X3. No tag here but good luck to those that drew.

Good luck, folks! We're going to need pictures!

Moosetrot

Am I the only one hoping AJE silence is driven by the fact he is out there working on getting us a picture?

I am hoping he is hanging CRs right now!

15" loop about 16" to 18" high,find a wolf trail,better when you find a trail with 2 or more tracks,but you can set a single track also.Good luck,pm if you want to more info.

We're rootin for u!!!!

I did not draw

My cousin did though so I am trying to help him get 1

My trapping partners son drew, but he may not be up to hunt/trap until the weekend, and I think the season will be closed by then. He is away at college.

Good luck to anyone who has a tag. Only a preference point for me.

Can’t wait to see some pictures!

Dave

All zones will be closed tomorrow, some at 10am, some at 3 pm
That didn't take long. My guess is the kill totals will be over the state allotted portion of the harvest. Two zones are already slightly over.

Fox Claw did the tribe not declare in the past or did we just not set aside 50% every time since they had no desire to harvest? I thought that we kept setting aside less and less when they didn't harvest but could be wrong.

Yes they did, 50% of the tags available for the ceded territory, leaving 119 total for the state.

I am talking about how the state handled the declarations in past. Instead of setting aside the full 50,% we did a smaller and smaller percentage each year that the season was open. As they showed they were not going to utilize it. Is that something the Board does or was that administration decision?

That is confusing to me, as well, MarshRAT.

Well the Board was clear they wanted 200 wolves harvested this year. As of this morning, we are at 213. Any takeaways or surprises from the harvest?

Yes I am surprised that with so little planning time etc. that the harvest would be that high and that quickly. I trust the data will be reviewed quickly and closely examined as to where the wolves were harvested (especially zone 6) and what methods proved the most effective and efficient. That should help decide how seasons should be established, quotas established etc. If we don't want high wolf numbers in the more populated and agriculture areas, harvests need to be high even if efficiency may be low. It seems we are not going to be able to control numbers closely in the major wolf habitat areas which means dispersing wolves will be a common issue.

Bryce

Shock and awe. It will b played that way. In fact the numbers are off. Just like bobcat and otter and corrections are overdue. Don’t see it happening with wolves.

Bryce, the hunters have waited a lot of years for this week so I wasn't surprised at the pace of harvest. If you listened to the landowners, they were opening everything up and actually working to recruit folks or groups with a tag. The guys that have been running coyotes/bobcats all winter knew where the wolves were and if our late bobcat season told us anything, we could run a very high success rate even being picky in what gets harvested.

It will be interesting to see what the modeling shows for a population this year.

The Natural Resource Board was very clear. Come back with a quota that shows you are heading towards 350 or we will do it for you. Sometimes you have to be willing to go down just to find out how hard it can be to accomplish under legal and regulated harvest seasons. But we have some of this data from the previous seasons when we pressured zones. It showed us just how much our population modeling was off.

Depends on how the modeling is interpreted. If you compare actual harvest, and rate of harvest, against the estimated population it would appear that the population is highly vulnerable to overharvest. But if you consider actual harvest and rate of harvest to be another indicator of population density, an objective observer might question the population estimate.

Well, can science prove the latter within 3-6 months? If not let's just assume it's the case! I'm good with that, I'm sure the Center for Biological Diversity and Wisconsin Green Fire will be too! Major schike-show ahead.