Wolves: Controversial Conversation

[Hmac]

So...above the law...or just proud to be a criminal? Kinda sound like these little POS kids who run around and screw up shit when they don't get their way...

Care about your opinion even less.

[Arik]

Just my opinion. I don't understand the idea of killing anything that isn't an immediate threat or to feed me.

No interest in shooting something just to have skin or skull or get a hard on from ground bones

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[Chipper78]

Don't. Care.

So I don’t post much on this on this site,but I do read here almost daily. So I have a pretty good understanding of who’s who around here. I am aware that you are a doctor and from the post of yours that I have read in the past you seem to be quite the decent person. I am in no way trying to be disrespectful to you at all, but I would like to maybe change your perspective a little. Read the following with the flattest Ben Stien voice you can imagine.

What I am about to type goes on a few assumptions. The first one being that the traps are legal, the second being that your wife is hiking with the dogs on public land or private land that doesn’t belong to you. If these assumptions are incorrect then disregard the following.

Assuming these things what is the difference in what she is doing and what someone like Diane Feinstein or any other anti-gunner does when they come after our guns? If the traps are legally set, and she is on public land or private land that the trapper has the right be on then she has absolutely no business touching someone else’s property. It is none of her concern. Is she doing this out of fear for the safety of the dogs? If so that doesn’t dictate throwing someone else’s stuff into a swamp where they can’t recover it. She could bring her issues to the land owner, or the DNR for whatever state you live in. She could attemp to contact the trapper and ask him to set up somewhere else. There are many better ways to handle it than taking the law into her own hands.

Whether she or anybody else likes trapping or not really doesn’t matter, if it’s legal. Doing something illegal to “teach someone a lesson” is inexcusable. Traps cost money, and taking someone’s traps not only outs then the money for the trap but it outs them the money they may have made from whatever fur they may have harvested.

There are many legal activities that people participate in that fall into an ethical gray areas. I don’t consider trapping to be one of them but I can see where people could be opposed to it. That doesn’t change the fact that when she moves the traps and throws them away she is basically stealing. What’s the difference in doing that and these protesters who destroy property in the name of their cause?

Just something to think about.

[Hmac]

Just something to think about.

Thank you a response that doesn't perceive the need to stoop to a personal attack.

[Chipper78]

Thank you a response that doesn't perceive the need to stoop to a personal attack.

You’re quite welcome sir.

[gunnerblue]

So I don’t post much on this on this site,but I do read here almost daily. So I have a pretty good understanding of who’s who around here. I am aware that you are a doctor and from the post of yours that I have read in the past you seem to be quite the decent person. I am in no way trying to be disrespectful to you at all, but I would like to maybe change your perspective a little. Read the following with the flattest Ben Stien voice you can imagine.

What I am about to type goes on a few assumptions. The first one being that the traps are legal, the second being that your wife is hiking with the dogs on public land or private land that doesn’t belong to you. If these assumptions are incorrect then disregard the following.

Assuming these things what is the difference in what she is doing and what someone like Diane Feinstein or any other anti-gunner does when they come after our guns? If the traps are legally set, and she is on public land or private land that the trapper has the right be on then she has absolutely no business touching someone else’s property. It is none of her concern. Is she doing this out of fear for the safety of the dogs? If so that doesn’t dictate throwing someone else’s stuff into a swamp where they can’t recover it. She could bring her issues to the land owner, or the DNR for whatever state you live in. She could attemp to contact the trapper and ask him to set up somewhere else. There are many better ways to handle it than taking the law into her own hands.

Whether she or anybody else likes trapping or not really doesn’t matter, if it’s legal. Doing something illegal to “teach someone a lesson” is inexcusable. Traps cost money, and taking someone’s traps not only outs then the money for the trap but it outs them the money they may have made from whatever fur they may have harvested.

There are many legal activities that people participate in that fall into an ethical gray areas. I don’t consider trapping to be one of them but I can see where people could be opposed to it. That doesn’t change the fact that when she moves the traps and throws them away she is basically stealing. What’s the difference in doing that and these protesters who destroy property in the name of their cause?

Just something to think about.

Excellent post. I know men and women who make a part of their winter living trapping in accordance with the law. To disturb their livelihood is criminal both legally and morally. I do not intend a personal insult here, just my opinion based on first-hand experience.

The trapping of a personally owned dog is something that concerns me greatly. In these parts, wolf snares are really only effective if placed in areas accessible only to snowmobile/tracked ATV/skis/etc., i.e. areas where one would be unlikely to encounter someone’s pet. Indeed, wolf snares are a big concern of mine when in the field with my canine partner. Luckily the fool doesn’t range much more than 25 yards from me at any time so I can be onto him quickly if he would become snared.

[Hmac]

Luckily the fool doesn’t range much more than 25 yards from me at any time so I can be onto him quickly if he would become snared.

And if it's a leg hold, or worse..a conibear? By the time you get to him his leg is toast, or he's dead.

[gunnerblue]

The Conibear is a fair point, but they are rare around here so I accept the risk (we’re LE so we’re used to it). Leg hold traps, despite popular assumption, are designed to HOLD the leg-not break or damage the limb. If it did, it would actually be easier for the animal to escape as the flesh would be easily torn with no intact bone for support. Leg hold traps are often used when trapping animals for relocation. It would hardly do to lessen an animal’s chance at survival in a new environment by hampering its mobility.

[Averageman]

I was invited to run a trap line on a local ranch while I was in high school.
I had an experienced Trapper show me the ropes and at one point I might have had as many as 40 sets out over a weekend and maybe a dozen during the weekdays.
For the most part and because this was Arizona, we caught Coyotes. Probably 100-150 Coyotes over four months. Now that's a lot of Coyotes, but it barely put a dent in the population as far as I could tell.Toward the end you could tell it had just moved the population out and toward the BLM property nearby. You could go ten miles away and call Coyotes very, very successfully.
It's easy to assume this is cruel and a viscous way to treat an animal, but to balance those thoughts you have to understand that there simply wouldn't be the large numbers of Coyotes if they weren't killing a large number of calves. You could tell by simply seeing the numbers of calves with bobbed tails and the Coyote scat in the same range with hair fibers.
I don't know a thing about Wolves, but I would imagine that they can kill a lot more and with greater efficiency.

[skywalkrNCSU]

I don’t have any experience trapping so I can’t comment on that except I think there is absolutely a place for it when done legally and responsibly. I hunt but not for any sort of bloodlust. The act of killing an animal is the worst part of hunting in my opinion and I have no desire to hunt wolves. That said, they should absolutely be managed like any other game animal so removing hunting because people like them as animals is beyond stupid and just thinking on emotion. If I worked in ranching and wolves were a problem near me I would absolutely hunt them.

I think of wolf hunting a lot of how I think of bear hunting. We think of these animals as charismatic megafauna because we grew up with stuffed versions in our crib, watched cartoons where they were super friendly, and they are smart animals. For some reason this causes people to throw logic out the window when the subject of hunting them comes up. I certainly don’t want to eliminate them because I think they are awesome animals and serve a place in the ecosystem but like anything else, if they reach a certain population threshold they should be managed and hunting is the best way to manage them.