D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
February
2008
Some New Red Blood
If we're gonna have wolves, we oughta train them to stay clear of humans and livestock.
Probably the most-asked question posed to me when I meet one of you readers is, "When are you gonna write something controversial again?" Of course, what these folks are really saying is, "We wanna see your blood run red on the ground again!" I liken that to the ancient Roman coliseum when the audiences cheered the lions to rip apart the Christians.
Sigh, I guess it is time to climb out of this comfortable old frying pan and leap headfirst into the fire once more. After all, appetites have to be satisfied!
Being a lover of both the hunt and those things hunted, I've often longed for and dreamed about what I'd do if I owned some land of my own — a tract large enough to hold enough critters for me to hunt.
Two of the critters that I'd stock on this imaginary ranch would be swine and goats. But I wouldn't want to hunt or shoot tame or semi-tame animals — after all, where would be the challenge?
So on this imaginary ranch, I'd devise an equally imaginary scenario where for the first full year of stocking, I'd not hunt the critters or kill them, but instead put the fear of all humans in them.
I'd do this by first scaring them with firecrackers every time they let me near, so that they reacted to loud noises. Then, as they began to keep their distance, I'd start shooting at them, but not trying to hit them. I'd just want to scare them so they'd put distance between them and me at the very first sight of me.
Along with that, I'd never feed them, but make them learn to live off of my land; they don't need a benefactor to artificially induce them to live!
Now, related to the above scenario, but seemingly disconnected, is the info I received and have also read about: that the Mexican wolves are indeed roaming about and amongst us here in Grant County. In fact, back in early December a team of feds was down to the Grant County Airport, where they were tracking an errant pair of lobos known to be near Hurley.
About the same time, wolves were also seen by a good friend of mine as they crossed Hwy. 180 East in Arenas Valley. My friend is an experienced woodsman who knows a wolf when he sees one.
Let me say here that ever since the Mexican wolves were introduced back in the late 1990s, I've endeavored to remain neutral on the subject. But that all changed when my friend Mark Miller had his dogs attacked within 20 feet of his nine-year-old daughter back in December 2006; I wrote about it in the February 2007 Desert Exposure.
That pushed me off of the fence and onto the "moderately agin'" side of the issue. I no longer think wolves should be in the wilds of New Mexico. Besides which, I've discovered that the wolf is nowhere portrayed as anything but evil in the Good Book, and I challenge anyone to show me pages to the contrary.
But it seems, my opinion aside, that indeed the wolves are here to stay, at least for the time being. That brings me to tying the wolf situation into my imaginary ranch.
Many of the anti-wolf clan claim that these "supposedly wild" critters aren't all that wild because they've been acclimated, or have acclimated on their own, to humans and have lost their fear because of undue interaction with homo sapiens.
Furthermore, everything I've read coming from most of the "antis" tells me they aren't all that anti-wild wolf, just anti-acclimated-to-people-wolves.
Well, duh! The answer to this seems simple: Just put the fear of God into every wolf in the Southwest! Make them shake in utter fear each and every time they even sniff a human.
Shoot at them (not to hit), throw firecrackers at them, chase them by any means, harass them, do whatever is necessary to make them truly wild. Sooner or later they will get the message, and if they're too dumb to learn, then they should be removed from the gene-pool anyway — put them back in a zoo!
Along with this idea, I'd quit artificially feeding the wolves, too, as I've heard some agencies are doing clandestinely. Whatever happened to "survival of the fittest"? No more road-killed deer and elk.
Lastly, and I've spoken of this a couple of times, before I'd release even one more wolf into the wild, I'd educate them to leave all domestic livestock, all pets and all people completely alone.
I'd use shock therapy with a dog-training collar. I'd booby-trap dead cattle, horses and sheep, so that the wolves had a shocking experience with them. And I'd do this as long as it takes until the lobos got the lesson for good, then let them loose!
It might even be a good idea to recapture all of the "wild" wolves already out there and put them in the pen and do the same to them.
All of this was brought home to me in December while watching a TV program on the decline of the mountain gorilla of the Congo; all 700 of them are in danger of extinction. The reason? They've become too accustomed to humans studying them 24/7 and wanting to protect them. Hence, the gorillas can't tell the difference between good and bad humans and the bad guys are killing them so that they can harvest charcoal in the gorillas' territory.
So now the very folks who embraced the poor critters are now trying desperately to make the gorillas revert to a wilder nature.
Know what? Probably as the mountain gorilla goes, so goes B'rer Wolf in the long run. In any event, if you truly favor keeping wolves in the wilds of the Southwest, then you'd dang well better change your thinking on how they should be treated.
As always, keep the wind forever in your face, the sun forever at your back, and may the Forever God bless you, too. k