Competitive hunting of wolves, coyotes in Idaho sparks outcry
Laura Zuckerman
Reuters
7:14 p.m. CST, December 11, 2013
SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) – The first statewide competition in decades to hunt wolves and coyotes in Idaho has sparked outrage among wildlife conservationists, who condemned it as “an organized killing contest.”
The so-called coyote and wolf derby is slated for the weekend of December 28-29 in the mountain town of Salmon, Idaho, where ranchers and hunting guides contend wolves and coyotes threaten livestock and game animals prized by sportsmen.
The tournament offers cash and trophies to two-person teams for such hunting objectives as killing the largest wolf and the most female coyotes. Children as young as 10 will be welcomed to compete in a youth division.
Idaho opened wolves to licensed hunting more than two years ago after assuming regulation of its wolf population from the federal government.
But Idaho Department of Fish and Game wolf manager Jason Husseman said the upcoming event is believed to be the first competitive wolf shoot to be held in the continental United States since 1974, when wolves across the country came under federal Endangered Species Act protections.
The wolf, an apex predator that once ranged throughout North America, had by then been hunted, trapped and poisoned to the brink of extinction in the lower 48 states.
Wolves in the Northern Rockies, including Idaho, and in the western Great Lakes were removed from the federal threatened and endangered species list in recent years as their populations climbed and federal wildlife managers declared them recovered. The Obama administration earlier this year proposed removing most wolves nationwide from the list.
The upcoming derby is being sponsored by Idaho for Wildlife, a nonprofit whose aim is “to fight against all legal and legislative attempts by the animal rights and anti-gun organizations” to impose restrictions on hunting or guns, according to the group’s website.
When contacted by telephone on Wednesday about the event, organizer and Idaho big-game outfitter Shane McAfee said media inquiries were not welcome.
Similar contests tied just to coyotes – allowed to be shot on sight as nuisances in much of the U.S. West – have prompted protests in recent years in states such as New Mexico, where many ranchers and hunters endorse the competitive hunts.
Lynne Stone, director of the Boulder-White Clouds Council, an Idaho conservation group, called the planned wolf-coyote derby “an organized killing contest.”
“Stacking up dead animals and awarding children for killing them has no place in a civilized society,” she said.
But Barbara Soper, whose 11-year-old daughter has registered to team with an adult hunter for the Idaho competition, said she and her husband are all for it.
“It’s my daughter’s first big adventure, and she thinks it’s awesome,” Soper said.
(Reporting by Laura Zuckerman; Editing by Steve Gorman and Lisa Shumaker)
Copyright © 2013, Reuters
Exposing the Big Game 
“It’s my daughter’s first big adventure, and she thinks it’s awesome,” Soper said.
It all start at the childhood… Most of the hunters i know started to hunt when they were kid, and today they can’t stop because it is their so called “passion”! Don’t impose something on your kids when you know they don’t have the appropriate age to make decisions by themselves.
I’m pretty sure there would be close to ZERO hunters on this planet if parents would be responsible enough.
That part literally made me sick. Like… really?
@Ted – I agree with you 100%. Did you happen to see the front page of yesterday’s NY Times? They had a picture of a boy holding a dead wild turkey. I think the article said the boy was 7 years old when he murdered his first innocent animal. I didn’t get a chance to read the full story but I plan to tonight.
And thus my tolerance for humanity goes out the window.
And someone already has a petition up.http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-the-salmod-idaho-coyote-and-wolf-derby
Signed and shared.
Note that NAPA Auto Parts is one of the sponsors, and perhaps the only sponsor we can leverage to pull out. Will be posting contact info around this afternoon.
Please post any contact info for them here too Will. Thanks!
Will do. Am working on it now. The NAPA store in Salmon, Idaho is an independently-owned location. Looking at additional approaches now.
While the most appealing and just response to such a killing derby would be the detonation of a neutron bomb over the town center of Salmon, Idaho, access to such devices is so limited as to make that option impractical. However, the poster advertising the contest does list a number of local businesses that presumably are associated with physical facilities worth some monetary value to their owners. And your typical small town businessmen, being the ethically slippery and sleazy creatures that they are, would presumably rather not see those facilities jeopardized by some force of nature, say, acting on behalf of a higher form of justice. Thus is born the rationale, as detailed in a previous post about the fictional “Operation Kropotkin”, for making such sponsorships so potentially fraught with negative consequences that businesses, which are all about making and keeping money, would naturally shy away from publicly supporting such outrageous events. The concept is not difficult to understand: it’s called “deterrence”. And all that’s lacking here are some bold and brave operatives who take the concept of “earth-justice” seriously and have access to a box of matches.
The problem with the neutron bomb solution is that there may be a few good wolf protectors in Salmon at the time and we can’t afford to lose any…
You have a point there although I’d wager that among Salmon’s 3,000 benighted residents, you’d be hard-put to find many wolf supporters. And any that are out there would probably keep their opinions to themselves lest they come under attack by wolf-abusing local yokels I’d be more inclined to eschew the nuclear option because of potential collateral damage to resident dogs, stray cats, birds, rats and mice, whose welfare I’d be far more concerned about than that of the human vermin.
Nevertheless and from a less fanciful perspective, there will always be unintended collateral damage in any war: innocent victims caught up by events they had no role in triggering. But make no mistake, this is (or should be) approached as a true “war” pitting the forces of good against those of evil. In a war you accord your enemy no quarter; and particularly in this war, where the stakes are so high (survival of the planet), no option should be “off the table.” That’s been the self-imposed handicap that many ARAs and most of the pro-environmental community labor under: they persist in naively believing that you can win a street fight with herbal tea and wiffle bats.
You’re right about the dogs, feral cats, birds, rats and mice vrs. the deserving vermin. I wasn’t thinking there might be wolf proponents among Salmon’s residents, I was hoping some staunch wolf defender would say “enough” and show up there for a bit of hands-on derby deterrent. I’d hate to hear that while they showed up with bats, someone else decided to nuke the place…
Sick sick sick, I’m so pissed!
This is horrible , What has humanity come too ? All we ever focas on is killing and it makes me sick .Shame on you Idaho .This is truly Americas worst state .
People are sick. Truly.