Robert Millage, 34, of Kamiah, Idaho, poses with the first reported wolf killed in Idaho this fall – the nation’s first wolf hunt in eight decades. ROBERT MILLAGE/Associated Press

Hunters using fair-chase tactics won’t bag many wolves, experts

By ROB CHANEY
of the Missoulian

Val Geist is unequivocal about wolf-hunting tactics: Use a deer rifle and get very, very lucky.

“It is vital that a wolf is down at once,” Geist said from his home on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. “Mere wounding may lead to an attack. It happened to me. One must prevent that or screaming by a wounded wolf. That can make a pack attack.”

Ed Bangs is unequivocal about wolf behavior. Having managed them for 13 years in Alaska and now 21 years in Montana for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, he says:

“Nobody who’s been around wolves has any fear of them. It’s not like a cape buffalo where you shoot it and have to chase it into the bush. I’ve been around a lot of wolves. I’ve run them down on foot and darted them. Probably the best thing that could happen is to stop giving them supernatural powers and treat them as real animals.”

One thing Bangs and Geist do agree on is how hard it is to hunt a wolf.

“Don’t be surprised if a lot of people return with empty tags,” Geist said. “They’re very, very difficult to hunt. At one time, the USSR had 16,000 wolf hunters, and the kill in one year was 15,000. That’s less than one per hunter, and these were full-time, year-round hunters.”

“In Alaska, hunters get virtually no wolves,” Bangs said from his FWS?office in Helena. “If they’re shot, they’re shot by hunters doing other stuff.”

Montana’s wolf season starts Sept. 15 for four wilderness backcountry areas, and follows the regular Oct. 25-Nov. 29 big-game calendar for the rest of the state. The Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission set a quota of 75 wolves for 2009. The state’s estimated wolf population is 500.
A coalition of 13 wolf advocacy groups asked U.S. District Court Judge Don Molloy to stop the hunt for a second year in a row. The groups successfully argued last year there wasn’t enough research done to justify taking wolves off the federal endangered species list.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service re-filed its delisting plan in April, authorizing Montana and Idaho to take over management (and hunting) of wolves. The wolf advocates vowed to resume the fight, and asked Molloy to block the hunting season again. Molloy had not ruled on that request at press time.
Assuming the legal challenges get settled, Montana wolf hunters better prepare for the toughest target they’ve ever chased.

“They’re pretty rare to encounter in most general hunts,” said Gino Del Frate of the Alaska Fish and Game Department. “It’s pretty hard to say, ‘I’m going to go out wolf hunting and be successful,’”

And that’s in a state with lots of wolves and both big-game and nuisance-kill permits. In Montana, wolves must be hunted using the same fair-chase rules as other big game. No baiting, no night-vision equipment, no trapping, no spotlighting, no use of vehicles to harass or herd.

Montana FWP wolf project coordinator Carolyn Sime agreed with Geist that wolves would be hard to find, but she had a much different idea of what might happen if a hunter did find one close-up.
“Could you see other wolves of a pack when you shoot one? Yes,” Sime said. “But they don’t want to deal with you. Wolves don’t attack people like that. They don’t want anything to do with us. They basically are real submissive.”

Sime acknowledged wolves that have become accustomed to human food or garbage could be much more dangerous, just as habituated bears are. She said pepper spray or shooting warning shots should be sufficient to drive wolves away.

Geist took a different tack. He said he started observing wild wolves while doing his doctoral research on mountain sheep in the Canadian wilderness (he’s now a professor emeritus of environmental science with the University of Calgary).

“The first wolf I shot attacked me,” Geist said. “It had enough stamina to turn around and charge me. Got within 50 paces. You’re better off not to shoot the damn thing than shoot it if you can’t get a clean kill.”
Geist also recommended against handguns as a wolf deterrent. His preferred weapon was a .243 caliber deer rifle with a fast-opening bullet. Heavier bullets, he said, are likely to pass through the wolf and allow it to escape and die in hiding.

Geist made national news in Canada when he testified in the coroner’s inquest on the death of Kenton Carnegie. The 22-year-old university student was working at a mining camp in northern Saskatchewan when he was killed by wild animals near a garbage dump on Nov. 8, 2005.

Although provincial authorities first blamed a bear for the death, Geist and two other scientists agreed with the local Saskatchewan law enforcement officers that wolves made the attack.
Garbage-habituated wolves had been seen in the area previously. In November 2007, a Canadian inquest jury ruled Carnegie had been killed by wolves.

Missoula outdoors writer Toby Bridges has had plenty of opportunity to shoot a wolf, although he hasn’t taken one yet. On a caribou hunt 100 miles north of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, he saw more than 30.

“Half the day we had a wolf follow us everywhere we went,” Bridges said. “Sometimes he was within 75 yards of us, and never more than 200 yards away. We knew what he was after, and we didn’t disappoint him that day. We’d shot our caribou and were packing out the meat and antlers and skin, and before we got over the rise, we saw him on the kill.”

Bridges said he’s not strongly interested in hunting wolves personally, but he hoped others would take the challenge. While wolves aren’t considered choice eating, many in Montana will weigh around 100 pounds – large enough to interest trophy hunters.

They’ll also become much harder to hunt, Bridges predicted. Biologists agree wolves are highly intelligent and adaptive, and will quickly adjust their behavior to opportunities or threats.

“I think we’ve already lived up to the expectations of the wolf recovery project, and now we have a predator that’s really making impacts on sport hunting,” he said. “We’ve got to put that fear back into them and let them know when they’ve crossed that line. Then we’ll see less of wolves showing up on the outskirts of town. They’ll give us a wider berth after they’ve felt the pressure a bit.”

Then what? Montana and Idaho authorities both pegged their wolf hunting quotas to the goal of removing between 30 percent and 35 percent of the wolf population annually. Public hunting is only one of three factors in that number, with natural causes and government-authorized killing to protect livestock also part of the equation.

Alaska and Alberta wildlife authorities say that public hunting has little chance of making a significant dent in wolf numbers. The more successful tactics are trapping and year-round bounty-hunting. Geist has argued publicly for kill quotas of 60 percent to 70 percent a year as the best way to keep up with wolves’ rapid reproduction rates. He also calls for setting aside large tracts of land where predators like wolves and bears can live unmolested by humans.

Trapping is not allowed yet in either Montana or Idaho, although that could change in the next year. Bounty hunting would have to negotiate the concerns of hikers, dog walkers and other backcountry users who aren’t used to being around live ammunition outside of big-game season.

“The honest answer is this is a work in progress,” said FWP wolf coordinator Sime. “Can we move wolves toward the hunter bag rather than the Wildlife Services bag? That depends. But we don’t feel we can manage the wolf population without the participation of hunters.”

Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .