Adam,

Our quota this year is 18 moose, devided between the differant age groups. 3 bulls, 3 cows, 6 teens and 6 calves. We have decided to skip the last 2 calves though, since things this year are differant (because of the bear or whaterver). This is in a 1800 hectare area.

As for shooting wolves and bears, although I personally am all for it, it is illegal ... The thing is that wolves were shot out in Norway about 100 years ago. There wasn't 1 single wolf left. Then mysteriously they started to reappear a little over a decade ago. the mysterious part is how they got to where they were sighted. If you look at a map of Scandinavia, they supposedly walked without being sighted, all the way from Finland (actually the wolves here have been DNA tested and genetically come from down around the Baltic countrys like Lithuania), and down to the southern part of Norway. This is way over 1000 km just from the Finnish border. It is very unlikely that wolves would not have been spotted by anyone for this distance, which is also thru populated areas. Not to mention up in the north where the Lapplanders live. Nothing moves on the tundra and in the mountains without them knowing it. What many people think actually happened though, and there has even been a couple of documentaries made about it but without any proof, is that the wolves were re-introduced by man...

Amongst other things, there were wolves that were sold from a zoo in the Baltics and shipped to Sweden. Strangely, they were supposedly destroyed only 2 weeks later, although no one in Sweden will say why (kind of strange after just paying lots of money for them???), or where any of the remains are.

There have been quite a lot of sightings of strange happenings that would indicate that this is correct. In fact a friend of my wife worked for a time with the govt. project tracking wolves, and is convinced that a handfull of govt funded scientists are behind the whole thing. Together with Swedish colleages. She told us about one incident where they come upon a car track at a dead-end road in a forest. There was tracking snow. Oddly, a wolf track went out from the dead-end turning area, but no track went in! So it was obvious that the wolf hadn't just crossed onto the road, sniffed the car tracks and moved on. Either it magically appeared, parachuted in, or was let out of the van... I think the van is most likely! This friend of ours was very "Pro wolf" to begin with, and interestingly enough is now totally against them being in Norway. I guess she's seen too many things that indicate that our population is being tricked.

Another odd thing is that in some areas, the govt. is saying that the wolves are beginning to become inbred!!! Logically, if the wolves got there by themselves, and there is no lack of wolves where they supposedly came from, why areen't new ones naturally coming to the same area? In this case they have openly said that they want to "relocate" to the area.

The only upside IMO is that certain people in certain areas are taking the law into their own hands. At least a few wolves every year are illigally shot. If a person is caught shooting a wolf, or any evidence is left, it's straight off to jail...

Although we personally have been spared the worst, my cousin for example has had his moose quota about halved in the past decade. And few people are keen to let their hunting dogs loose in that area because the dogs get eaten...

Sorry for the longwinded post, but our problem here is that the wolf no longer has a place in our society. Norway isn't set up to have wolves, since we are a small country with no unpopulated areas large enough to make it problem free. The argument of the pro-wolf people is that no wolves have been reported to kill a human here in such a long time. That it affects peoples lives in other negative ways is obviously not important to them... And I doubt that a wolf will take on a grown human. But I have no doubt that a young kid will make a tasty treat for a wolf...

Do you have any knowledge of wolves attacking humans in North America? I know it happens in Russia and in India.

The wolf subject just gets me real mad...

Erik D.