Wolf Litigation: a snowball’s chance…
Posted December 28, 2009 in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
I’ve been meaning to note the NRA’s involvement in the Northern Rockies wolf fight for weeks now.
I am not surprised that the National Rifle Association is trying to intervene in the case; it is clearly an issue that their members care about. No, what struck me was a truly weird narrative included in the organization’s filing. To be a part of the case, the NRA had to show that their members were impacted by wolves and to do so they included some pretty wild testimony.
As outlined in an article in the Helena Independent Record, an NRA member from Nevada detailed his "most memorable and probably most life-threatening encounter with wolves" on a 2005 hunting trip in Montana:
[The NRA member] said he and his guide heard wolves howling throughout the morning, and "suddenly the woods came alive with elk and the guide and I were overrun with a herd of about 40 elk stampeding past us ..." He said the snow was too deep for he and the guide to move, so they watched as they were surrounded by 30 wolves in what appeared to be three packs.
Oh my, given the threatening reputation that some folks attribute to these critters, I can understand the concern. Sure, there has never been a documented case of wolves killing humans in the United States, but a good storyteller should never let something like that get in the way of the narrative.
[He] said they watched as three wolves attempted to take down a young calf, but the cow elk kept protecting it.
"In a move that could have had dire consequences, the guide and I decided to try and save the calf by throwing snow balls at the wolves," [he] said. "We managed to hit the wolves a few times and they retreated back to where some of the other wolves were waiting below."
He said the cow and calf escaped, and the wolves eventually dispersed.
Wow. Tough guys stand up for elk with nothing but their bare fists and…snowballs. Gutsy. Really, they owe the wolves a debt of gratitude because that is one of the coolest stories I have heard.
But the bravado of these heroes aside, it does raise an interesting disconnect. Given the killing machine rhetoric about wolves out there, it’s shocking that the blood-thirsty carnivores could be so easily scared off. Frankly, I am not sure the pit bulls in my neighborhood would be so easily dispatched.
Well, anyway, it’s a great story. Thank goodness the hunter and his guide were able to scare off those bad wolves and protect those helpless elk. Hey, do you think they resumed their own elk hunt the next day?
Comments are closed for this post.
Comments
joe robinson — Jan 3 2010 06:58 PM
correct there has been no documented killing of a human by a wolf in the U.S.
but there has been documented killings in
canada
italy
france
russia
germany
should i go on?
give people all the information and let them make up their own minds.
the rheteric from the pro wolf crowd is as
misplaced as it is from the anti wolf crowd.
Josh Mogerman — Jan 4 2010 02:20 PM
Joe, you are right. The rhetoric is pretty heated. I try to keep it reasonable.
Historically, there have been wolf attacks on humans (mostly a long time ago), but wolves with rabies or habituated wolves were, to my knowledge, usually the source. And as for the recent fatality in Saskatchewan (SI ran a story about it a year or two ago), there are a lot of questions about that alleged wolf attack (i.e., were those wolves habituated? Was the man actually killed by wolves?). But again, none in the US.
But lets be clear here, in terms of dangerous threats to humans, wolves are way, way, way, way, way down the list... They rank far below cars, humans, sports, toys, pools, weather, food allergies, and domestic dogs. Dogs killed an elderly couple in Georgia earlier this year (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/18/national/main5249653.shtml) and are way ahead of wolves in terms of deadly human conflicts.
Domestic dogs, by the way, are also responsible for far more cattle and sheep deaths in the Northern Rockies than wolves. Going from memory here, but I think 4X as many in Montana... Yet we don't see the same sort of howls for control of Fido and Rover.