Predators fang. In general, hunters take animals in the prime of life, while predators disproportionately take out the older, younger, or less fit individuals. As poet Robinson Jeffers has noted, it is the fang that has created the fleet foot of the antelope." By George Wurthner
Predators Fang
"Beyond the general hostility towards predators that many hunters hold, state wildlife agencies are not the objective, scientific, wildlife managers that they claim to be. Wolves, mountain lions, bears, and other predators are a direct threat to state wildlife budgets because top predators eat the very animals that hunters want to kill. Because state wildlife agencies rely upon license sales to fund their operations, maintaining huntable numbers of elk, deer, moose, and caribou is in the agencies’ self-interest." By George Wurthner
"Some vested interests, including many hunting advocacy organizations like the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and Wildlife Society, plus state game departments hoping to sell more hunting licenses, are quick to support hunting over other alternatives. Some suggest that nearby human populations are too high to permit wolf restoration or that wolves won’t stay in the park and will cause conflicts with other interests like ranchers."
Hunters have a place
Do hunters have a place in managing elk and deer herds? Yes, of course they do, but not at the expense of natural predators. Like the wolf and cougar. Fish and Game Agencies are in the business of selling hunting and fishing permits. Their collective idea of game management is to reduce the number of predators = more game to hunt = more money in the States pocket.
However, these types of management policies, I believe, may be responsible for diseases such as Chronic Wasting Disease. Diseases that have a direct effect on humans.
Why Fish and Game Agencies Can't Manage Predators
Why the predator's fang is so important
"Predators can also limit the effects of disease. Diseases like chronic wasting disease found in elk, deer, and moose since infected animals are more vulnerable to predators.” ~ George Wurthner
Lets talk about chronic wasting disease or otherwise known as (CWD), and how to handle your elk or deer in preparation for butchering.
Chronic wasting disease
How to handle your kill if you are concerned with Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD)
- Be alert for deer or elk acting abnormally or that look sick; report any such animals to agency officials.
- Wear rubber or latex gloves when you field-dress your animal.
- In areas reported to have CWD, minimize your contact with a dead deer's brain and spinal cord and wash your hands after contact.
- Don't eat deer brains or spinal cord.
- Bone out your deer meat and discard the brain, spinal cord, eyes, spleen, and lymph nodes.
- If an animal is from a CWD-suspect area, unused parts, especially skull and spine, should be disposed of in an approved landfill or incinerator.
- "In many parts of the country the deer population has grown out of control, causing tens of thousands of deer-related car crashes and the destruction of natural habitat." By Sean Page
"If you’re hunting in an area with chronic wasting disease, get the animal tested before it ever hits your plate, and don’t eat meat that tests positive." ~Brent Race - High Country News
The effects of poor predator management
In Idaho, officials have announced they plan to allow hunters to target the 1,000 wolves in Idaho, shooting and killing up to 220 wolves during this hunting season alone.
Manage for and maintain a diverse and healthy Ecosystem, which of course must also include two of nature's historically proven management tools; the Wolf. Wolves by design keep deer and elk populations strong and healthy.
- Colorado Mule Dear CWD
- What are MME's? Devastating!
Predators fang
We welcome your comments and perspective. Support Intelligent Wolf Conservation!
LANSING, MI — State Sen. Tom Casperson apologized Thursday for including a fictional account of a real-life incident in a 2011 resolution urging the U.S. Congress to remove Michigan gray wolves from the federal endangered species list.
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) of deer and elk is endemic in a tri-corner area of Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska and new foci of CWD have been detected in other parts of the United States. Here is more information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Chronic Wasting Disease and Potential Transmission to Humans.
And Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, with possible transmission from Squirrels.
Dear Brian – the picture portrayed in your comments is indicative of many persons inaccurate perceptions of predators, especially wolves.
Without the onset of technology, humans have hunted prey species in much the same fashion as other less advantageous predators. Deer, Elk, Bison, Moose, Antelope, Big Horn Sheep, Mountain Goats, etc. have been run off cliffs, chased into box canyons, run into pit traps full of torturous spikes, and many animals have suffered from a misplaced shot by rifle.
I personally have encountered many gut shot animals, one which remains thoroughly entrenched in my mind. It was a doe antelope standing with her entrails hanging to the ground, left by idealistic hunters looking for the big buck, and not food taken home to the family. On the very same day I encountered an antelope fawn butt shot, with his haunch filleted, still alive and dying a slow agonizing death.
Let us not forget the many other agonizing ways in which we dispatch animals to their deaths, steel legs traps for which animals have died in untold agony, snares where animals are snagged around the neck or legs and hung until dead. These deaths are not painless nor are they quick.
Your dog is a direct descendant of the wolf, their genetics match to this day, and had humans not created a more palatable form of feeding pets, they too would dispatch food sources as do wolves. Many hunters who use dogs to hunt other animals, legally and illegally are fully aware of the way in which dogs will dispatch an animal to its death, and revel in the process.
Man did not create weapons as a way of dispatching animals more humanely, it was done to give us the means with which to kill at longer distances, faster, and ultimately easier, a distinctly unfair advantage. Killing has become ugly in societies removed from the process and yet each and every time you purchase a fish, chicken, pork chop, steak from your local market, someone somewhere has killed it for you and not with a bullet.
I was taught hunting was for food and all other forms of killing were done for humane purposes or self preservation, but my first kill was by hand in order to teach me that the death of an animal is to be respected and not taken lightly. Feeling the life drain from that animal was profound and I have never killed lightly or without reason. It was only after that first kill I was given other forms of weapons to dispatch an animal with knowing I would forever carry the respect and admiration deserving of all life including other predators.
Wolves do not generally kill healthy animals as do humans, they look for the unhealthy, the weak, the old, the injured, cleaning out the herd from disease insuring healthier fitter animals. Man on the other hand, kills the healthiest and biggest animals weakening and often leaving herds at risk by removing their protection and not just for food, but for trophies mounted on walls collecting dust, instead of shared and spread to their offspring.
Am I against hunting, no, not for man nor wolf, bear, cougar, eagle, owl, for we are all hunters in one form or fashion and we all prey on other life forms for food. I am against the destruction of all life forms just for human convenience. The wolf is also feeding his family, Brian.
dont o know that the wolves kill for plesure? think of your self as a deer “you feel like your being whached. and the all of a sudden you see a wolf running after you so you run. then all of a sudden you fell a sharp pain in your hind leg you just got bit but yoou keep running while loosing large amounts of blood. but you finaly fall over cause you cant run any more from blood lose and the wolf eats you while your still alive. then when hes done he leaves and you have to wait to die in the heat. ……but with a hunter they shoot you and its painless and they come and take you home to feed his faimly.” so tell me how would you like to die quick and painless or slow and pain full death with them ripping off you limbs one by one?
“Park Service wildlife veterinarian Margaret Wild says wolves could also purge chronic wasting disease from the elk herd by killing weakened, diseased animals (HCN, 10/28/02: Deer, elk disease doesn’t scare hunters). While the theory has not been tested on infected herds, Wild says computer models show that wolves can reduce and perhaps eliminate the disease in elk and deer. “It really makes a lot of sense, if you think about it,” says Wild. “I think we can take the experiment in steps,” tracking the proposed four-pack of wolves to see if they’re killing infected animals.”