Wolf
A wolf moves through a clearing in the Cabinets. (Photo by Dan Halvorson)
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Hunters snapping up tags for wolf season
by Kootenai Valley Record
September 17, 2009
Local license providers are reporting brisk sales of permits for Montana’s first-ever fair chase wolf hunting season, scheduled to begin Sept. 15 in some areas of the state.
The $19 licenses went on sale Sept. 1.
"We probably sold a hundred of them the first day, and they’ve been buying them every day since," said Ardell Filler at Libby Sports Center.
Mac’s Market has been "selling them right along," said Darrell Orr, who estimated that he’d sold about 20 licenses over the first two days they were available.
Orr said he saw few deer but plenty of wolf tracks while hunting last season. Filler said he expects the wolf to present an elusive target to hunters, however.
"Sure they see them, but by the time you get out of your car to shoot at them they’re going to be gone," he said. "And what they don’t understand is that once they start shooting at them, they’ll know."
The wolf season opens Sep. 15 in early backcountry deer and elk hunting districts 150, 151, 280, and 316, with the general season running from Oct. 25 to Nov. 29 across the state. A winter wolf season is set for Dec. 1-31.
The wolf harvest is managed on a quota system, and the season will close in each of the state’s three management units upon reaching the quota or according to the closure date.
The statewide harvest quota is 75 wolves. In Wolf Management Unit 1, which extends across the northern tier of Montana, the wolf harvest quota is 41, with a subquota of two in the North Fork of the Flathead River subunit. In WMU 2 in southwestern Montana, the wolf harvest quota is 22. In WMU 3, which extends across the southern tier of Montana, the wolf harvest quota is 12.
According to state wildlife officials, the season represents the culmination of one of the fastest endangered species recoveries on record.
"Montana’s approach to recovery has always been open, balanced, and based on science," said FWP director Joe Maurier. "Montanans have lived with wolves since the mid 1980s, about 10 years before wolves were released in Yellowstone National Park. We’ve all worked long and hard to reach the day when Montana would fully bring wolves into the state’s wildlife management programs."
In the mid 1990s, to hasten the overall pace of wolf recovery in the Northern Rockies, 66 wolves were released into Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho. The minimum recovery goal for wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains was set at a minimum of 30 breeding pairs and a minimum of 300 individual wolves for at least three consecutive years and well distributed throughout the recovery area. The goal was achieved in 2002, and the wolf population has increased every year since.
At the end of 2008, about 500 wolves were believed to be living in Montana in about 84 packs, 34 of which were breeding pairs.
A coalition of conservation groups has sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over its decision to remove wolves from protection under the Endangered Species Act and is attempting to block hunting seasons this fall in Montana and Idaho while the issue is decided. Opponents and supporters of the hunting seasons made their cases last Monday before U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula.
Molloy pledged to make a decision as quickly as possible.
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Editor’s Note: See the September 8, 2009 edition of the Kootenai Valley Record for the printed version of this story. The Kootenai Valley Record publishes once a week, on Tuesdays, in Libby, Montana. They are a locally owned community newspaper, located at 403 Mineral Avenue in Libby. For in-county and out-of-county subscription information, call 406-293-2424, or e-mail kvrecord@gmail.com.
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