Wolf hunting

[12] With the extinction of the wolf in metropolitan France, the office of Wolfcatcher Royal was modified in 1971 and now serves an administrative function regulating vermin and maintaining healthy wildlife populations.

[17] In an 1856 brochure, the Hungarian nationalist exile István Türr noted, among many other grievances against Habsburg rule in his country, that "Since the restriction of the liberty of hunting and the seizure of all arms in Hungary, wild beasts have so multiplied, that, besides an enormous damage done to the crops, the flocks, and the poultry, the wolves venture, not only into villages, but into the very towns, and besides doing fearful depredations, attack even people.

The number of "Kreisjäger" (district huntsmen appointed by the government) is not sufficient to destroy them; arid in consequence of the universal dislike to public functionaries, increased still more by the circumstance that they are not Hungarians, the landed proprietors do not allow them to hunt on their grounds.

[19] The Swedish kings Magnus Eriksson and Christopher of Bavaria decreed wolf hunting a civic duty, with only priests, parish clerks and landless women exempted.

[22] In Czarist Russia, before the emancipation reform of 1861, wolf hunting was done solely by authorized firearm holders, usually police, soldiers, rich landowners or nobles.

[34] The Cherokee feared that the unjust killing of a wolf would bring about the vengeance of its pack mates, and that the weapon used for the deed would be useless in future unless exorcised by a medicine man.

[34] Civilians turned bounty hunters known as "wolfers" began killing ungulates in large numbers as bait, poisoning the meat in hopes of attracting unsuspecting wolves.

[47] A government-backed wolf extermination program was initiated in 1948 after serious declines in caribou herds in the Northern Territories and a rabies concern due to wolves migrating south near populated areas.

The recent Wolf expansion even to the mountains of Madrid, has generated a great controversy in Autonomous Community of Castile-León over whether to allow hunting also south of the Duero river.

[67] This is why large numbers of people support the Protect America's Wildlife (PAW) Act which was proposed to Congress by George Miller, the state representative of California in July 2009.

The PAW Act is urgently needed to close the loophole in federal law and protect our nation's wildlife from the unethical and unsportsmanlike practice of airborne hunting.

[69] After the gray wolf was removed from the endangered species list for the western great lakes region in January 2012, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources instituted a hunting season to manage the population.

In Oregon although the gray wolf, Canis lupus,[84] was controversially removed from the state's endangered species list, the killing of wolves remains strictly illegal.

[86] In addition to trapping, there is no limit to the number of tags wolf hunters can possess, therefore making the hunting of wolves legal year round in the state of Idaho.

Though once abundant over much of North America and Eurasia, the grey wolf inhabits a very small portion of its former range because of widespread destruction of its habitat; in some regions it is endangered or threatened.

[2] While not in the same class as high grade furbearers like beaver, otter or mink, the gray wolf's fur is nonetheless thick and durable,[96] and is primarily used for scarfs and the trimmings of women's garments, though it is occasionally used for jackets, short capes, coats,[97] mukluks and rugs.

[98] Aside from bodily protection and adornment, gray wolf pelts have also been used as camouflage in hunting and warfare, as an insignia among western Native Americans and as a form of currency.

[99] In Scandinavian folklore, wolf-skin girdles assisted in transforming the wearers into werewolves,[100] while several Native American tribes used wolf pelts for medicinal purposes.

Nuxálk mothers painted wolf gall bladders on their young male children's backs, so they could grow up to perform religious ceremonies without making mistakes as hunters.

Most Native American tribes, especially the Naskapis, viewed wolf flesh as edible but inadequate nutrition, as it was not a herbivore and thus did not possess the same healing qualities thought to be distinct in plant eaters.

[30] The "Derboun" of the Arabian mountains and southern Syria was a small black wolf which apparently was considered by the Arabs to be more closely related to dogs, as they freely ate its flesh like any other game, unlike with regular wolves which had an unpleasant odour.

[108] During Vilhjalmur Stefansson's Arctic expedition in 1913, George H. Wilkins sampled cooked wolf meat and commented that it was "fine eating" and noted a resemblance to chicken.

The others took the joke in good part, and one and all declared they had detected nothing in the dish to excite suspicion in the least degree.Wolf meat was eaten several times during Vilhjalmur Stefansson's 1913 Arctic expedition, particularly during the summer, when wolves were fat.

[114] Accounts on how wolf meat tastes vary greatly, with descriptions ranging from "tough",[115] "gristly",[116] "distasteful" and "smelly",[113] to "somewhat [resembling] chicken",[117] and "very superior to lean venison".

The federal legislation does have a provision for predator control, permitting state employees or licensed individuals to shoot from an aircraft for the sake of protecting "land, water, wildlife, livestock, domesticated animals, human life, or crops".

[132] But since this sort of poison caused pain and brutal death for the animals who swallowed it strychnine baits, capable of killing wolves, were banned in 1972 by the US government and in 2006 by the European Union.

[141] Wolf hunting proponents have drawn attention to the fact that wolves will on occasion commit acts of surplus killing when within the confines of human-made livestock shelters.

Opponents state that without wolves, prey populations swell unnaturally, unbalancing ecosystems whilst simultaneously sapping wildlife management resources.

Game animals in Yellowstone killed off all young, reachable tree saplings, destroying beaver, songbird, insect, fish and amphibian populations, and threatening to starve themselves via overexploitation.

A 10-year study in the former Soviet Union showed that in some regions, every successful wolf litter in spring coincided with a 100% increase in cestode infections in moose and wild boar, with some specimens having up to 30-40 cysts.