Ruffed Grouse, Dog and Wolves



cooter00

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I would have dropped that damn wolf right as it passed me my dog is my child and I will defend him like one
 

Retired Educator

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Read this yesterday. Sounded like it happened fast with little time to react. I'm thinking I would have been shooting the wolf but when there were children involved a person never knows how they would have reacted. Give the guy credit for realizing he needed to protect the children first.

On the other hand, shooting a protected animal, even when threatened, would most likely end up being a pain in the ass before all was said and done. You might need a signed affidavit from the dead wolf that admitted the person was innocent.
 


Duckslayer100

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dead wolf, no story, my Mo

Nobody gets in trouble if the body is never found. There are enough hungry critters in the woods that a carcass wouldn't last that long...

Biggest issue would be just keeping your own yap shut. But folks have a problem with that.
 

cooter00

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It would not have been in the paper I can tell you that there would be a big unmarked grave for him and as many of his buddies I could have dispatched �� the three S's shoot shovel shutup
 

remm

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The wolf stood by at 15 feet when he was loading kids into the pickup? Nope. At least one wolf would have perished, possibly more from the rifle under the back seat and this story would have never been written. Kids would have told their buddies that dad shot a couple coyotes when we went grouse hunting. End of story.
 

SDMF

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Not sure what I'd have done. If you shoot the wolf without tooth-marks in a human or video proof of a human in grave danger, you're in for one giant pain in the backside before the ordeal is over. Even with toothmarks in a human, they're likely going to try and match/compare them to your own dog's teeth before believing a wolf chewed on the human. Dumping the wolf to save your dog is still going to get you in deep doo-doo. Says right in the article that wolves may not be killed except in defense of HUMAN life.

As for the SSS theory, that's problematic as well. Most folks have a hard time with the "Shut-up" part. Secondly, the areas of MN where I've hunted ruffs are flown a LOT by MNDNR. Animal trails are pretty easy to see from the air as would be a fresh shallow grave. If you leave the thing to let the other animals scavenge it, there'll be trails and the leaves will be gone before the carcass is and it'll be visible, especially from the air. Once the carcass is found, they're going to work pretty hard to get to the bottom of the story. Trying to explain that the wolf was chasing your dog or threatening your children days, weeks, or months after the carcass is found is a mighty tall order.

I'm no wolf lover and if it were up to me, they'd be treated just like coyotes, shoot on sight year 'round. But, that's not the reality right now and the chances of SSS working out in your favor are really pretty damned thin.
 

guywhofishes

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[h=1]Minnesota man involved in wolf killings gets lifetime firearms ban[/h]






wpid-20120316_082320_isleRoyaleWolf.jpg


A gray wolf is shown on Isle Royale National Park in northern Michigan in this 2006 file photo. (AP Photo/Michigan Technological University, John Vucetich) By David Hanners | Pioneer Press
PUBLISHED: March 6, 2013 at 11:01 pm | UPDATED: November 5, 2015 at 12:23 pm






As punishments go, the month Vern Hoff must spend in a halfway house for his crime may pass quickly. But as a federal judge noted Thursday, the lifetime ban on firearms will require some big adjustments for the man who took his new bride hunting for their honeymoon.
“Your inability to possess firearms is going to require a real change in lifestyle for you,” U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery told Hoff as she sentenced him for his role in an ill-conceived caper and attempted cover-up involving two dead gray wolves in the Superior National Forest.
Hunting has been a big part of life for Hoff, 55, whose Finland home is “a trophy case” of mounted game, his defense attorney said.
Losing the right to have hunting rifles “probably hurts him more than anything that happened here in the courtroom,” defense attorney Dan Scott told the judge. She agreed.
Hoff was one of two men indicted last July for killing the wolves; Hoff was also accused of lying about it to federal investigators. The other man took a plea bargain; Hoff went to trial.
In November, a federal jury in Duluth acquitted Hoff of conspiracy but convicted him of a felony count of lying to a federal officer and a misdemeanor count of violating the Endangered Species Act. At the time of the February 2010 incident, gray wolves were protected species, and hunting them was illegal. They were removed from the endangered list in Minnesota in January 2012.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Provinzino had asked Montgomery to lock Hoff up for at least three months, half the maximum called for by federal sentencing guidelines. The prosecutor said Hoff had long thumbed his nose at authority in general and wildlife laws in particular.
Calling the crime “cowardly,” she said Hoff has “a deep disregard both for authority and for the law” and that he’d shown “no sense of contrition or sense of responsibility.”
Given the chance to speak, Hoff apologized “for being a burden to the court” and also apologized to his wife, seated in the gallery’s front row.
“I’m here to take responsibility for my actions,” he said to end his brief comments.
Hoff owns Vern Hoff Land Construction, a company with contracts to plow snow on forest roads and clear waste trees from federal land. He and his employees were on one such job the morning of Feb. 17, 2010, when the events that led to the charges unfolded.
Employees Kyler James Jensen, then 30, of Silver Bay, and Samuel Underwood, then 39, of Aurora, were driving to the worksite in the Superior National Forest when they rounded a corner and came upon five gray wolves trotting down a freshly plowed road.
Jensen sped up. Ridges of plowed snow lined the narrow lane and the wolves had no escape. Jensen told Underwood, “I’m going to get me some wolves,” hit the accelerator and ran over two of the animals.
The two men stopped at a clearing down the road. Jensen phoned Hoff and told him he’d killed two wolves.
“Good job!” Hoff allegedly replied.
Hoff then told Jensen to pick up the carcasses and bury them before the U.S. Forest Service forester they were working with arrived at the jobsite.
The men loaded the dead animals into the back of the truck. Later that day, Jensen bulldozed a trench and buried the carcasses.
He and Underwood — who had protested the killings — got off work about 5:30 p.m. and stopped at a bar for a couple of beers together.
Later that evening, Underwood went to Hoff’s home. He was angry he hadn’t been paid in two weeks, and told Hoff he wanted his money. As a prosecutor contended, “Hoff responded that pay was not his department and that he did not have a check.”
Things got heated. Hoff grabbed a pool cue and pointed it at his employee. Underwood grabbed the cue and snapped it over his knee, flinging the pieces to the floor. Hoff grabbed a shotgun and aimed it at Underwood.
Underwood grabbed that, too, wrestling it away from his boss. He told Hoff he’d return the shotgun when he got paid.
Hoff fired him and told him he’d mail his last paycheck to him.
Fuming, Underwood left and called the Lake County sheriff’s office to report the assault (a state court jury eventually acquitted Hoff in the assault) and then called the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to report the incident with the wolves.
Later that night, DNR Conservation Officer Daniel Thomasen and Special Agent Ronald Kramer of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service met Underwood in the national forest. Underwood had told them about the incident and Hoff’s involvement, and he planned to show them where Jensen buried the wolves.
As the three drove to the site, they encountered Jensen in his truck. Thomasen pulled him over and asked him what he was doing in the forest at 11:30 p.m.
“It probably has something to do with the two wolves that I hit this morning,” Jensen replied.
Jensen had come back out to the forest to dig up the carcasses. The lawmen could see parts of the animals sticking out from beneath a tarp in the back of his pickup.
Jensen lacked a driver’s license, and his lone passenger had been drinking, so Thomasen told Jensen to call someone to drive them home. He called Hoff.
When Hoff arrived, Kramer asked him if he knew anything about the wolves. Hoff denied knowing what Jensen had done, denied telling his employee to bury them and denied even having spoken to Jensen on the phone. (When he testified at his own trial, Hoff told jurors he didn’t know Jensen had intentionally killed the wolves.)
In July, Hoff and Jensen were indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiracy to violate the Endangered Species Act. They were also charged with violating the act (Jensen with two counts, Hoff with one), and Hoff was named in an additional count of making a false statement to a federal officer.
Jensen took a plea bargain in November, pleading to the two counts of violating the Endangered Species Act. His sentencing is scheduled for Monday.
Provinzino had argued that Hoff should get jail time because his crimes “were flagrant, intentional, and wholly unnecessary.” She also said he had a “significant criminal history dating to 1981, including numerous wilderness violations, for which there has been little accountability.”
She said he had illegally possessed wolf pelts in 1981, and in 2005, Canadian officials charged him with nonresident camping without a permit and fishing out of season; the Canadian Ministry of Natural Resources fined him and banned him from fishing for six months.
In 2006, Hoff was found to be in possession of a motorized auger in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and was convicted and ordered to pay a fine.
“Hoff’s conduct demonstrates a deep and long-standing disregard for fish and wildlife laws,” Provinzino wrote in a presentencing memo to the judge.
 


snow

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scary deal,I know of a walking trail in alaska folks use daily near anchorage,winter months its not unusal to see wolves/moose along the trail,the wolves harrase folks walking dogs and on occassion have taken said dog as a group,fearless coming in for the kill,but in AK most folks carry and its legal to shoot wolves.
 

Captain Ahab

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Wolves would have piled up like cordwood with my kids and dog in the mix. Not worth the chance and the SSS leason would have passed to the next generation.
 

wildeyes

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All i got is that would have been one mia wolf Period. AKA jimmy hoffa.
 


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