This is a great conversation. I agree with Dodge that a trophy bull elk is a helluva accomplishment. They are like ghosts, fading into the timber when they're not rutting. Even when they're struck by the love shovel they can be pretty savvy, simply disappearing into the backcountry. I'd throw mountain goats in the mix, too, not so much because they're particularly smart but because they live in such forbidding country. Big blacktailed deer and Coues deer deserve respect, too, because they are such specters. Densities are low to begin with but both live in hard country to hunt.
Andrew McKean
Outdoor Life Hunting Editor
Moose are a tough draw just about anywhere. But you might spend some bucks applying for Western moose hunts. In most states - Wyoming, Montana, Utah - you will accrue preference points with each unsuccessful application. That means that you can expect to spend years applying before you actually draw, but in states with preference points (also called bonus points) eventually you will rise to the top of the list and you'll get drawn. The downside is that some states, like Utah, are now requiring that applicants buy a hunting license just to submit an application. So it can get expensive to apply in more than a handful of states.
Good luck. If you're an older person, I hope you get drawn soon. If you're a younger person, expect to apply for decades but eventually you're going to get that moose you've always dreamed of.
Andrew McKean
When you talk about wolves, I think you have to distinguish between those artificially planted in Yellowstone Park in the mid 1990s and those that have been naturally recolonizing the West (and the northern Midwest) out of Canada. In the Yellowstone case, Clinton-era biologists and environmental activists were trying to speed up time, to fool nature by bringing back an apex predator before its natural time.
But those Canadian wolves naturally migrating into Montana and northern Idaho, as well as Minnesota and Michigan, have a lot more status, in my mind. They're simply responding to suitable habitat, including all the deer and elk that sportsmen brought back from the brink (okay, and quite a few cows and sheep, too).
There are those who think that any good wolf is a dead wolf, but to me, those wolves are just doing what you or I would do, migrating where the living is easy, and to me they have a lot more credibility and reason to be there than those airlifted Yellowstone wolves.
That doesn't really address the main point - that reintroducing wolves was a sneaky way of ending big-game hunting. Still, I'd encourage folks to get used to the idea that wolves will be around for a long time, and to insist that we get the chance to hunt them.
Andrew McKean
Outdoor Life - Hunting Editor
That is so cool. I didn't shoot my first turkey until I was well out of college, and that was a love-dumb spring gobbler. So you have earned some serious accolades. I have a question for everyone, though: How many of you think we should be able to shoot hens in the spring? In many places where turkeys have been successfully re-established, their populations are reaching nuisance levels. Would hunting hens in the spring be a positive or a negative proposition?
Andrew McKean
Outdoor Life - Hunting Editor
