Just ran into a friend of mine in Fleet Farm. He hunts a 600-acre property just across the Mississippi River from a property I have access to. This area has a lot of wolves for several years now and I tried to draw a tag to trap one when there was a MN wolf season. I never got a chance.

So this friend of mine told me that the DNR trapped 15 wolves from the 600-acre property in the past few months. I would have paid to buy a license to trap one of those wolves and so would a lot of other people. This whole wolf thing is ridiculous and getting dumber all the time.

I'm just blowing steam because there's not a darn thing any one of us can do about this. But it's just plain wrong.

Bernie do you know if they disposed of the wolves or just move them elsewhere?
They may be headed to a certain island in Lake Superior.

Osky

Agreed. Why they won't take money from licenses, to generate extra income, is beyond me. And get the same results. Population control, and money to boot.

Same thing with hiring night time snipers, killing deer over corn piles at night down here in the cities, and getting a huge bill for doing so. When we hunters would gladly pay to do it.

Now you went and got my blood pressure all up, Bernie. Thanks...

with the feds in charge..you are right nothing we can do..frustrating for sure

Oftentimes state game agencies want to achieve a certain goal within a specified period of time. Usually, trappers are not able to meet the goals..... So the agency does it on their own.

That has nothing to do with this particular situation. All wolf hunting and trapping is outlawed by the courts, so the DNR has to hire trappers to come in and do it.

Are you saying that DNR is prohibited from doing it themselves ?

So if all trapping/hunting is outlawed....how is it legal to hire trappers to do it ? Are they federal ?

Most likely federal trappers doing that trapping.

You were thinking you could catch one?

I believe that they are all federal trappers. I know a guy that was a MN state wolf trapper, he would get calls to trap nuisance wolves during the time that they were delisted and after the relisting he is not able to trap them anymore, only the feds.

May have been turned over to the USDA APHIS

I absolutely guarantee I can snare one.

That makes sense.

I blame our own DNR as much as I do the Feds. They claim there are roughly 2300-3000, or whatever, wolves in this state. That's the same amount they said there were back in the early 1990's. Anybody, and I mean anybody, that spends any time outdoors knows there are FAR more wolves in this state now than there were in the early 1990's. I rarely saw a wolf track in the 1980's, now I see tracks everywhere I go when hunting, trapping, or even ice fishing. It's an absolute joke. If the state would report the correct amount of wolves, they would be delisted much quicker. Either somebody's lying, or the DNR is totally incompetent when it comes to estimating the actual population. Look how quickly the harvest quota was met the last time we had a season. If they actually think there are only 2500-3000 wolves here, they need to throw out the computers and try another means of estimating the population.. Seems the more they rely on computers the worse our fish and game management becomes. Bears, wolves, Mille Lacs, our DNR has lost a lot of respect by sportsmen, and deservedly so.

As I remember the ruling the court made, wolves have to be recovered in every State to be delisted. They could not be delisted regionally or State by State. So no matter how many wolves there are in MN they still won't be delisted unless the courts ruling is overturned or by Congressional action.
ID, MT,WY, and the eastern third of WA were Federally delisted by Congressional action.
I cannot see how you can blame the DNR for the situation.

idaho has a mountain of them two but we can trap and hunt them, it helps a bit but not much rearally do we see mature wolfs trapper or shot mostaly pupps!

prolly with your eyes closed ! i read your books

. They Have a Responsibly to provide the Sportsmen, Public and the Feds As accurate a Count of these Wolves in our State as is Humanly possibly with all the technology at their disposal. To this extent they are inherently at fault for providing false numbers.

The USDA trappers are doing the damage control trapping in Minnesota...there are some State trappers approved for damage control of Wolves...very few though and they are extremely limited as to the methods they can use compared to the Feds.

That's a pretty big responsibility. A lot of fluctuation can occur between spring and fall in population numbers of wolves