They were not erased by the modern hunter, but by farmers who didn't want them eating their sheep and, in many cases, by professional wolf-killers hired by states. The renowned conservation writer Aldo Leopold's earliest work was killing bears, wolves, and mountain lions for the forest service.

Unfortunately it wasn't until we'd nearly erased wolves and grizzlies (cougars have always been too wily to be wiped out) that we decided it was actually good to keep them around. Now we've got them back--but being back, they will need to be managed, and that includes hunting. Not wanton extermination, but rather a season tailored to remove a specific number of wolves in order to reach what the state fish & wildlife department considers appropriate.

While you are correct that modern hunters are not to blame. Eradication by farmers was actually the final straw to an otherwise stressed population that had already lost a majority of it's natural habitat.

State-sanctioned kills + poachers + roadkills + farmers + smaller habitats...

It does not sound like conservation to me...

It is worth noting that a predator like the wolf needs a huge hunting area to thrive. Otherwise they starve. If you manage the habitat there is no need to kill them in cold blood.

A farmer that protest his livestock is, guess what, a hunter. What is up with the semantics on murdering livestock?

Wolves are not livestock, which is a term for animals useful to humans.

Wolves murder livestock. Perhaps we should get rid of all the guns and forget history so wolves can murder again huamns again

Murder? Really?

I am using the language of GP, but you are attempting to use it to undermine my point. So... really?

Human hunters are, as of right now, an integral component of keeping wild animals from overpopulating. If you pull the human hunters, the herd sizes will explode (since we've driven away/contained their natural predators), and many of them will starve to death.

Whatever your thoughts on hunting, it's part of the predatory/prey cycle throughout the world. It's also a not-so-distant tradition from our history that goes back millions of years.

So you are saying that we should kill animals, in cold blood and painfully, because we broke their habitats.

What if instead of killing them, to patch a flawed system, we work on rebuilding their habitats?

Also there are many ways of controlling the numbers of a species, killing them is just the easy one.

Eh, a hunter spends hours or days to kill one animal reasonably quickly. A farm slaughters thousands of animals after raising them in absolutely cruel conditions. If I had the goal to make animals suffer fewer creature-hours of pain then faced with the choice to either ban hunting or ban livestock, I'd go with livestock.

However if you're vegetarian, vegan, or raise your own livestock then I salute you as having a consistent stance on the issue.

A hunter can fail, because he is human. He can inflict a tremendous amount of suffering killing an animal, sometimes leaving the offspring alone to die of starvation.

But if I had to choose between hunters of industrial farming, I choose hunters, of course. It is just I think we can try to fix both problems.

And yes, I am vegan.

Wolves are not livestock.

No they aren't. What's that have to do with anything?

A human can eat any animal. A human can't eat any vegetation. What point are you trying to make exactly?

That people don't kill wolves to eat them. So it makes no sense to compare killing wolves for sport to killing livestock.

The semantics is strong with this one. Livestock is a word, it doesn't change what it is. Killing for sport, population control, or any other reason is hunting.

Personally I only aim for the guilty ones, but occasionally wildlife court takes too long and I have to make snap judgements.

This season I bought a license to shoot one deer. It was somewhat expensive. Without limited hunting the sides of highways would be knee deep in killed animals and wrecked cars. Something has to keep the population in check. Wolves might help do this, but then they would overpopulate and have no predators.

I'm not a hunter, but hunting does provide a revenue stream for wildlife protection & management. Presence of wolf tags might also make the presence of wolves more acceptable to both hunters and ranchers.

Hunters aren't a breed. I don't understand these comments more than I don't understand a human's desire to hunt

Stop killing animals.

Give me free food

Commenter told me to "grow a fucking vegetable" but I can't because a wolf keeps eating it. So now I have to murder a wolf or my family starves.

See how this (aka life) works?

Yes, that is how life works.

I have a fence around my garden/orchard. It is tall enough to keep the deer out, electrified to keep the bears out, netted to keep the birds out - but ground squirrels leave me no choice but to eliminate them from the area.

If they would stay away, I wouldn't have to "murder" them. At least they don't go to waste, there are plenty of hungry things out there to move them up the food chain!

I can't fathom how people enjoy killing for sport (for food, sure, but solely for pleasure?). That must be some kind of pathology?

Hunting is a practice as old as mankind itself. And in many parts of the world, it's a tradition that's been handed down from from parents to children even today.

It also helps keep the various wild herds/packs from exploding in size, reducing the number of wild animals that die from starvation.

(Bias disclaimer: I don't hunt, but I live in a state where I'm a minority)

The purpose of hunting is to acquire food. Wolves are not food animals, nor are they any longer competition for us.

There's no evidence that wolf populations would explode if not managed by humans, so controlling them seems premature. There is plenty of evidence though that wolves help manage ruminant populations which do explode out of control without their natural predator, which just so happens to do a better job at it than us (see deer populations in eastern US).

> The purpose of hunting is to acquire food.

Not solely. Humans have been hunting non-food targets for about as long as they've hunted food targets.

> There's no evidence that wolf populations would explode if not managed by humans

They (and other predaceous species) currently being managed by humans, just by the government and not hunters at large. The bureau of Fish, Wildlife, and Game has long set poison traps for the express purpose of killing wolves, coyotes, and wild dogs.

Wolves are at the top of the food chain. They would manage deer population down to a certain level, which would stop their own population growth, except, they would then start going after cattle, which is how we got where we are now. Hunting is the final critical piece of management that will keep them thriving.

Ive been hunting my whole life. I've still yet to encounter someone who did it for the 'killing'. It's about fresh food, cultural traditions, and conservation. The modern hunter does more for the environment than most who sit behind a computer all day. You should take a intro course on hunting and understanding the carrying capacity of an environment impacts how tags are issued.

Sidenote => I also love to fish. I find it odd how much flak hunting gets over fishing. I guess people feel a stronger bond to an animal vs a tuna.

> It's about fresh food, cultural traditions, and conservation.

You don't eat wolves. No one you know grew up hunting them. Killing a (still) endangered species is not about conservation, in fact, it's closer to the opposite based on everything we know.

I'm talking about killing for sport, which is what wolf hunting is all about on an individual level (on a government level, it's about the political showmanship of protecting rancher interests).

And as a sidenote, I live in Montana; I am very familiar with hunting. To generalize hunting without considering the animal being hunted is disingenuous and entirely self-serving. Should we talk about hunting horses and dogs in the same breath?

Fair point. Ive never hunted wolves, nor do I plan on it. I subscribe to the eat what you kill mentality. However, I will not judge someone for the 'trophy kill' if the environment allows for it. If there is a tag for it, I trust the people in charge of regulation to make the correct decisions on issuing tags. I will also not judge a rancher protecting their livestock which is their food/source of income

I enjoy hunting to eat deer, but yeah, I also don't get why you'd kill just to kill.

>I also don't get why you'd kill just to kill.

Hunting is an important part of modern conservation, and human hunters are the only controllable element in the predation cycle. Hunting wolves in the way the gp is referring to would be a set season with a specific number of wolves of a certain sex and size in a specific area. These numbers are determined by conservationists in the USFS among others, in order to keep a reasonable and sustainable number of wolves.

In my experience the killing part is not what hunters enjoy. There is a lot more to hunting then pulling the trigger...

I could enjoy the research, stalking, and viewing parts of the experience, but I'd personally rather do it with a camera than a rifle.

Do it! Though it ends up being far easier with a camera as you aren't restricted by seasons and locations. I think part of the fun in hunting is that most of the time you turn up empty handed, so the one time you get it is special. Certain tags can take decades to acquire, then you have to actually kill the animal in the right (potentially quite small) location, in the right (potentially quite narrow) time frame, using a single shot from potentially hundreds of meters out. Compared to with a camera you can walk onto a wildlife preserve, find a watering hole, and shoot away all year round.

100,000 years of human history would disagree on your pathology diagnosis. Humans have been killing for sport, for food, and for war, since before we were humans.

We are literally the best hunters in the known universe. Its not a pathology.

By what metric are we the best hunters? I'm no animal expert, but eagles, sharks, lions, etc. seem pretty good it!

Humans could hunt any of them to extinction. The reverse could not occur.

They are good. We are just better. And I'm sure there are many other civilizations in this galaxy that are much better than we are.

all the metrics. saying otherwise is just foolishness.

hunting laws are actually designed to limit our ability to hunt because we are TOO good at it. There are limits on ammo size, on weapon types, on times of year you're allowed to hunt, etc.