Montana's wolf season closes after 72 kills

Montana's first fair-chase wolf hunt ended Nov. 16, three wolves shy of the statewide quota of 75.

That was close enough for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks to pull the plug on the season, lest the hunt go over the quota. Had the quota not been approached, the season would have run through Sunday.

Idaho hunters have killed more than half of the 220 statewide quota, and Idaho Fish and Game commissioners this month extended the season until March 31 in wolf zones that have not reached their quotas.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials said before the season that the state's wolf hunt would be a learning experience. As much as it was a hunt to manage wolves, it was also an experiment to see how a wolf season would work and how a hunt should be run. It was a season to build on for the future.

"We feel pretty good about how the season went. We need to make some adjustments and perhaps create some sub-quotas in some areas," said Shane Colton, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission chairman from Billings.

"But overall, this season was a clear indicator that the state of Montana and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks can manage wolves responsibly and we should be able to continue to do so," he said.

Montana's wolf population was about 500 at the end of 2008 in 84 verified packs with 34 breeding pairs. The Rocky Mountain region has about 1,650 wolves.

"We stayed conservative because we wanted to get a hunt on the ground. All along we said this was going to be a year to see how it goes and make adjustments from there," Colton said.

That 72 wolves were actually taken by hunters came as a surprise considering that wolves are generally very secretive and are considered difficult to hunt.

"Wolf numbers are clearly robust. The fact we reached a quota shows that the numbers are robust. There wasn't anyone who thought we were going to get more than about 45," Colton said. "Maybe the numbers are more robust than we think. Maybe we caught them by surprise. No one knows."

The early-season hit on the Cottonwood Pack in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness near Yellowstone National Park, including the taking of the alpha female that had been tracked by radio for five years by researchers, caused a stir in the scientific community.

Wolf hunter numbers came as a bit of a surprise with 16,500 individuals purchasing licenses. With a quota of 75, that meant just one out of every 208 hunters would fill a tag, a hunting success rate of less than half of 1 percent.

But another reality is that the $325,859 generated by those license sales isn't going to come close to paying the bills for wolf management in Montana.

According to Carolyn Sime, who heads Fish, Wildlife and Parks' wolf program, an analysis from Montana's 2003 wolf management plan puts the state's annual cost for wolves in the $907,000 to $948,000 range.

And all plans for future hunts may change depending on what happens in the courtroom.

A lawsuit to end wolf hunting and put wolves back on the endangered species list filed by 13 environmental groups will be heard in federal court in Missoula early next year. Among the issues in the suit is that you can't delist wolves in Montana and Idaho while keeping the contiguous wolf population of Wyoming on the list.