10-4 SS Fish and Game 2
Wolf hunting stats:
Picking up from yesterday, I was on the phone with Fish and Game's Niels Nokkentved looking to find out about the general interest and success rate in hunting wolves. "There is a list of how many wolves have been taken so far and so far they have taken 22 across the state and most of those are in the Panhandle. So far in 2013 we have sold 11,180 resident gray wolf hunting tags. Now wait a minute. Are there 11,000 gray wolves in Idaho? It is not one tag per wolf, it is one tag per hunter. It is up to the hunter to go out and get a wolf. It is like a deer tag. You get your tag and you go out and hunt your deer. Most people probably won't get one. With deer, the success rate is around 40%. The success rate is very low for wolves. Lots of people by wolf tags, not many people kill them. Last year I think we barely made 300. Did you sell it 11,000 tags? Yeah, probably. Wow. The first year it was almost 40,000 tags. And they killed something like 280. Last year hunters took 255 and trappers took 124. So that's 379 and we sold a similar number of tags. Does that mean I can start calling them the elusive gray wolf? Those are your words. ( Laughter) But I don't think it would be inaccurate.
