MOOSE: Hunting is the answer

Here is one more example of how the Idaho Fish and No Game has mishandled wildlife management in Idaho.

When you start getting moose in Downtown Coeur d’Alene, it tells me that we may have an overabundance of moose. Why hasn’t the Fish and No Game increased the number of moose permits in Unit 3 to help control these big fellows, especially close to towns?

I know of at least six moose that have been killed between DeSmet and Coeur d’Alene on Highway 95 in the last year. One older woman was in the hospital in a coma for several weeks from a moose hitting her car.

Hunting is a game management tool. I guess Idaho Fish and No Game has decided to just watch the carnage and sit on their collective hands as they did with the wolves and just hoped the problem would just go away.

Speaking of wolves, that’s probably why that moose was downtown Coeur d’Alene, because it had been chased down Canfield Mountain into the neighborhoods. Just one more impact from not handling the wolf problem.

At least when an animal is harvested by a hunter, the meat gets consumed and not wasted as it was in this case. Some overzealous Fish and NO Game officer shot it up with drugs when it was obvious that the animal had a broken front leg. It should have been put down on the spot and the meat given to any number of families in Coeur d’Alene that could have used that meat. Just a total waste of 700 pounds of perfectly good meat. Some Fish and No Game officer might have got his hands a little dirty dressing it out for the food bank.

MILT TURLEY

Avery