Sierra TImes

About Those Wolves...

By Sheriff Mike Cook

I have talked about the wolf problem before many times. Now I have some real proof that they are killing all our elk and deer. The sad thing is they are now attempting to protect the grizzly and spread it out across the western states also. These large predators will have to eat each other because all the other game except man will be gone and man is much easier prey than other predators.

I said proof and here goes. A friend of mine had a long conversation with me today. This last elk season an old friend of his invited him to go to Idaho into the central part of the state, hunting unit's 10 & 11 if I remember right, and hunt elk. It had been four years sense this person had hunted this area but he had hunted it for 18 years prior to that and had taken big bulls every year in that area and he was very familiar with this area. He also told my friend that there was a lot of elk in that area.

I might add these hunters are the type that get out and walk all day and hunt very hard. They spent three weeks in this area hunting hard and didn't even see an elk, alive that is, and no new elk tracks or sign. They did see about six old wolf kills. My friend said there was wolf tracks around each kill sight and that the elk and one moose had been eaten. He also said that the trails in the area showed that at one time there had been a lot of elk in the area. The trails are starting to grow back over and the only animal tracks were wolves.

This points out quit a story about what is going on, on the ground, in these areas where the wolf has been planted. Anyone who doesn't believe that the wolf will wipe out the elk and deer herd's is either stupid or just plain uninformed. All they need to do is get out in the woods and see it for themselves. This is not the way to balance nature as the lies from the pro-wolf people would have you believe. Another lie, they do not eat only the weak and tired.

The problem is that elk, deer, and moose have lived for generations without predation by the wolf so they don't know how to protect themselves from this big old gray wolf that isn't native to this part of the country any more. They are about a defenseless as a child on the streets alone in New York City without even a weapon. Even if we get this stupid law turned around and once more get ride of the wolf like we should be doing it will take years to help bring back the deer and elk herds. The animal rights people will have put a stop to hunting like they wanted in the first place.

In the January 2004 NRA magazine "American Hunter" there is a very fair article called (Wolf Troubles in the Rockies) that everyone should read. Our hunting and wildlife is very much in danger of being reduced to near extinction. It won't be long before the deer and elk are listed as endangered and the hunting seasons will be stopped. The sad thing is we allowed this to happen. Every hunter and rancher in America should have saddled up and rode into Washington DC and demanded a stop to this stupidity a long time ago. Anyone who supports any of these stupid ideas deserves to be thrown out of office and never voted for again.

We should have a law passed that makes it illegal for anyone to plant or protect a predator and put them in jail for a long time if they do. Until we stand up and demand the same common sense our ancestors had in the law and our rights we will loose this. It may be illegal for them to plant these wolves in the first place and that still needs to be decided.

I want to see a law that protects anyone who shoots a predator and see the bounty laws returned so that people will go out and hunt them down. It seems that if I remember history right the ranchers would pay hunters they called "Wolfers" to go out a rid the range of them to protect the livestock. That needs to be done again.

Here in Oregon we need to demand the law to be changed to allow hunting with hounds and bait again. The deer and elk are being killed by predators and the ones they don't get suffer and die from disease. I look to see our hunting opportunities to be slowed way down here also. We will also have the wolf if we don't march on Salem and demand that they do away with Oregon's Endangered Species Law and to pass a law making it a crime not to shot any Wolf seen in Oregon.

Now I know that a bunch of you whacko Wolf lovers out there will get mad and send me all kinds of dumb e-mail's telling me how stupid my ideas are. To you I say don't even try because you not only don't know what you are talking about, you have nothing valuable to say about it. All you do is call me names and make nothing in the way of justification for your side of this argument. In short you don't have a clue so crawl back in you hole of stupidity and stay there.

To all you others who have a clue and want to do something to save our environment from destruction, not to mention our food supply, please get up and write and call your elected officials and let them know how you feel on this one. Demand the law to be changed now before it is to late.

God Bless America and God Bless our Troops still in harms way.

Michael E. Cook, Coos County Sheriff, Retired.