Why do people hunt wolves?

That I've seen, the problem with wolves hurting people in the last few centuries often involves

A.) a rabid wolf

B.) a tamed wolf (or at least, the stupid idiot who actually bought a wild animal thought so.)

C.) A wolf that has gotten used to humans (say, eating out of garbage.)

D.) Someone with a dog, say on a walk or even the dog just chained out back.

The problem I know of with wolves is more with what they do livestock than what they do to people, (unless of course, a pack has made a nuisance of itself.)

With livestock, they're the farmer's livelihood. If a pack a wolves takes down a calf or a cow, it would be similar to someone walking up to your car in the dead of the night, slashing the tires and messing with the engine. Suddenly you can't get to work/school the next day and you'd have to pay to have it fixed. Do this enough, and pretty soon you'll find it hard to keep food on the table and pay the bills if you don't loose your job all together.

Another problem can arise when there are too many wolves.

Say for instance when there are a few years where food is abundant and herbivorous multiply and then carnivores multiply. Then food gets scarce again and suddenly disease and famine takes a few more herbs than usual. Then you have a case where local carnivores out number herbs in such a way that they're really taking a toll on the herb population.

Then after awhile it'll get to the point where there isn't enough food for the wolves and they'll wind up starving or finding a food source somewhere else (usually in places that get them in big trouble.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if a little bit of it does have to do more with fear than any rational reason. We do it all the time, despite the fact that we're supposed to be so advanced and modern and think in scientific "this is fact, this is fiction, this is fact, this is emotion"

A good example would be with domesticated dogs and so called dangerous breeds as well as so called family breeds. There are more than a handful of people who think an entire breed (even several entire breeds of dogs) are all vicious animals. On the other end of the spectrum, there are people who believe their are breeds of dogs, or even several breeds of dogs, that would never bite or otherwise harm a human.

Why Hunt Wolves

I have hunted wolves in the past......didn't have much choice in the matter. My neighbour's property has an electric fence around it, to protect his horses and the few other assorted animals he has. Its a hobby farm, mostly donated animals. He was having a large wolf problem. They kept using boulders to jump the fence and had previously killed one of his sheep and attacked a horse in a barn stall. It was a small pack...only four of them. And once we took out the "leader", they moved on.

Sure, its rare to hear of a wolf attacking a person.....unless provoked....but where I live, wolves are abundant and not exactly scared of the human population. There are many attacks on farm animals, or domestic dogs here.....even attacks on animals as large as moose. When a wolf is hungry, he will do what he can to get food, and seeing as humans are encroaching ever closer on their hunting grounds, they have become lazy. its easy for wild animals like bears and wolves to become dependent on humans for food. My children's school doesn't allow outdoor recess from late March until early May, just because of the amount of bear traffic after a winter hibernation.

The main reason more people are attacked by dogs than wolves each year, is the sheer number of domestic dogs to people ratio..and the fact the majority of North America's population live in cities, where they are not likely to run into wolves.

I don't hunt for fur, or for sport. I do it for the meat.....meaning I only kill what I need and I make use of as much as the corpse as I possibly can. If wolves are too close to my house or barn, I fire warning shots first. If that doesn't work, I do not hesitate to kill them. Just as I won't hesitate to shoot a bear who is aggressive too close to my house, or a coyote, or wildcat. I have lost a domestic dog to a beaver before. Yes, a beaver. Think about that the next time you pass by a beaver damn. No animals should be approached with a nonchalant attitude....not even domesticated ones.

You people don't think anyone is going to read what your wrote way too long and small and wolves aren't born for native people go be smart donate them blankets :l Like really they don't just need warmth to live and who ever is a hunter who shoots wolves sorry I JUST CAN'T take it as an opinion GET A LIFE you just scared of some carnivore just don't go in the woods THERE EASY AND STAY AWAY FROM THEM LAZY RICH FAT PEOPLE

The same reason they hunt deer, it's game. But if you mean, why are they CULLED or killed because of these "attacks" then that's different. I understand that they are not responsible for the attacks, but there is always a spoiled brat out there, who thinks that anything that's not his should be hurt, and then when he gets hurt, the media and relatives blow it out of proportion.

And the reason you trust them more than some dogs...is because they are dogs. Dogs are just one step down from wolves, they are the offspring from a pure wolf bred with a Dingo (a dog found in australia and some other countries, it's the ONE pure dog, and ancestor to most modern day dogs).

I am thinking of learning how to hunt when I'm older, but i would never hunt or hurt and Endangered

species.

I think that people whold take a step back and consider different points of veiw like you and I, unfortunatly, it's becoming a rare trait nowdays.

Because their population needs to be contained, the more wolves you have the less food there is for them, so they start moving on to other prey like live stock and in some cases maybe even a person.

They have perceived in their minds that the wolf could be a threat to their lives, livelihood, or their domesticated animals.*... Man and Wolves can live together but the number, or population has to be contained, or controlled so that they do not become overpopulated.*

wolves are killed for money. period.

wolves pose little threat to people unless said people wander into the woods and sit there waiting to be eaten. however wolves do kill deer and elk and in some states elk hunting brings in a lot of money from outsiders. so they kill the wolves so there are more elk to be killed. makes sense in their warped minds.

wolves have also been known to attack livestock. again its money.

and for some reason people have always hated the wolf. its been demonized in fairy tales and been the stuff of horror stories. the idea that killing these intelligent animals from a helicopter can be considered "sport" shows how depraved some people are.

and all domestic dogs are descended from wolves but over thousands of years of living with humans, they have evolved into something very different. you can not tame a wolf even from a pup. they will remain free as they should be. the reason natives never had lots of problems with them is we respect them for who and what they are and didn't try to make them into something for our own use. instead we learned from them about working together for the good of "the pack".

Your ? and opinion is way too long, I got board and quit reading it about a 4th of the way through. I hunt them for their pelts. others do to protect their live stock ( their livelihood, you know there job and income what brings food to their table). What do you do for a living and what if something interfered with your income? You wouldn't just sit back and give up money that pays your bills.

Boy you sure love them wolves!

I doubt what Im about to show you will sway your mind to reconsider your emotional opinion. But here goes nothing!

“Native Americans had no problem with wolves”

Long ago before the white man came, native Americans not only hunted wolves they also would raise a wolf pup and use it to pull a travois. http://www.majesticview1.com/images/NAID%20Pics/do...

That painting shows horses that were not here before the white man. Although they would also raise coyotes, those were too small to pull a travois. And when they had bad luck hunting they would eat the wolf or coyote. Yep they ate dog meat.

If there were too many wolves in an area they would kill the wolf pups in their den. That was their way of population control.

Despite all that and the great respect they had for wolves, wolves did kill them.

In 1770, during a smallpox epidemic in the north eastern US, Wolves entered Indian camps to eat corpses of smallpox victims. They also attacked and killed the sick.

History seldom mentions how wolves killed the native Americans when they traveled alone or how sometimes their children were killed by them; but they were.

Wolf attacks on humans are a fact;

http://www.aws.vcn.com/wolf_attacks_on_humans.html

Many of those attacks are ignored. You wont see them in your history books!

When a child was carried off by a wolf, they didn’t call it a wolf attack; they called it a “wolf lifting”;

http://www.wildsentry.org/WolfAttack.html

I live in Alaska were there are tens of thousands of wolves. And we are having problems with them;

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-...

http://www.sciencebuzz.org/blog/wolf_attacks_in_al...

They are chasing people near anchorage, going into villages and killing their dogs and killing live stock. Despite my electric fences and steel mesh fences they killed my horse and 3 our dogs.

I can show you places here in Alaska where the wolves wiped out 90% of the deer, 80% of all small game and cut the population of moose in half.

Seems this is going on in the lower 48 also;

http://www.clarkforkchronicle.com/article.php/2010...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/24614...

My parents live in Montana and they have seen the wolves kill elk and leave them to rot on their property. The wolves there and in Idaho are wiping out the big game NOT the hunters. By law hunters can harvest only a certain number of animals but wolves are free to kill all they want.

Wolves also love to kill livestock for fun like these 27 sheep in Montana;

http://www.greatfallstribune.com/section/OPINION

Wolf attacks on humans;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_attacks_on_human...

Wolf lover propaganda;

http://mainehuntingtoday.com/bbb/2009/03/11/exampl...

Now I know I won't change your mind. And I really don’t care if I do.

But the fact is wolves are destructive killing machines that belong in the wilderness.

And while wolf attacks on humans are rare I would bet you wouldn’t want to be one of those poor souls who was ripped to pieces by them

And if we are going to bring them back I think its only fair to bring them back in EVERY place they were before. And if that means turning loose a few hundred in major cities so they can live in fear like some people in rural areas do then so be it!

And yes I hunt them and trap them. I hunt them because its fun!