IDFG Debunk Hunters stories and Fairy Tales

In Oppose Welfare Ranching, Protect The Wolves, Sacred Resource Protection Zone by Twowolves4 Comments

 

Perhaps Hunters will stop spreading their myths and Fairy Tales after being proven outright Story Tellers by Idaho Fish and Game . A Prudent individual might liken them to outright Lies… What do you Think?

We will also be publishing another Article showing a Montana Study has shown the same thing. Wyoming is to stubborn, they will continue to allow hunters to slaughter 25,000 Elk a year, then blame it on Wolves… Same Study would most likely apply there as well.

Wildlife CSI – Idaho Panhandle elk mortality study

The Panhandle region placed 172 GPS radio-collars on 6-month old elk calves in the Coeur d’Alene and St. Joe River drainages since 2015.  A couple reasons we collared so many elk was to determine survival rates and for those elk that didn’t make it, find out why they died.

The GPS collars have a signal that activates once the collar hasn’t moved for several hours, indicating a mortality.  Next, the collar sends an e-mail to biologists with the location of the collar.  It’s pretty amazing technology, something that wasn’t available just a few years ago, and it’s giving us new insight into what’s affecting the elk population.  We try to hike out to every dead elk within a day or two of receiving the mortality signal so we have the best chance of figuring out what happened.

Calf elk mortality

 

It can be difficult to look at a partially consumed elk carcass and determine how the animal died.  The more of the elk that is there, the easier it is to figure out what happened.  We want to find out why it died, or in our language, determine cause-specific mortality.  That’s why we try to get to the elk as soon as possible.

Once we get to the location and find the elk, we take a crime scene approach.  We conduct a careful search around the carcass looking for predator tracks, hair, drag trails in the dirt or snow, broken branches that indicate a chase, and blood on vegetation or the ground.  Next, we perform a necropsy (basically an autopsy for an animal).  We skin the entire animal looking for teeth or claw punctures and bruising on the skin or muscles (which means that something injured it while it was still alive).  We look for broken bones, parasites, and abnormalities of the internal organs.  Lastly, we saw open a femur bone to examine bone marrow.  Bone marrow is normally hard and white and is the last fat reserve the body uses during starvation.  Soft and red bone marrow means the elk was in very poor condition when it died.

Elk bone marrow

Femur bone marrow
Creative Commons Licence
Idaho Department of Fish and Game

The two most common predators that kill older calves in the Panhandle are mountain lions and wolves, but their kill patterns are quite distinctive, hence the crime scene approach.  Lions tend to ambush and bite the neck or throat of their prey.  The attack site and the kill site are often close together.  Lions often drag their prey to a more hidden spot and will cache the animal by covering it with snow, leaves, or needles.  Lions have a habit of shearing hair, which looks like someone cut the hair with sharp scissors.   Lions often enter the chest cavity first and eat the internal organs.

Elk carcass cached by a mt lion

Elk carcass cached with moss by mountain lion
Creative Commons Licence
Idaho Department of Fish and Game

Wolves, on the other hand, are not ambush hunters.  They typically chase their prey long distances, biting hindquarters, flanks, neck, and face.  Wolves will eat the animal where it died and often scatter the carcass throughout the site as each wolf takes its own piece to consume.  Wolves will often chew on all the bones.  The site of an animal killed by wolves is often a much messier scene than that of one killed by a mountain lion.  There’s often very little of the carcass remaining when we get there.

Calf elk killed by wolves

Elk calf killed by wolves
Creative Commons Licence
Idaho Department of Fish and Game

So, what have we learned?  In the normal to mild winters of 2015 and 2016, 80% of the elk calves survived from January to June; 14% were killed by mountain lions, 3% were killed by wolves, 1% died of disease, and 2% were unknown deaths.  A survival rate of 80% for 6 month old calves is very high.

2015-2016 calf mortality graph

Creative Commons Licence
Idaho Department of Fish and Game

In the colder, snowy winter of 2017, 50% of the elk calves survived.  Interestingly enough, the predation rates were similar to the milder winters; 16% were killed by mountain lions and 6% were killed by wolves.  Starvation (16%), heavy parasite loads (2%), and disease (2%) accounted for the difference in survival rates among the winters.  Calves were in worse body condition in 2017 as determined by bone marrow condition.  We could not determine cause of death in 8% of the cases.

2017 R1 calf mortality graph

Creative Commons Licence
Idaho Department of Fish and Game

What do these calf survival rates mean for the elk population?  We are working on some modeling now, incorporating other information like cow survival rates, calf:cow ratios that we get during our winter aerial surveys, and the percent of spikes in the harvest.  Once we get the results of the modeling , we’ll report to you on that.

Our jobs can certainly be gruesome at times, but it rewarding to determine what is happening with our elk populations so we can make informed management decisions.

Mt lion caching elk carcass

Mountain lion caching elk carcass
Creative Commons Licence
Idaho Department of Fish and Game

Source: Wildlife CSI – Panhandle elk mortality study | Idaho Fish and Game

Comments

  1. Readers will remember also that successful predation rates rise when prey are close to exhaustion and death from starvation.
    Some ungulates, deer, increase twinning and thus reproduction in response to predation stress. Little or no study on this has occurred for Cervus/elk. However, twinning is lower in elk (<1%) and some prenatal absorption occurs under high stress.
    High population density always reduces fertility in ungulates.
    High forage abundance results in higher reproduction.
    Elk are early to mid-successional foragers, and the famous population drop situation in the Lolo district (SE of the panhandle area) was determined by field biologists to be the result of forest succession to later more mature, forest, and had nothing to do with predation,
    which was not significantly additive.

    Although wolf-induced mortality can be extrapolated as being up to 12% or so, from the two-year study, Recreational hunting is the main cause of mortality in western elk populations, according to Wisdom et al. back around 2000. Since these tend to be removed from the landscape, the above article's Calf mortality may be influenced in other ways by the human stressors of noise, or any threatening activity sensed by females and young (elk are famous for exiting the watershed upon hearing gunfire; this is part of the rationale for recently introduced US legislation seeking to legalize suppressors and silencers) . This major source of stress would tend to increase difficulties in their life, and contribute to higher mortality, even when studies are separated by months.
    I am sure that researchers will quickly hypothesize the cascading results of such stressors, especially with any comparison of unexploited herds to those exploited. There are few if any unexploited herds in Idaho, and it may be difficult to find similar habitat that remains unexploited by public hunting. YNP would not appear to be sufficiently similar, as elk disperse from there in fall both toward human-exploited and exclusion areas, and to the National Elk Refuge in the Jackson Hole area.
    Naive wolves are quickly killed in the small divisions of Wyoming wolf managment units around the Refuge.

    I do not cite sources for these comments; they are easily available for those with interest in the subject and variables.

  2. These facts are interesting, but not surprising! Those of us who live in Idaho know that wolves are not now, nor have they ever been the reason for abnormal or escalated ungulate population declination. Fairy tales? I wouldn’t put it so whimsical. Vicious, propaganda or manufactured lies by those who know how to work the system is the plain hard facts here. Hunters or livestock ranchers know that bending or molding to fit their lies are sucessful because of 100 years of practice. I know they do this, you know they do this, and unless IDFG are all dumb as a box of rocks-; know they do this. But bottom line is they can’t be bothered with facts when the working and mutually beneficial model that has slithered into place works, for all except their targeted scape goat or “scape wolf”.
    I believe this, what I personally call “good ol’boy” mentality is solidly entrenched in their conceit and feelings of “entitlements” that they have honed to a secret nod. The only way to fight this “fraternal order of shoot, shovel and shutup” can only be achieve through vigilencey “in your face tenacity”. We must maintain a united, informed and unrelenting front, be in their rear view mirror. We need to create a media blitze, catching their eyes in our headlights!
    In no way am I suggesting stooping to their loathsome level.But rather hit them where they live…in the only place that they would truly feel..yes, hit them on their shiny moneyclips! Boycott beef, create redtape quagmires, impact tourist dollars and call them on their cowshitt!
    Only with a concerted, strategic, and united front, do we have any hope in winning…tick..tick…tick…I would like to suggest a list of who’s who! Names, contact information and area of expertise be created. Strategic staging rallys to generate public support. Chip away at their credibility. (not much to chisle there). TOGETHER we can stop this organized crime ring. Alone, we are like the lone wolf, noble in deed- but
    ill-equipped to weather the tornado we are caught up in!

  3. These facts are interesting, but not surprising! Those of us who live in Idaho know that wolves are not now, nor have they ever been the reason for abnormal or escalated ungulate population declination. Fairy tales? I wouldn’t put it so whimsically. Vicious, propaganda or manufactured lies by those who know how to work the system is the plain hard facts here. Hunters or livestock ranchers know that bending or molding to fit their agendas, (lies) are sucessful because of 100 years of practice. I know they do this, you know they do this, and unless IDFG are all dumb as a box of rocks-; know they do this. But bottom line is they can’t be bothered with facts when the working and mutually beneficial model that has slithered into place works! (For all except their targeted scape goat or “scape wolf”.
    I believe this, what I personally call “good ol’boy” mentality is solidly entrenched in their conceit and feelings of “entitlement” that they have honed to a secret nod. The only way to fight this “fraternal order of shoot, shovel and shutup” can be achieved, is through vigilance and “in your face tenacity”. We must maintain a united, informed and unrelenting front, be in their rear view mirror too! We need to create a media blitze, catching their eyes in our headlights!
    In no way am I suggesting stooping to their loathsome level. But rather hit them where they live…in the only place that they would truly feel..yes, hit them in their shiny moneyclips, (blow those coveted clips UP!) Boycott beef, create redtape quagmires, impact tourist dollars and call them on their cowshitt!
    Only with a concerted, strategic, and united front, do we have any hope in winning…tick..tick…tick…My idea is to create a list of who’s who! Our own network, with names, contact information, etc., and area of expertise. Get everyone in sync, dedicate a n internet monitor, responsible for updates, and current strategic staging.
    Have locationally diverse rallys (advertised in various media outlets, to generate public interest and support. Chip away at their credibility. (not much to chisle there). TOGETHER we can stop this organized crime ring. Alone, we are like the lone wolf, noble in deed- but
    ill-equipped to weather the freezing wind, with a growling stomache!

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