The dog hunters wouldn't have had a whole lot to do this year anyway because most utilize snow to cut a track at a bait station similar to they way they hunt coyotes, then they drop the tailgate and turn loose the hounds. Most of the zones already had reached their quotas by the time there was sufficient snow.

Out in Montana a lot of sheep men have gone to using Greater Pyrenees dogs to take care of the coyotes bothering their stock. These dogs do more than just scare off coyotes, they are experts at luring the coyotes (ranchers usually work the dogs in pairs) and destroying them. There have been some problems though. Not infrequently they will suddenly take to killing sheep themselves. And you DO NOT want to be hunting with your dogs anywhere in the neighborhood of these killers. They will seem sublime and friendly until it's too late.

I do see a possible problem with safely training and maintaining these kinds of dogs, especially in a fairly congested state like Wisconsin. Ontario has in fact finally outright banned certain breeds of dogs for that reason (particularly pit bulls). The public is always going to view with great skepticism and a certain justifiable degree of concern situations where dogs are trained to chase and kill other dogs. Sounds like the judge was trying to err on the side of caution ... for at least the time being. This whole wolf hunting thing has proceeded at a pretty fast pace and I for one do not disagree with thinking things through a bit more thoroughly first.

Baconboy, have you ever seen an Irish wolfhound? Check it out. Those dogs are huge and they were bred to run down wolves. They are supposedly a pretty-mild mannered dog these days but apparently the instinct to chase is still strong in them. We are both wrong in assuming that these special sighthound breeds (including Irish wolfhound and the borzoi) attack and kill their wolf prey. Rather they have been bred to literally run their prey to exhaustion and then pin it down until their owners can catch up and dispatch the animal. The dense forests of Wisconsin hardly resemble the Russian steppes and I'm not sure sighthound breeds would work well. Sounds like it would be a much more productive endeavor in the vicinity of Yellowstone Park. Be interesting to see how this plays out.

exactly. stupid idea. however the hunting regs for wolves were written largely by politicians in our state, not by wildlife biologists or people who actually hunt