Jim Heihorn saw it coming. When I talked with him back in 2009, the fifth-generation Idaho rancher was all too happy to buy his first wolf hunting license. It had been, by his admittedly rough estimation, 80 years since wolves were last hunted in his part of the state. He was sanguine about the opportunity but questioned whether hunting would be an effective management tool.
“If I see a wolf, I’ll shoot it, no doubt about it,” he said. “But I don’t know if that’s enough. That’s the thing about wolves. I don’t know that we can control them with individuals with tags. The last time they were in this valley, there were a lot more sheep. But there were also full-time wolfers who used everything at their disposal—poison, snares, airplanes—to hunt wolves.”
