Speaking of keyboard jockeys - I think if you really look at the areas that have been impacted by wolves and speak to hunters and ranchers specifically in those areas, the love hate relationship with wolves would be better illustrated. With a state as large as Montana, just the posts in this forum are drastically different with respect to wolves. Elk herds in eastern Montana in the breaks haven't been impacted at all by wolves. I am guessing the herds in the Belts and Little Belts haven't had a noticeable decline from wolves. The herds around Yellowstone, in Southwest Montana, Northwest Montana and places like the Bob Marshal have been impacted, in some cases, severely. I spend a great deal of time in the woods and you rarely see wolves in a situation where you could shoot them. Mostly, you see them crossing roads and you see what is left of what they kill. I guess if you visit Montana on a short hunt or don't know what the hunting was like before wolves, you would think Montana hunting hasn't been impacted because most non-residents that come here live in places with sucky hunting. I can say that prior to the rise of the wolf population, I would see 3-5 whitetail bucks a day in NW Montana and about 50+ bucks during my vacation in the rut. The last five to seven years that number has dropped to 10-15. I used to pick up 250 to 350 sheds a season. The last few years that has dropped to less than 50. I could always count on going out and finding elk in the areas I hunt. Now that is not true including areas in south west montana that were superb hunting areas. I spent the entire summer scouting for moose in NW Montana when I drew a moose tag. I never saw a live moose the entire time. I did find two fresh kills of cow moose during the summer that the wolves had taken down. I saw two wolves still working on one of the kills. I wouldn't be surprised if the moose hunting in Montana is shut down in the next ten years because of the population decline. With respect to winning over non-hunters - we can't even get avid hunters to agree. That will never happen. Who cares what the anti-hunters think. I wouldn't spend one second worrying about what they think or want. It comes down to doing what is right for the animals that were painstakingly returned from the brink of being wiped out. Part of that strategy was killing wolves and it worked. One other person mentioned the decline in tags as a result of the depredation. It goes beyond elk and deer. I know of several local small herds of big horn sheep that have been wiped out by wolf packs including one herd on the Flathead Indian Reservation and one on the south side of Glacier National Park. As I said in an earlier post, we haven't found any wolves that starved to death yet.
