Hunter4Hunters shows partisan colors in new documentary

The group Hunters4Hunters is wading into partisan waters with a new documentary that blames wolves for the decline of northern Minnesota’s deer population and its livestock producers— and targets the DFL for allowing it to happen.
The hour-long documentary, titled “Minnesota: Fed to the Wolves,” advocates for the implementation of a wolf hunting season in the state. It includes interviews with several northeastern Minnesota residents, who recall in grisly detail the loss of pet dogs or livestock to wolf attacks. It also interviews resort owners, like Steve Koch of Melgeorge’s Resort north of Orr, on the loss of resort business as deer hunters have increasingly stayed away from the region due to recent declines in the white-tailed deer population. It’s a production that clearly aims to strike an emotional chord with people, to promote the political campaign of GOP gubernatorial candidate Lisa Demuth and Republicans in general.
The documentary hits home in its interviews with livestock producers who have lost large numbers of adult cattle and calves and the difficulty and lengthy timelines they face in getting compensated for those losses by the state. Whether one favors a wolf season or not, no one should find it acceptable that farmers and ranchers frequently lose significant amounts of revenue due to a public wildlife management decision. The state can and should do more to ensure that such losses are justly compensated— and quickly, not months down the road.
Even where money isn’t at issue, the personal heartbreak of losing a pet is real, and the in-person interviews in the documentary will undoubtedly pull at many heartstrings.
Yet there are logical inconsistencies that are glossed over by the grisly stories and images included in the documentary— foremost being the claim that a wolf hunting season would do much to resolve the legitimate concerns raised in the video. Regardless of one’s position on the merits of a wolf hunt, there is little reason to believe that a season would save pets or livestock from wolf attack or help the deer population recover.
As a number of livestock producers and even some pet owners noted during their interviews, federal trappers did respond to their reported losses and removed significant numbers of wolves, sometimes entire packs in their area. That’s the existing response to wolf complaints and it would appear to be a far more targeted and effective approach to the problem than a random wolf hunt could ever be.
There’s also little reason to believe that a wolf hunt would do much to reduce the wolf population, given the ability of wolves to quickly respond to losses through reproduction and the difficulty of hunting or trapping wolves in northern Minnesota’s dense forests. From 1849 through the mid-1960s, Minnesota used bounties and spent state tax dollars on sustained eradication efforts, and wolves were entirely unprotected in the state (meaning you could shoot any wolf you saw at any time) until 1974 when they were federally listed.
Yet go back and read some of the newspaper accounts of that era and you’ll find the exact same stories you hear today, of wolves roaming in towns, taking pets, and killing large numbers of deer. People seem to forget that the DNR closed the deer season statewide in 1971 because the numbers were so low, and that was at a time when the wolf population was believed to be around 750, and largely limited to northeastern Minnesota. Deer harvests throughout the 1970s were far below what we see today. Heavy snow winters and poor habitat were the primary drivers of the poor deer numbers then and we’re seeing some of the same factors impacting deer numbers in more recent years.
What’s more, we know that northwestern Ontario, just north of our border, has maintained a wolf season for decades and their deer populations and deer harvest rates are in virtual lockstep with what we see in the Minnesota’s border country.
What’s more, Minnesota’s three-year wolf season a decade ago had zero impact on the deer population. Indeed, deer numbers actually declined during that period, due to heavy snow winters that coincided with the years of legal wolf hunting.
In their press release announcing the release of the video, Hunters4Hunters suggests the film asks whether farms, ranchers, and pet owners should have greater ability to protect livestock and domestic animals from wolf depredation.
Yet Minnesota law currently allows anyone in northern Minnesota to shoot a wolf without a permit if it poses an immediate threat to livestock, guard animals, or domestic pets on property they own or lease, and neither political party is proposing to change that.
In other words, it could certainly be argued that we already have the management tools in place to address the wolf concerns raised in the documentary. Federal trappers can respond by targeting the actual wolves that engage in attacks on livestock or pets. The state’s failure to pay ranchers in a timely manner for livestock losses is a human problem, that we should be able to resolve, not a wolf problem.
A wolf hunt might make some folks believe their concerns are getting attention, but there’s little reason to think it would do much, if anything, to prevent the next unfortunate attack on someone’s beloved dog or prized calf.
We know that wolves take pets and livestock. It’s an unfortunate reality of living in wolf country, and we can all imagine the heartbreak and frustration that comes with such losses.
Yet, until Hunters4Hunters can produce a documentary that cites evidence that a wolf hunting season would prevent the loss of a single pet or livestock, it’s simply misleading the public for partisan purposes. Don’t we have enough of that, already?