Sportsmen Unite Against Wolves

By Lisa Schmidt

While livestock producers suffer the brunt of increasing wolf populations -- both financially and emotionally -- ardent hunters are watching big game disappear everywhere wolf packs travel.

"It took a hundred years -- and hundreds of millions of dollars -- to build Montana's elk populations from only a couple of thousand back at the turn of the 1900s to the 150,000 to 160,000 we had in the state during the mid to late 1990s - before reintroduced wolves began to whittle them down," said Toby Bridges.

Bridges, an avid muzzleloader, rifle and bow hunter who has written more than 1,000 magazine articles and 12 books about hunting and conservation, is organizing the Montana chapter of Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife.

"(We want to) unite sportsmen in this state, to show up in force to insure being heard when dealing with issues and legislation that will surely have an impact on the quality of Montana's outdoors," Bridges said.

The new Montana chapter also would follow the lead of chapters in Utah, Alaska, Wyoming, New Mexico and Idaho to work with landowners, sportsmen and the hunting industry to insure the quality of wildlife habitat across Montana.

"A major goal of the organization is to vastly improve landowner and sportsman relationships - with sportsmen actually conducting the work needed on private lands to insure quality habitat for wildlife, whether we're talking about elk, deer, moose or things much smaller, like grouse, pheasants and ducks," Bridges said.

The Montana SFW plans to pressure Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks to reconcile the wolf population estimates with the livestock and wildlife damage seen across the state.

"When the wolf reintroduction was started, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services officials claimed their target goal was to have 300 wolves in the three Northern Rockies states involved - Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. Today, using USFWS numbers, the wolf population in these three states is six times that objective. Sportsmen feel the number is more like 10 times the original objective number -- probably 3,000 or more wolves. I speak for a lot of Montana sportsmen when I say we want to know the truth. We're tired of being lied to about the true number of wolves in this state, and receiving nothing but a snow job from FWP officials when it comes to how those wolves are impacting the quality of hunting here," Bridges said. "Montana SFW will push hard to get the wolf population level back closer to what was originally claimed. We feel that the much lower number of wolves will greatly benefit both Montana sportsmen and Montana livestock producers."

Aim for Conservation

Wolf populations can be reduced easily, with just a change in management philosophy: Bridges wants wolves to be managed as predators instead of big game animals.

"One way this can be more easily attained is to continue with a long, established season on public lands -- no permit required -- and to allow private landowners to shoot wolves on sight, year around, on those privately owned lands. Kills would be reported to FWP, to maintain a known harvest," he said.

To change that management philosophy through the court of public opinion, Bridges says the Montana SFW will go face-to-face with organizations such as Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club, Center For Biological Diversity and others, "which have continually intervened to thwart taking wolf numbers down low enough that our big game herds can continue to grow," Bridges said.

"All across the country, sportsmen stepped up to the plate to provide the billions of dollars it took to fund all of those restoration projects. We were able to rebuild our big game herds across this country into one of the finest wildlife resources in the world because we first had the common sense to eliminate or at least very tightly control the number of major predators in America. This success sticks in the craw of the anti-hunting environmental organizations, who now want to control the future of all wildlife - even though members of organizations like the Defenders of Wildlife or the Humane Society of the United States have not spent one red cent on real conservation that has saved anything. That really pisses me off!" he said.

Bridges is gathering contact information for potential SFW members and plans to ask for financial support from ammunition companies when he attends the SHOT Show (Shooting Hunting and Outdoor Trade) in Las Vegas, Jan. 19 - 22.

For more information about Montana SFW, visit Bridges' web site at www.lobowatch.com or send an email to him at wolfkill@lobowatch.com.