January 17, 2012 in Outdoors, Idaho

Idaho wildlife official clears wolves in dog death

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WALLACE — A state wildlife official says an investigation has failed to find clear evidence that a dog died in an attack by wolves last week in northern Idaho.

Idaho Fish and Game official Josh Stanley says he could find no evidence of wolf tracks in the snow where the domestic dog was killed Wednesday about a mile north of Wallace. Another dog suffered wounds to the face in the skirmish.

Stanley told the Shoshone News Press he tracked a 100-yard radius around the home where the attack took place and found tracks more closely resembling dogs or coyotes.

After the attack, local authorities placed blame on four wolves.

Idaho rules allow citizens to shoot wolves only if they have a hunting tag or to protect domestic animals and livestock.

10 comments on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  valleyman on January 17 at 8:38 a.m.

  Shocking… Yet another clear example of people acting in a manner inconsistent with the truth to obtain a result they otherwise couldn’t obtain - the destruction of wolves…

  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - a balance must be found. The wolves are back, like it or not and we must coexist. That doesn’t mean allowing them to reach an unsustainable population, but it also doesn’t mean killing them all because you don’t like them…

• 

  RedCedar on January 17 at 9:48 a.m.

  The original article seems to have borrowed heavily from the one in the CdA press. It extensively quoted one Barry Sadler from Mullan who said such things as “They just can’t coexist with people, It’s impossible … as long as they run wild, they’ll continue to kill everything until there’s nothing left.” According to that article, he also said wolves just chew animals up a lot of the time without eating them, and called them “treacherous and filthy.” The percentage of what they kill versus what they eat is less than 10 percent, Sadler said.

  Then we have this gem: Regarding Wednesday’s attack, he said people don’t realize that wolves would rather eat dogs than any other animal.“They hate each other,” he said. “They’ll kill dogs any chance they get.”

  The article goes on to describe how Sadler killed a wolf that chewed on his dog (I can vouch for that — I saw the dog), and concludes with his opinion that he can’t figure what God was thinking when He made the wolf.

  In short, what it seems happened is somebody got their dogs chewed on by some unknown canids, and rather than wait for facts from Mr. Stanley, the news writer somehow encountered Mr. Sadler who offered himself as a North Idaho wolf expert and gave as lurid a story as any yellow journalist could ask for.

  Much of what he said was just plain ridiculous.Wolves would rather eat dogs than any other animal? Then why are they supposedly “killing all the elk”, when dogs are so much easier to find? Wolves don’t even eat coyotes. They just kill them to eliminate the competition. They kill everything until there’s nothing left? What then did the Lewis and Clark party, much less a million or so Indians, live on in the days when wolves “ran wild”? Back when Mr. Sadler’s dog got chewed on he was quoted in the paper as saying “We used to love nature, but now we hate it.” This from a guy who moved to the area not so long ago. In my humble, untrained, non-expert opinion, this man has “issue” and they’re not called “canis lupus”. And by the way, his dog that was attacked by wolves (or at least chewed on by something), had a big patch of fur and skin missing from it butt, but seemed to be getting around just fine.

  Perhaps the S-R reporter had enough professional judgment to leave out the more ridiculous and lurid comments that Hagadone’s paper went to press with, but unfortunately that just left the remainder sounding more reasonable.

• 

  liberal_in_right_wing_land on January 17 at 10:13 a.m.

  Idaho claims to be a wildlife state, but they know nothing about nature and wildlife. They just want to hunt everything and kill it.

• 

  RedCedar on January 17 at 10:38 a.m.

  Sometimes, l_i_r_w_l you make a good point. This time, however, was not one of them.

• 

  oneanddone on January 17 at 11:28 a.m.

  Oh no RedCedar! He’s right. We’re always on the lookout for those drunken, drugged, women beating, Washingtonians. And they’re everywhere - like rats on the South Hill.

• 

  johnclarke on January 17 at 11:35 a.m.

  I’m glad this is cleared up.

• 

  Middleman on January 17 at 2:11 p.m.

  “Sadler killed a wolf that chewed on his dog (I can vouch for that — I saw the dog), and concludes with his opinion that he can’t figure what God was thinking when He made the wolf.”

  Wow!! Was he absent the day his science instructor told the class that ALL dogs are descendants of wolves? Seriously, what an ignorant statement.

  Also, dogs are no where near the top of the menu for wolves. They like large, meaty and easy to kill prey (the slowest of the elk/dear herd) to satisfy them. The only way they attack a dog is if they are cornered or really hungry.

• 

  MrBloggy on January 17 at 3:13 p.m.

  Dear spirit-brother!
  you are innocent of
  Bowzer biting and Lassie
  lacerating!
  Proud Idaho Gray Wolf
  you only kill in self defense
  to protect your cubs
  when rampaging elk try to
  stab you with deadly antlers
  you stop them and feast on
  their livers!
  you are free to go spirit bro
  protect and serve elk steaks
  for the pack!

• 

  RedCedar on January 17 at 3:40 p.m.

  Middleman, the question isn’t why Mr Sadler is so ignorant about nature in general and wolves in particular; it’s how a reporter could take this unknown man for a wolf expert and quote him extensively, when almost every thing he said was obviously either false or exaggerated. It’s people like him, who just moved to North Idaho and then decide they hate nature when some of it bites their dog (or eats their cat, or spills their bird feeder, or raids their garbage, or simply scares them), not the much-maligned “locals”, whom the self-professed critics of Idaho on this board should be criticizing.

• 

  greenlibertarian on January 17 at 10:37 p.m.

  I remember the same BIG RED FLAGS, Red Cedar. “Wolves hate dogs”, ok, nutcase, I don’t believe any of this story until I see some credible follow-up. Cha-Ching, there it was.

  Thanks for elucidating the voice of reason on this.