Ten inches of fresh snow! Perfect conditions for opening day of Montana's elk season, the hunter thought as he cruised back road after back road  trying in vain to find a fresh bull track to follow. He'd hunted the area for years and never had trouble locating plenty of elk sign until the last few seasons, that fall being the worst. He finally found a lone bull track and started to follow it in hopes of eventually getting a shot.  A half-mile onto the track he ran into competition in the form of a pack of wolves that also had started trailing the bull. Another hour and several miles later, the frustrated hunter gave up in disgust, knowing that if he ever did catch up with the bull, all he'd find was a mangled and meatless carcass.

Such are the future prospects for many hunters in Yellowstone country. Wolves are depleting the once thriving Yellowstone elk herd at an unbelievable rate. When wolves were re-introduced in 1995 (over the protests of common-sense realists who predicted the impending disaster), the elk herd was at a stable 20,000. Three years ago the numbers had tumbled to roughly 8,000 and in 2006 Montana Game & Fish didn't even waste money on a count.

Don Laubach of Gardiner, Mont., an outfitter, guide, rancher and wildlife photographer who has been involved with the Yellowstone eco-system for years, has kept up with the evolving wolf situation since the beginning. He claims that the plethora of predatory canines (wolves,) has reached epidemic proportions. Elk no longer bugle for fear of drawing wolves. As with the brown bears of Alaska, the wolves, protected as an endangered species, have learned to key in on gunshots as a source of free meals. Truly it’s a “No Win” situation for hunters or prey animals.

According to the Federal Register, the Fish & Wildlife Service and its biologists set the initial goal for a wolf population of 10 breeding pairs, or 100 animals. According to Laubach, the initial release of 31 wolves reportedly cost taxpayers $1 million per wolf to reintroduce. Alaska trappers thought the idea so stupid and fraught with serious long-term consequences they wouldn't agree to live-trap wolves for transplanting to Yellowstone even if the politically active local "wolf lovers," would have allowed the wolf population to be exploited. Consequently Fish & Wildlife bought the wolves from Canada, where biologists were no doubt glad to get rid of some toothy problems and make money  in the process. Laubach says that, in 2004, the U.S. government reportedly spent $11.4 million on wolf management — if the present program can be considered effective management rather than simply as damage control.

Today there are at least 1,200 wolves roaming and killing four-legged prey, with 17 breeding pairs of wolves in a single valley. That’s a far cry from the original total goal of 10 breeding pairs in the whole ecosystem.

Wolves are voracious, insatiable predators that require 20-25 adult elk or more than 50 deer per wolf per year to survive. Do the math and you'll see why most of the hoofed prey critters in the Yellowstone ecosystem are on a rapid and possibly irreversible downward trend. The only exception is the buffalo, which uses defensive tactics similar to those of muskoxen to fend off wolf attacks.

Big game animals aren't the only critters suffering from this monumental governmental SNAFU. Local stockmen are also getting hammered by the furry killers. Early on, Friends of Animals jumped on the bandwagon and  squeezed all the publicity it could out  of magnanimously agreeing to reimburse ranchers for wolf-killed livestock. However, as one might expect from  this anti-hunting, misbegotten bunch of emotion-driven zealots, they haven’t put their money where their mouths are. According to another reliable and knowledgeable local source, one rancher lost 30 head of livestock verified as wolf kills and has been reimbursed for only 50 percent of ONE animal. Surprise, surprise!

Some 400 wolves have been killed  on stock-depredation permits, but sane wolf control is impossible until the wolves are de-listed and the individual states are allowed to manage them within the dictates of common sense and good game management principles that take all wildlife into consideration.

Alaska is another state where wolves have been deified and made  the poster child of the animal-rightists and their equally off-center friends. When trapper and outfitter Coke Wallace trapped an Alpha female wolf outside the buffer zone around Denali National Park a couple winters back, he got death threats and hate mail and was blamed for ruining the structure of this famous wolf pack.

The highest mortality rate within a wild wolf pack is the result of the wolves’ penchant for killing each other. Yet when this happens, it's not classified by biologists as a serious loss. The reason is simple: There is no chance for sensationalism by the wolf lovers and their money-grubbing organizations to entice money from an uninformed and gullible public that is led to believe it is actually helping the wolves to survive. Let a trapper or hunter kill the same wolf and these organizations play it to the hilt and gather every buck they can from their emotional bleeding-heart pleas to the public. To get an idea of what’s really at work here, go to www.wolfsongalaska.org.

Several knowledgeable individuals with whom I have discussed wolves readily agreed that if Yellowstone Park and Denali National Park were high-fenced to keep all the critters inside enclosed, in a few years all the prey species would be wiped out by the wolves. If these intelligent and adaptable predators couldn't disperse to new hunting grounds as they are prone to do after depleting a food source, they would also perish. For a different perspective on wolves, I talked with a high school buddy of mine who has become one of the world's most renowned photographers and an expert on wolves. He is neither hunter nor anti-hunter, but a realist with a passion for wolves. He has done several National Geographic documentaries on wolves and has spent countless days and months following and living with them in the wilds to photograph and to study them.

He feels strongly that wolves are essential to nature's balance and well-being in areas where the prey species and predators have survived and cohabited for generations.  However, he has little time for the stupidity and lack of intelligent and   realistic foresight exhibited by the government and biologists who think they can change the world and make it run according to their dictates. They believe that it’s perfectly natural to re-introduce efficient killing machines into areas where the prey base is completely unaccustomed to coping with such predators, be it wolves, cougar or grizzlies.

This is a surefire recipe for a disaster that can take years to recover from, if ever. This “wolf at any cost” mentality has gone too far. It has to change, although it might already be too late.