Delist them? Hell, we should pay bounty on them.
I spent more time in the hills hunting this fall than I ever have.
The elk herds in this area (not to mention the moose, which are all but eliminated, as well as the mountain goats and bighorn sheep, whose numbers are way down) are diminished, broken up, fleeing, with the remnants acting as they never have before.
The remaining elk seem to be herding up in as big a numbers as they can, and many, many of them are heading to privately held land and simply hunkering down there.
On the big private ranches they are granted a bit of safety, in that ranchers watch for wolves and of course usually allow very few hunters in.
On public ground no one is vigilant around the clock and if the elk spend time up there they will be slaughtered. What has happened to the ordinary meat hunter, like myself, is that we have to hunt higher and deeper and more frequently just in hopes of bumping into a scattered group of elk.
The wealthy-—and I bear them no grudge-—can purchase a hunting vacation on the big ranches, around five grand for four or five days, and can usually score a big bull.
The upshot of the introduction of the gray wolf is that the numbers of elk are way down, as are other big game animal populations; the remaining big game is perpetually nervous, milling, moving, not breeding or producing calves like it used to; and the hunting privileges have shifted to the very rich (and the very poor, who will poach for the food of necessity, the law be damned), while the typical wildlife-supporting hunter is increasingly deciding just to stay the hell home.
Here’s a quick story: while I was way up high last week I ran into a younger hunter, a really skilled outdoorsman, who spends far more time than I in the mountains. He said that last year he was hunting way up, when he glassed a big bull lying on a neighboring ridge, maybe a half mile away.
As he set about figuring out a sneak, he noticed movement coming down that ridge toward the elk—wolves, eight or ten of them. They cover the ground fast, and they were closing on the big bull.
My friend thought, Surely the big boy will get up and start to move. Even if he can’t outrun them. But he will move.
As he watched, the wolves almost on the elk, the bull finally stood. Then my friend understood the situation. The big bull had been attacked by the wolves earlier, and his hindquarters were mostly eaten off him: a red bloody maw back there. For some reason—maybe to pursue and attack more of the herd—the wolves had left him.
Now they were returning to finish the job, which at length they did.
There you have the fruits of environmentalism.