Wolves kill hunting hound

COEUR d'ALENE - Jim Johnson won't hunt in the Latour Creek area again.

Too dangerous, he says, because there are too many wolves there. Too many wolves that he believes are pretty big and not too frightened of people, either, even in the daytime.

"It was too scary," he said of a hunting expedition on Saturday that ended with the death of a hound. "And nothing much scares me."

Johnson, Jeff Cleveland and a few friends were bear hunting with their hounds near Cataldo when GPS and telemetry units tracking "Jake" indicated he had stopped moving. When he was found hours later, Cleveland said it was clear the 7-year-old Walker hound he had raised since he was a puppy had been killed by wolves.

"There was blood all over with wolf tracks around," Cleveland said.

Cleveland, who lives in the Wolf Lodge area, said fellow hunters saw a black wolf that circled them from a distance around the perimeter of the kill site.

He said he has been hunting with hounds for 16 years.

"I've never had an issue in my life with wolves," he said.

Cleveland called the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and was upset when he was told there was nothing they could do. He said he thought he should receive some type of compensation.

"I think Fish and Game should be liable for this. They're supposed to be backing us," Cleveland said. "But I call them and they say 'tough luck.'"

He put seven years of work into Jake, a great dog who had proven he was adept at tracking bears.

"For $5,000, I couldn't touch him today," he said.

Jim Hayden, wildlife manager with Fish and Game, said there is no state compensation program in place for dogs killed by wolves, mountain lions, bears, or anything else in the outdoors.

He said the federal government and Defenders of Wildlife, as part of the wolf recovery program, reimburse ranchers for losses of livestock to wolves.

He said he was sympathetic toward anyone losing a trained hunting dog.

"That's a big loss," he said.

Hayden said there are a number of drainages in the Panhandle where wolves roam.

"Anyone taking dogs into those areas needs to be careful," he said.

Johnson, who has been hunting with hounds about five years, said he saw a wolf track, probably the alpha male of a pack, that was the largest he had ever seen on Saturday.

"It was frighteningly huge, about an eight-inch diameter," he said.

He said this was his first real run-in with wolves and believes Latour Creek "is totally infested" with them.

"I won't ever hunt Latour Creek again," he said.

Hayden said it would be unusual for a North Idaho wolf track to measure eight-inches in diameter. He said 5 by 5 inches is a typical adult track, but it would appear larger in soft snow and mud. The average wolf in North Idaho weighs about 100 pounds.

Cleveland said he and other hunters spent Saturday night in the area because there was one hound still out there.

"We thought he was going to be wolf bait that night," he said.

But via the tracking systems, they found that dog alive and well the next morning. Cleveland believes it spent the night near Butler Creek.

"That creek was just roaring," he said. "I think the only thing that saved that dog was that he was tucked in next to that creek. The wolves didn't know he was there."

He said raising hounds is a serious and expensive business. He wasn't sure if he would continue with it.

"You put thousands of dollars and years into these dogs," he said. "It takes the wind right out of your sails when something like this happens. I'm not going to keep raising, breeding and hunting with hounds and have them be wolf bait."