Anglin with Anglen - 1974
March 21, 1974
We had two wildlife pictures on T.V. this past week that were entertaining to watch but controversial. The first, “Cougar Country” was just plain fiction throughout. But to city viewers it would be taken as the truth and as such was very misleading.
The second, “Big Cats” showed some of the work Hornocker was doing with the cougar in central Idaho. Our cougar hunters disagree with him on a lot of his statements about his work, but he was a good enough talker to our legislators to get them to close several thousands of acres to cougar hunting so he could conduct his experiments with the big cat in that particular area.
I’m not an authority on either phase of cougar control, but I do like to read about Hornocker’s works, and I also like to talk and listen to our own cougar hunters; so, I’ll straddle the fence on this subject.
When Yellowstone Park got a new superintendent, he immediately go into a squabble with the Craighead brothers about the grizzly bears. After five or six years of research the Craigheads took their papers and left the Park. Time alone will tell who is right in all this animal management problem. I don’t believe any of us want to see any of our wildlife completely exterminated.
As the poison 1080 thinned out the coyote in Wyoming it also was developing a coyote that never ate anything but what it killed. I had a brother there that ran sheep under fence and for every coyote he killed or poisoned, he got ten dogs that were killing his sheep. He killed dogs thirty-five miles from home; they had their owners name and address on their collars.
And speaking of dogs, we were on a drive last week and saw a big German shepherd dog that had a cow cut out from a herd and was working her over. I’ve always wondered how many dog injuries were blamed onto the coyote. This is the second case I have heard of this past week about dogs into cattle herds.
Tuesday I went for a drive down to the Wildlife Refuge to look at the birds, and apparently the swans had left as I didn’t see any. Lots of geese and a million ducks, more or less in district one. Went to Myrtle Creek fishing Thursday. The swans were back in district seven. Didn’t catch any fish. In fact, didn’t even get a bite but the trip wasn’t wasted as it was a beautiful day and I did get to watch the birds. Quite a crowd was at Deep Creek and they only had two whitefish. Takes a lot of time to fish the mouth of these creeks with any luck.
Started to the Moyie Friday but as I passed Dawson Lake I saw it was still frozen over so stopped there. Man, I drilled a lot of holes before I even caught one perch. Finally I got into a small school of perch, Dawson Lake “Standards”, and got enough to eat. Glad there wasn’t much traffic past the lake as they would have had me in the booby hatch as hard as it was snowing up there.
We have had a week of regular March weather this past week, and wasn’t that some lightning and hail storm we had last Tuesday? McArthur is closed now until the creek season is open, early in June. The Moyie River stays open until the end of this month for white fish.
Some elk are being reported throughout the county — quiet a herd on Katka. Have one report of turkeys too. I see by the paper that the forest service has hired a wildlife biologist for the Kootenai Forest. He will be stationed at Coeur d’Alene. This could be the start of federal control of our game in the national forest; we will just wait and see.
- • •
Editor’s note: For 27 years, beginning Feb. 8, 1973, Ralph Anglen of Bonners Ferry wrote an outdoor column for the local paper that was widely read and used as a source of fishing and hunting information. It was called “Anglin’ with Anglen,” and was the real deal, the genuine item, written by someone whose socks were wet, whose toes were cold and who pulled no punches. We will continue as space allows to reprint Anglen’s column solely for its pleasure and historical significance. Any typos, we leave as is. Readers are reminded that this column was written almost 50 years ago and conditions, including state fish and game regulations, have changed.