Elk kill in wyoming???

[.45colt]

Any of You Guys see this?? Is it true?http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/03/25/wo ... night.html

[.45colt]

linkey no workey,have to paste it on top.

[jnyork]

Yes, true.

[harry]

And it happens every winter on or around the feed grounds of western Wyoming. I've seen the aftermath of the kill and the BLM/Forest Service/Game and Fish push the piles of elk into the timber with dozers so as not to be seen as easily.

[piller]

How do the idiots who believe that only humans kill more than they can eat explain that? Not trying to get political. If it can't be answered without too much topic drift, then just PM me. Yes, it is true that predators will kill more than they need.

[ollogger]

Yes & it has happened before! but folks still think they only take what they need & clean up
the old & the sick



Brad

[crs]

The book "The Real Wolf" goes into wolf behavior in great detail and will dispel any Walt Disney delusions for an open minded person that reads it.
They also kill just to train their offspring to survive, just as all predators do.

[7.62 Precision]

Also, when we mess around with nature, we get unexpected results. This has been proven over and over.

Wolves had very low populations in most of the western US, but the native wolves were starting to make a comeback in many areas. But because the animal rights organizations have other agendas beyond simply recovering wolf populations, and have successfully used the introduction of wolves in the SE US to disrupt all kinds of activities they opposed, they pushed for reintroduction. Since they could not reintroduce the native wolves, which were already slowly spreading, they did the following:

1. Got non-native wolves from a completely different environment (Arctic or Subarctic). These wolves had different hunting habits.
2. Kept them in captivity for varying amounts of time as they bred packs to release, feeding them in captivity, so that most of the wolves released had never hunted non-enclosed animals, and domestic animals as well. Keeping animals in captivity and feeding them, even in large enclosures and feeding live animals, alters the behavior of the captive animals. It does every time. Wolves rely on instinct, but they also rely on training. Different wolves in different areas develop different hunting techniques and pass those on through generations through training.
3. They released them in a totally different habitat with different game than the habitat they came from originally.

So they brought with them both instincts and learned behavior based on where they originated, which was then altered by being bred in captivity; is it any wonder that we are surprised by their behavior?
Also, most wolves, when game is plentiful, will eat the best parts of the game animal and then move on. Wolf packs in the arctic that remain in one territory will kill every caribou they can as the herds come through and then eat them for some time after. So we have wolves that came from arctic or subarctic areas, and were then kept in captivity with plentiful food sources.

Remember too that the wolves had the bison, in herds so large they could have been seen from space if anyone was looking. When we bring wolves back without the bison, we don't really know what to expect as far as impact on other game and domestic animals, do we? Except that in the 1800s, people learned what happened when the bison were gone and the wolves were not.

We are often sorry for what has been lost, but bringing it back is almost always problematic. Look at the sea otters in AK. Otters hunted to near extinction by the Russians. Sea urchins lost their main predator, overpopulated and destroyed the kelp forests. Alaska's waters have never been nearly as rich as they were when the coast was blanketed by kelp forests. Sea otters are protected and programs run to increase populations. Everyone knows that when the sea otters come back, so will the kelp forests. Except when the otters come back, there are not enough kelp forests supporting enough urchins to support the otters, so the otters wipe out the crab populations, and now there are bounties on otters to keep the populations down to save the crab and other shellfish.

The world changes and always has, and so far we have not had much success in changing nature back to what it was whenever we want to roll the clock back to.

[winchester1886]

7.62, I am a person that has a great interest in wolves and large hunting dogs, over the years I have read heaps on wolves, but what you have said here is the most intelligent writing I have ever read on the subject, well done go to the top of the class.