It’s disgusting that I even need to ask such a question, but how are sportsmen supposed to feel and react when they’ve been lied to, abused verbally, demonized, ignored, laughed at, had tax money stolen from them and basically treated like a piece of worm-infested porcupine scat?

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) is sending out “kits” to moose hunters and asking them to:

1. Take a blood sample,
2. Saw off a slab of moose liver, and
3. Pluck some hair.
BTW – In looking at this letter (posted below), I don’t see anywhere in that letter any instructions on safety precautions needed for when hunters do IDFG’s dirty work. Perhaps it is contained in the kit itself somewhere. If there are readers privy to this information, could you please let me and readers know? It is very important.)

Each hunter then must make a mandatory stop at an IDFG office where each hunter will complete a “MANDATORY” check of the moose. This in addition to the request sent out recently to Idaho sportsmen asking that they report wolf and grizzly bear activity. Really? Why not report polar bear movements or those of penguins? Why now? Why are fish and game officials all of a sudden interested, or seemingly so, in what sportsmen think, see or do?

According to what is written on a letter sent to moose hunters by IDFG, the reason for this action is to: “improve moose management through a better understanding of disease in wildlife populations.”

Isn’t it just a little bit too late? Where were these concerned wildlife managers when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) were lying to the American people telling them that wolves would have no significant impact on game herds or the spread of disease? (Please find this in the Final Environmental Impact Statement for the (re)introduction of wolves to the Northern Rockies.)

The wolf recovery team decided that it would not even bother to offer any kind of investigation into diseases that are carried and spread by wolves because any existing information was: “limited,” “poorly documented” and “can never be scientifically confirmed or denied.” These claims came at a time when there existed no fewer than 300 scientific studies worldwide just about the tapeworm Echinococcus granulosus.

And today the World Health Organization includes on the “Fact Page” that: “More than 1 million people are affected with echinococcosis at any one time.”

When an individual, at least one who has the capacity to think independently, considers how government officials lied to them, and then how they have been treated before, during and after this crime of wolf (re)introduction was forced down their throats, why would they be eager to help these isolated by choice from the global scientific community elites with their fake task of “improve[ing] moose management through a better understanding of disease in wildlife populations”? It sure stinks of mollification to me.

For years these clowns were offered technical and scientific evident to help them “better understand wildlife diseases” and they plugged their ears, closed their eyes and shouted out loud, like a small child.

For crying out loud, back in 1971 wildlife biologists in Minnesota didn’t “discover” that Echinococcus granulosus tapeworms existed. They were out LOOKING FOR IT in moose.

That 1971 study result showed some of us, but evidently nobody at IDFG or USFWS, two distinct things:
1. “The incidence of E. granulosus and Taenia spp. in the northeast is evidence of a higher timber wolf (Canis lupus) population in this part of the state.”
2. “Data from the aerial census and classification counts indicate a net productivity of 30-35% in the northwest and 9-15% in the northeast. This indicates a difference is occurring in the survival rate of calves in their first six months of life between the two areas. Area differences in nutrition, predation and parasitism may be responsible for these observed differences in net productivity.”

Patrick Karns, in 1971, had a “better understanding” of wildlife diseases. It’s 2014, time for some TRUTH for a change!

This and the 600-plus studies in existence in 2001, when the World Health Organization published their latest scientific data on Echinococcus granulosis and Echinococcus multilocularis, evidently isn’t good enough for Idaho wildlife officials, or any others in this here United States of America. But NOW they want to ask Idaho moose hunters for help in better understanding wildlife diseases.

I’m not a resident of Idaho, nor do I buy a hunting license there, but if I did, my inclination would be to tell IDFG to STICK IT! You didn’t listen then and you won’t listen now. You are just trying to pacify the hunters and cover your own asses. No thanks!

A tip of the hat to reader “Chandie” for sending me a copy of the letter.