Wolf shootings spike during gun-deer hunt
Authorities seek leads about record nine killed illegally
By Kevin Naze
Press-Gazette correspondent
A large male wolf shot in the head and neck in Oconto County near Mountain was one of a record nine wolves illegally killed during Wisconsin’s nine-day gun-deer hunting season.
On top of that, a state wolf expert said he believes even more were targeted and not reported.
Adrian Wydeven, a Department of Natural Resources mammalian ecologist, said researchers had radio collars on 56 wolves heading into the November firearm deer season.
Four of the animals killed wore collars. Three other collared wolves are missing, though Wydeven said they sometimes travel out of range and the signal is lost.
“When you figure we have only about 10 percent of the wolves out there collared, you can kind of assume there were more” illegal shootings, he said.
It was a huge jump from one wolf known killed during the gun-deer hunt in 2004, and two last year. The previous high was five in 2002.
“Part of it might be just frustration by some who don’t see the state or federal government doing anything,” Wydeven said.
Wolves began repopulating the state around the mid-1980s, having dispersed here from Minnesota and Michigan on their own. State officials estimated there were close to 500 in Wisconsin last winter.
Wolves continue to be listed as endangered under federal law. Earlier this year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began a process to delist wolves in the Great Lakes region from the federal list of endangered and threatened species, and return management authority to the states.
The delisting process is expected to be completed by early 2007, but wolves would continue to be protected animals in Wisconsin.
Various animal rights groups have successfully filed suit to stop wolf management in the past, at times making it difficult or even impossible for the state to control wolves that are preying on livestock.
Oconto County conservation warden Joseph Paul said the wolf shot on county-forest land near Mountain was “right on an ATV trail, in about a quarter-mile” off Butler Springs Road on opening morning, Nov. 18.
Paul said some evidence was found at the scene, and an investigation is ongoing. He said the male, which Wydeven estimated at about 2 years old, was killed with a shotgun slug.
A radio collar no wolf was with it was found in the Wisconsin River in Oneida County.
Two wolves were killed in Douglas County, one by a hunter who turned himself in after shooting what he thought was the second of two running deer. Other wolves were killed in Adams, Ashland, Bayfield, Chippewa and Price counties.
A $4,000 reward fund offered by the Timber Wolf Alliance of Ashland, Defenders of Wildlife of Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been established for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone involved.
Intentionally shooting a wolf can bring fines of up to $25,000 on the federal level and more than $10,000 from the state, plus possible jail time and revocation of all hunting privileges.