Minnesota’s governor-turned-presidential-candidate is taking some flack in the local hunting community for his hunting ethics.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty has taken a drubbing from hunters for not tracking down a deer he shot on opening day of Minnesota’s firearm deer season.

A headline on deerhuntingchat.com calls the possible presidential candidate a “slob hunter” for wounding a deer on Nov. 7 and then leaving for a Republican fundraiser in Iowa before the animal could be found.

After the governor shot the deer at 7 a.m. from more than 200 yards away, he and his brother Dan, an accomplished hunter, went to where they last saw the animal.

Finding blood but no deer, they returned to base camp for breakfast and to consider their next move.

We all know these politician out hunting things are staged events, part of a campaign itinerary, and Pawlenty can’t be blamed too much for having another appointment to make, especially if there were other hunters in the party able to search for the deer.

But that part about finding the blood at 7 A.M. and then retiring for breakfast to consider the next move is a bit problematic. When you’ve taken your shot and found blood, the next move is to find the deer, no consideration needed.

Today’s the opening of deer hunting season here in Minnesota, and for once it looks like the lawmakers and wildlife officials are a step ahead of the hunters when it comes to the advantages of new technology.

Tweet this: No, you can’t use Twitter to help take a whitetail beginning Saturday, when the state’s 2009 firearms deer season begins. Nor can you text your buddies, saying, for example, that the deer of a lifetime is ambling their way and that they should GET READY.

Minnesota law has long prohibited the taking of game by hunters with the use of two-way radios and, more recently, cell phones. And while the statute doesn’t specifically address written communication carried over the airways, the Department of Natural Resources said this week its interpretation of the law covers all communication using radios and phones, regardless of its form.

Of course, hunting is starting just as I’m typing this, so there isn’t much chance any Minnesota deer hunter is going to read it before heading into the field. Maybe if I sent it out on twitter…

It was noted here a couple of weeks ago that wolf hunting near Yellowstone Park in Montana had been suspended due to a greater than expected number of wolf kills. Now it turns out that one of those wolves had a Minnesota connection.

In life, 527F was reclusive — even for an alpha-female wolf. Her territory was so remote that researchers studying wolves in Yellowstone National Park rarely saw her. But they knew a lot about her because for five years she wore a radio collar disclosing her travels, her mating and her kills.

In death, though, 527F is making an uncharacteristic publicity splash.

A hunter shot 527F on Oct. 3. She had strayed nearly a mile outside of Yellowstone into the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, where Montana had opened its first legal wolf-hunting season in decades. In all, four of the 10 Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolves in Yellowstone’s Cottonwood Pack, including one other radio-collared female, were shot.

The loss of 527F leaves a hole in research that had been under way at the University of Minnesota and elsewhere, said Daniel MacNulty, a U of M research associate.

The whole article, from MinnPost, is well worth reading. It goes in to some depth regarding the relationship between the Yellowstone wolves, elk, and local ranchers and hunters who tend to blame the wolves for everything that goes wrong with either their livestock and one of their, and the wolves, favorite game animals. The re-introduction of wolves in Yellowstone may look like a resounding success from a ways away, but it’s evident that the locals are still having some problems with it. Given ranchers and other inhabitants of the American West’s traditional attitudes toward wolves that’s hardly a surprise, but it’s still a fair bet that enthusiasm for killing wolves goes well beyond the limits set by wilflife managers on the scope of the wolf hunting season in Montana.

Today is Blog Action Day, an event where bloggers around the world focus in on a special topic. This year’s topic is climate change. Since the discussion of climate change, especially its effect on wildlife and habitat, is a continuing theme here at Thinking Outside, I’m not writing a specific new post on the topic, that will still be happening on a regular basis.

Instead, I’d like to encourage everyone to keep an eye open for the topic to come up on their favorite blogs, and, if you’d like, take a tour through past Thinking Outside posts that have touched on the topic of climate change.

Climate change is a fact, it’s going to affect all our lives, and those of us interested in outdoors issues need to be especially aware of climate change, what we’ve done to make it happen, and what we can do to try and fix the problem. There are lots of serious problems facing the human race, but don’t be surprised if, in a couple of generations, your grandchildren are asking why those of us living at a time when the problem became evident didn’t do more to make things better.

It’s been expressed here that the new wolf-hunting season in Montana and Idaho could suffer from an excess of zeal among hunters long conditioned to fear the animals. Well, the reason is not yet known, but that hunters are killing wolves in greater numbers than expected in the Yellowstone area is already a fact.

Montana’s inaugural wolf hunting season has been almost too successful in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness.

Nine wolves have been killed by hunters in the area along the northern border of Yellowstone National Park, including four from the Cottonwood Pack, two of which were radio-collared as part of the park’s wolf studies.

The large kill in the Absaroka-Beartooth has surprised Montana’s wolf manager.

“We didn’t think wolves would be that vulnerable to firearms harvest,” said Carolyn Sime, wolf program coordinator for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. “The uncertainty is why we went with a low quota to begin with.”

The total quota for the hunting district, one of four backcountry wolf-hunting districts in the state, is only 12 wolves. The season opened Sept. 15, while the general season, which encompasses the entire state, opens Oct. 25.
“It is conceivable that three more wolves could be harvested in the backcountry and the season could be closed before it opens in the front country,” Sime said.

That quote was from October 5, to their credit, Montana’s wildlife managers acted this week to suspend the wolf hunt near Yellowstone until the general season opens on October 25. While their concern is that too successful a hunt in the Yellowstone area will cause a reduction in quotas elsewhere, there’s no doubt they were surprised by the speed and success of wolf hunts near Yellowstone.

That seems a little unbelievable. How could any professional wildlife manager, knowing the history of human and wolf interaction in the West, be surprised that, given the chance, hunters would shoot wolves as fast as they can?

I’ve let it be known here a few times that I’m no lover of ATV’s. The damage they can cause when misused, plus the noise they make coming down an otherwise peaceful trail are a pain.

My personal complaints can be fairly easily dismissed by an ATV lover though as the predictable rantings of one of those left-wing type hikers who doesn’t fish or hunt anyway.

But when the criticism comes from someone who is an outdoors community insider, who does hunt and fish and all the rest, it’s a little tougher to dismiss. Dennis Anderson is the outdoors columnist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and when it comes to ATV’s and hunting grouse, he doesn’t like what he sees.

Some say hunters and anglers, no matter their differences, should stick together, knowing that no single activity — walleye angling to dove shooting — has universal appeal, even among sporting types. Live and let live, the thinking goes, lest hunters and anglers become divided among themselves, and everyone loses.

That said, count me out when the subject is “hunting” ruffed grouse by four-wheeler, a practice I find demeaning not only to the sport of upland hunting, but to ruffed grouse.

While Anderson is concerned with rutted trails and the possibility of ATV hunters success leading to an over-harvest of grouse, he also sees long-term implications for the attitudes of hunters in general if they continue to rely on ATV’s.

Barring that, Minnesota will raise still more generations of grouse “hunters” whose primary concern about the birds isn’t their habitats and the purchase and maintenance thereof, but whether trails leading into grouse woods are open to ATVs.

This is no small deal. Hunters who pass enough time chasing grouse away from trails soon develop keen appreciations for aspen cuttings, willow thickets and alder lowlands. Wear out enough boot leather and you, too, over time might concern yourself with forest management and — perhaps, even — the politics tied thereto.

A trail-loving hiker couldn’t have said it better.

The last possible roadblock in the way of the first legal wolf hunt in years has been cleared, and the hunt is on.

With four gray wolves already shot in Idaho, a federal judge in Montana has cleared the way for legal hunting of the once-endangered predators to proceed in Idaho and Montana.

U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy found there would be no irreparable harm if the hunt goes forward, though he warned that a coalition of conservation groups represented by Earthjustice have a good chance of prevailing later on their argument that it was wrong to remove endangered species protections for wolves in Idaho and Montana, but not in Wyoming.

Legal wolf hunting opened in two areas of Idaho on Sept. 1 and will expand to most of the state by the end of the month. Montana’s wolf season opens Sept. 15.

It looks like wolf hunting is going to be fairly popular. Over twelve thousand tags have been sold in Idaho, and over seven thousand in Montana.

Those who fear that animosity towards wolves could get out of hand already saw at least one sign that their fears could come true.

An Eagle, Idaho, man was cited for poaching Tuesday when he shot a wolf on a public road from the back of his pickup truck in an area not open for wolf hunting. The man told officers he thought he was in a legal zone until he later checked a map.

The wolf was a small female, still a pup, according to the fish and game department. Officers, who have not filed charges pending an investigation, seized the wolf hide and skull, a camera, rifle and hunting tag.]

That didn’t take long.

In Montana and Idao, they’re prepping for the first licensed wolf hunt in many years.

Starting today, hunters can walk into any license vendor in Idaho and buy a tag to kill a gray wolf.

Vendors such as Daniel Stephenson, owner of River of No Return Taxidermy in Salmon, Idaho, expect robust demand.

“In our area, there’re lots of [wolves] and they’re not a real popular thing for deer and elk hunters,” Stephenson said. “So everybody wants a chance to go get one.”

The Idaho Fish and Game Commission approved a plan August 17 to allow up to 220 wolves to be killed by the public this coming fall and winter. Licensed hunters will be allowed to kill wolves starting September 1. Most hunting will be finished by December 31.

Montana, another state with a growing wolf population, already approved a 75-animal quota for its wolf hunt, which gets underway September 15 and lasts until November 29.

In both states, wolves have been removed from the Endangered Species List and the states management plans have been approved. There’s no wolf hunting in Wyoming yet, because they’re still fighting over the state’s proposed management plan.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out, how many wolves are actually taken and how it affects the population. In one sense, this is exactly how the Endangered Species Act is supposed to wrk. A species is protected until it recovers enough to be returned to local management and rules. But with long-standing human animosity towards wolves, whether the states’ management will work remains to be seen.

And there are still lawsuits waiting to be played out, seeking to prevent the hunt. Those cases are scheduled to be decided by the end of August.

Moose only live in the northeastern corner of Minnesota, so their population is pretty closely monitored, and the rules regarding hunting of moose, especially regarding number of licenses issues, is a yearly question. This year, despite some reservations, the hunt is on.

Despite fears that the population is crashing, a special committee reporting to the Department of Natural Resources recommended today that the population will hold its own “for the foreseeable future.”

And despite the threat to the species posed by what the committee called “the long-term threat” of climate change, it recommended that moose hunting can continue in the northeastern part of the state.

The committee was formed, in part, because moose numbers have declined dramatically in northwestern Minnesota during the past two decades and appear to be dropping in northeast Minnesota.

Earlier this year, the DNR reported that the 2008 survey of the animals found a statewide population of about 7,600 animals.

A couple interesting things going on here. First, the future of moose hunting season may depend in part on an expaned deer hunt in the same part of the state. There’s a parasite that passes from white-tailed deer to moose, so fewer deer, fewer moose with parasites.

Second, it’s a good bet that many of the members of the committee are hunters, so it’s good to see them recognize climate change as a factor in the future of the moose population in Minnesota.

Committee chairman Rolf Peterson said committee members recognize climate change as a clear long-term threat to the persistence of moose in Minnesota but weren’t able to quantify the extent of the threat during the next half-century.

There’s still nothing like the topic of wolves in the Western U.S. to stir up a controversy, and you can bet that’s exactly what we’re going to get now that Montana and Idaho are firming up their plans for a hunting season on wolves.

The states of Montana and Idaho are going ahead with plans for an open-season hunt against wolves in September, in which licensed members of the public can take part.

The decisions follow a ruling earlier this year by the Obama administration, widely criticised by environmentalists, to remove wolves from the list of endangered species in the Rocky Mountain states. The interior secretary, Ken Salazar, was endorsing a decision by the Bush adminstration.

Montana wildlife commissioners voted yesterday to allow hunters to kill about 75 wolves, which is about 15% of the state’s population. Officials in Idaho will meet later this month to decide on their quota. But earlier plans called for hunting of up to 250 wolves.

Federal and state government biologists claim the wolf population in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho has grown so rapidly since the species was re-introduced to the region in the mid-1990s that it has become a choice between ranchers’ family pets and livestock, and wolves.

The recovery of wolf populations and their removal from the endangered and threatened species lists is, one hand, one of the major wildlife success stories of our time, and, on the other, a continuing of one of the most misunderstood predators in the world. Few animals stir human emotions as much as wolves, and the management of wolf populations is one of the major dividing lines that separate rural from urban dwellers, ranchers and hunters from environmentalists.

That the wolf populations have increased is not in dispute, whether or not hunting is the best method to regulate the population is. There’s still much to learn about how species survive, and one major question remaining is to what extent genetic diversity, and not just raw numbers, is a factor in that survival.

But critics say the administration based its decision on science that is decades out of date, and does not take into account a growing body of evidence for the importance of protecting genetic diversity. If the wolf population dwindles too much – or if wolves survive only in isolated pockets – inbreeding would endanger their future.

“The recovery plan for wolves in the Rocky Mountains dates from the 1980s and has no reference to modern genetics,” said Michael Robinson, a conservationist for the Center for Biological Diversity.

For evidence of what can happen to a species population that becomes isolated, there’s no need to look any further than the wolves of Isle Royale National Park.