Bwananelson, your response is instructive and sums up the not-so-rare feelings of some sportsmen. There are those who see hunting as a game, as a sport, from the perspective of an outsider who thinks it is neat to see and take strange animals, or pretty animals or...oooooh...DANGEROUS animals.

An ancient line of division exists between the culture of local hunting for meat as described by Dphariss and I and tourist hunting by outsiders who come in to see the sights and bring back something to hang on their wall. There is a bit of blending of the two as well, in that some local hunters do indeed hunt for trophies as well as meat.

Ultimately it is indeed a choice of models, a choice of paradigms. What are the paradigms were are faced with and which do we want?

The model that replaces humans with wolves? Sorry, but we cannot have both unless wolf numbers are rigourously controlled. The Idaho Fish and Game Department fears declining hunter numbers and for good reason. There is not, in the West, "enough to go around".

Many so-called environmentalists fall in your camp, the camp that espouses the notion of the "circle of life", an ephemoral concept at best that means whatever the speaker wants it to mean. Usually in this context it means the establishment of laws or rules that limit hunting in the name of taking away the predator position from people and giving it to some animal like the wolf.

You don't live here so it is difficult for you to get a feel for what it is like to have such oppressive laws dumped on top of you.

How's this for a compromise??

I admit that the Federal government {theoretically...} represents all US citizens and the vast Federal grounds are open to use by all Americans, regardless of where those lands exist. Since this is in fact true, my feeling is that if the Federal government is so in love with wolves, and if Back East {and other non-local} interests are so enamored with them, then at the very least allow a compromise that limits their protection to Federal ground, i.e. the ground that all Americans possess an interest in.

Thus, any wolf that steps off Federal ground could be legally shot, poisoned, dynamited, trapped or otherwise culled at the discretion of the property owner. THAT might be a just and culturally sensitive method of managing introduced species. Right now the rights of property owners are ignored and violated at every step of this discussion.

But I doubt such a common sense compromise will ever exist.

This issue isn't about wolves, it is about the destruction of traditions and philosophies of game management as very successfully implemented by our state Fish and Game Departments. They have been wildly successful in growing elk and deer herds in the West and deer in the East. It is, ultimately, about the destruction of hunting and the rights of property owners just as Dphariss says.

I am well aware of the mass explosion of deer numbers in the South and East. I grew up in New Jersey {where deer bag limits are higher than in Idaho}, in Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and Florida as well as here in Idaho, and in Washington state. I have hunted in these states and in Alabama and have family throughout the South.

What you need to limit the numbers of deer is not wolves, but a positive, growing culture of hunting in your states, a culture that adapts itself to the wonderful deer resource, adopts techniques and methods of hunting applicable to the local settings and results in the provision of food which itself is a tremendously important symbol and culturally relevant bond between hunters and the ground and the animals they both support. Such ties promote future trans-generational development of the hunting culture. Your states need a growing, educated, committed hunter class, not wolves.

What you promote with this nonsensical dumping of the rat-wolf in the West is the destruction of the hunting culture and is an oppression that needs to be stopped. You may not see it where you are, but where the resources are much more limited, the picture is quite clear indeed.