Wolf Depredation of elk

Wolf Depredation of elk

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Last week, we applauded the de-listing of wolves and today, on Sportsmans Spotlight, seasoned hunter Tommy Allen, who was hunting elk in the Selkirk Mountain Rang, underscores our position. “The area is just thick with predators, very few elk sign it cut a few fresh tracks, but just such thick timber. They're really hard to hunt unless you get them in a clearing or a logging cut. One thing I did run into some guys who hunted the area for around 25 years. They said they used to shoot a lot of real nice bucks in the area, but in the last five or so years, they haven't seen any deer. And obviously, that's because the predators I didn't see a single deer up there either. Muleys should be in the rut right now. The White tail should be coming into it pretty soon. But there's just very few deer or elk because there’s just there's tons of predators. And that's happened in the Frank Church wilderness and the lower unit in Idaho where the wolves just decimate any deer or elk in those regions and it takes forever for them to come back. The wolves and I've heard them still come into an area, they'll clean out everything, and then they move on to the next area and they'll clean out everything in that area. And then if there's nothing else to eat, they come down and will get after people's livestock, especially in a state like Washington State where you can't entrap wolves, you can't shoot wolves. And you're right on the border of Idaho where you can. Well, I assume the wolves would probably end up hanging out more in Washington, knowing that they have a little bit of hunting pressure in Idaho. But this is kind of sad to see how many predators were in that area and how little deer sign and elk sign was in that area just due to the pressure from not hunters, but from wolves and grizzly bears. I'm not sure how much they actually go after adult elk and deer, but I know they attack the fawns.
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