at not less than $5000, during six months preceding his capture by a Survey hunter. In Wyoming two male wolves were killed, which during one month had destroyed 150 sheep and seven colts; another pair were reported to have killed about $4000 worth of stock during the year preceding their capture; while another, captured in June, had killed thirty head of cattle during the preceding spring. The county agricultural agent at Coalville, Utah, reported that wolves had taken 20 per cent, of the year’s calf crop in that section. A wolf taken in New Mexico was known to have killed during the preceding five months twenty yearling steers, nine calves, one cow, fifteen sheep, and a valuable sheep dog. In two weeks at Ozona, Tex., two wolves killed seventy-six sheep.

In Oregon four coyotes in two nights killed fifteen pure-bred rams, valued at $20 each. One flock in Morgan County, Utah, was attacked by three coyotes and $500 worth of sheep were killed in an hour. Near Antonito, Colo., sixty-seven ewes, valued at about $1,000, became separated from the rest of the herd; all were found killed by coyotes.

After a personal investigation in 1917, the president of the State Agricultural College of New Mexico reported that 34,350 cattle, 165,000 sheep and 850 horses are killed annually by predatory animals in that State, these losses amounting to $2,715,250. This involves the loss of 16,000,000 pounds of meat, and about 1,320,000 pounds of wool.

Dude! Is This A Freak Buck Or What?

Tom Remington — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 02:11:49 +0000

I have one report that this deer weighed 440 pounds before it was field dressed. Is this a hunting ranch deer?

Update: Well, seems via some searching on the part of readers, we’ve discovered this “trophy” deer picture on a website that shows the game farm and preserve where the deer was taken.

It Could Get Dangerous When Deer Fight

Tom Remington — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:18:50 +0000

I can’t seem to find much information on these photos. They were sent to me by a reader. When everything is put in perspective, even though the focus is on the horn lodged in the buck’s right eye, that’s a pretty good sized deer.

Posted by Tom Remington

Maine Man Bags Opening Day Buck (1)

Trapped On Ice, Coyotes Have Advantage

Tom Remington — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:30:09 +0000

This is not necessarily the taking of the weak and sickly of the Maine deer herd by coyotes.

Reader Al forwarded these photos he received from a friend and fellow hunter. The photos were accompanied by a short caption.

“Tom, This email Is from Paul ***** one of the top cat hunters in the state. Looks like the buck lost out when he hit the slippery ice. Quite common for coyotes to get the upper hand when this happens.”

“Al, I forgot to send these to you the other day. I found this while chasing a cat. I was near the same stream a week before and it was open. Once froze the coyotes ran this big buck out there and ate him alive, but (fish and game) says they just get the sick and little ones! Paul”

Tom Remington

Field & Stream’s Petzal Bags Kansas Buck Didn’t See Any Deer In Maine

Tom Remington — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:49:34 +0000

While congratulations are in order for Dave Petzal in bagging a beauty of a buck in the cold and snow in Kansas, unfortunately he does nothing to help Maine’s cause for those hoping to make a few bucks (sorry) from drawing outsiders to the state for trophy whitetail.

Please don’t take me wrong, Petzal did nothing wrong and what he said in his “rantings and ravings“, is nothing more than what anybody else would have said – the truth and the truth is really going to hurt Maine’s whitetail hunting in the near and distant future.

Petzal began his article with, “And so, having hunted in Maine for a week without seeing a deer, I went to western Kansas where I could see 20 deer at a time, or 60 in a morning.” Unfortunately for Maine, this is the kind of negative advertising that is going to hurt for a long time.

For those not aware, Maine has suffered through two recent back-to-back severe winters, mostly above average years of snow. A combination of weather, diminishing habitat, overgrown predator populations and a deer management policy many are now questioning, the deer hunting in portions of Maine is abysmal.

Northern Maine, often just called “The Big Woods”, while never boasting great numbers of trophy whitetail bucks, has had a reputation of producing large-bodied, big-antlered beasts that avid hunters drooled at the prospects of bagging, willing to drop a few dollars on for the chance. The Big Woods is now the big empty woods.

In a previous article today, I shared a report that with over 5,500 hunters entering the Northern Maine Woods, only 90 deer were tagged. That’s worse than bad.

And as the word spreads and highly visible writers like Dave Petzal talk and write about their experiences, it’s not going to get very pretty for Maine hunting. Hunters, as we all know, are great for local economies come hunting season but they aren’t stupid either. They refuse to spend their money if there is no game to go hunt.

It will take years to repair the damage that has been done, both in whitetail deer management and to Maine’s shaky economy. This may destroy some of the guides and outfitters, as well as put “mom and pop” businesses under.

Congratulations Dave! Nice buck!

Note: I want to thank reader “Richard” for keeping me supplied with these news items.

Tom Remington

Black Bear Blog » Hunting Stories

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