Wolves do not kill for the love of killing...that would be humans...how many people do you know that have mounts from animals that they enjoyed killing? Or pictures of themselves with animals that they killed? Wolves don't do that at all...they kill, eat, and move on...
I'm sorry, but YES they do! Some of you guys have this unrealistic, romantic notion about wolves.
Wolves do kill for fun!
The following is an interview by Kelly Wood of the All
American Patriot (AAP)with probably the most well-known and respected experts on wolves today,
Jim Beers,Robert T Fanning Jr,Dr. Valerius Geist Ph.D. , Will Graves B.A.,Bill Hoppe and Dr. Delane Kritsky.
AAP: Speaking of animal kills, there is controversy with the wolf advocates over claims that Wolves kill for sport . . . Does this really happen?
HOPPE: Yes, it’s called a number of other things, including “sport killing.” The scientific term is “surplus killing reflex”. Any Rancher who spends any amount of time paying attention at all, has witnessed this . . . ahem . . . “surplus killing.” Just this past year, in early summer, I was in the Lamar Valley where I personally saw 3 adult wolves ferociously kill and rip apart 10 Elk Calves. They viciously and quickly brought the calves down and proceeded to rip away at the carcasses, fiercely shredding away but oddly they failed to eat anything from the carcasses that they were ripping and shredding. It took them all of a half hr. to do this and after they appeared to tire, they just wandered away.
GRAVES: The official Russian literature on the topic is clear. My letter to Ed Bangs cited data that included documented observations of a single wolf killing 39 reindeer in one attack and another killing 29 in a single attack. It also discussed an incident documented in Sweden in 1977 of one wolf killing between 80 and 100 reindeer in 19 days. The popular misconception is that wolves are noble killers, preying only on the aged, weak, and infirm – The reality is that wolves are opportunistic killers and have an affinity for females that are in late stages of pregnancy and young animals. Sometimes it takes several days for wolves to kill a moose. In the end, they are eating the moose alive — something they also do frequently with sheep.
GEIST: There’s no question about that that this is part and parcel of the nature of wolves. When they have the opportunity to kill in excess, just simply kill and leave, kill and leave, and go on killing, they will do so. This has nothing to do with Yellowstone wolves, Russian wolves — this is a universal characteristic of wolves, period. By the way, grizzly bears will do the same thing. Colleagues have observed them in the Arctic when they were killing calves of the caribou herd. They would just run through the caribou herd killing one calf after the other.
GRAVES: My extensive research I did on the characteristics and behavior of Russian wolves both in Russia and former Soviet Union I found extensive evidence that wolves were surplus killers. The point that usually comes up is why do they engage in surplus killing, and when do they do it. I tried to answer that in my book. The why is for the scientist but there’s no doubt in my mind that wolves are surplus killers and there’s another term that I sometimes use is wanton killing. Wanton killing is when maybe a wolf will just accidentally stumble on a white tail deer or something and will just kill it for the sport, just one game animal. I call it wanton killing. Surplus killing is when maybe a few wolves, maybe three or seven, will kill 30, 40, 50, a hundred sheep in a two or three-hour period. That’s what I call surplus killing.
GEIST: At any rate, this is part and parcel of normal wolf biology. When you introduce wolves, that’s what you will realize.
