Hunting advocate explains wolf incident on I-90

Recently, a radical pro wolf group, calling itself the Wolves of the Rockies, has been calling for the prosecution of me, Toby Bridges, founder of Lobo Watch, for “deliberately” and “intentionally” hitting two wolves on Interstate 90 with a vehicle.

The basis for their claim stems from a bit of “blue” journalism published by the Great Falls Tribune on Sept. 19, in which that newspaper’s writer, John Adams, totally rewrote a post that I made on the Lobo Watch Facebook page to purposely make it look as if those two wolves had been purposely run down. Here is the original post made on Facebook:

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Sorry for not being on this page at all over the past month. On the morning of Aug. 14, my wife Christy suffered a brain aneurysm and had to be life flighted to Seattle for emergency surgery. She is still there, undergoing a very slow recovery. In the past 4 1/2 weeks, I have driven more the 5,500 miles (five trips) going over once a week for a couple of days.

Just got home late yesterday evening. The trip over, during the early hours of Sunday morning, did get a little exciting ... for about 30 seconds.

I was nearly out of Montana, headed up the side of the Bitterroots toward Lookout Pass. I had stopped at the rest area on the Montana side, at around mile marker 5, and had just started to regain some speed up the steep grade. Just past MM4, a cow elk and calf suddenly ran right out onto Interstate 90, and I let up on the gas and had just started to brake — in case more elk followed.

What followed were two adult wolves. The cow jumped over the concrete barrier separating West and East traffic lanes, the calf stayed on “my” side — and both were running up the highway, toward the pass. The wolves went after the calf ... and I let off the brake and hit the accelerator. I was going to save that calf.

I was driving Christy’s van, since it gets better gas mileage, and had just regained some speed, back to about 55 mph when suddenly four young wolves shot right out in front of me. There was no time to hit the brakes (like I really would?) and I heard two distinct loud “thumps”. Out of my mirror, I saw an almost black 50-pound wolf spinning around in the middle of the highway ... with one very apparent, very badly broken back leg. In the other mirror, I saw one slightly smaller wolf rolling onto the shoulder.

At the sound of the wolf pup with the broken leg squalling, the two adult wolves cut back across the highway in front of the van and shot up the side of the steep slope. I drove on to the pass, came back down the other side to where I could get back on the westbound lane, and came back to where the dead wolf laid on the shoulder. I saw the other pup — dragging a broken leg — topping a steep bank about 80 or 90 yards upslope, just as it went back into the timber. I thought about going up and putting the young wolf out of its misery ... then I gave that second thought. The two adult wolves were still in the very close vicinity and I did not have a gun in the van.

While I snapped a few photos, I heard the pup howling in distress and a few minutes later I heard quite a ruckus up above ... then all went quiet. I do believe that the adult wolves finished off their severely injured offspring.

Two wolves out of the equation ... and it was all an accident. I love it when things go good. Right now, with my wife laying in recovery 550 miles away, I need a few good things to happen for me.

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Nowhere in this post does it say that I intended to run over a wolf. I said I intended to “save that calf” from two adult wolves, which were running the cow and calf up the westbound lanes of I-90. How was I going to do that?

I spent about 30 minutes with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Region 2 game wardens Joe Jaquith and Tyler Ramaker on the morning of Sept. 22 to discuss this issue and to discuss how the Great Falls Tribune writer John Adams purposely turned around the wording of the Facebook post to make it look as if I did indeed take aim on the young wolves and run them down. I shared with them how I intended to save the calf from being pulled down and killed right on Interstate 90.

The two wolves were probably 50 or so yards behind the calf, which was close to 200 yards on up the highway. My feelings were that if I closed in on them and started honking the horn, the two wolves would break off and run back into the timber. If that didn’t work, perhaps just getting the van in between the wolves and calf might be enough to deter the attack.

I still had more than 400 miles to drive to visit my wife in the hospital in Seattle, and I had no intention of damaging the van I was driving by hitting a 100-pound adult wolf.

Recalling the incident for the FWP wardens, I went on to explain that I had absolutely no idea that the half-grown wolf pups were anywhere around. After I had accelerated to catch up with chase ahead, the young wolves darted right out in front of the van, just 10 to 15 feet ahead.  Even if I had slammed on the brakes, at 55 mph there is no way that the vehicle would have stopped in time to avoid hitting some of the wolves.

I’m really not sure how many there were. I can recall seeing what I think were four wolf pups running up out of the ditch. It happened so quickly, like in less than a second, that I really did not see the two wolves I did hit. They were below the hood line, and after I heard the thumps, I saw them in the side mirrors of the van. I did catch a glimpse of one other wolf as it turned and ran back up the steep bank.

I point out that no laws were broken. I did not intentionally try to hit anything that morning, just as the sun was coming up over a ridge to the east. Like the vast majority of highway collisions with wildlife, it was purely an accident — with the animals running right out onto the roadway in front of the vehicle.

I really don’t expect Fish, Wildlife and Parks to issue any kind of citation. Should they, I feel that the resulting court case could prove as a much needed catalyst to bring the wildlife disaster known as the Northern Rockies Wolf Recovery Project into a Montana court of law.

I point out that when wolves begin chasing elk out onto the interstate, it’s a sign that those wolves have pulled down game populations to the point that killing another elk for food is more important than their own safety, or the safety of their offspring.  

When it comes to excessive wolf depredation, Mineral County is one of Montana’s hardest hit counties. The elk herds in this county have easily been decimated by as much as 70 to 80 percent over the past 17 or 18 years — since the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service forced the introduction of a non-native Canadian wolf subspecies in this state and next door in Idaho and Wyoming.

Montana FWP has played an integral role in this massive loss of elk, working hand-in-hand with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to insure the quick growth and spread of wolf numbers throughout Western Montana. Montana’s wildlife agency has repeatedly lied to the sportsmen of this state when it comes to true wolf numbers and the degree of damage those wolves were doing to elk and other big game populations.

There are many sportsman based conservation organizations who would cherish the opportunity to testify against the poor manner in which Montana FWP and especially the Montan FWP Commission have tried to “manage” wolves as a big game animal — instead of trying to control it as a destructive predator.

Likewise, there are a number of former Montana FWP managers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists and other federal wildlife managers and biologists who would be more than ready and willing to hang out a lot of dirty laundry of those who are responsible for the destruction of big game herds in the Northern Rockies.

That’s what would actually be on trial, not how I accidentally hit two wolves.

The manner in which the Great Falls Tribune turned to “blue” one-sided journalism in order to paint an entirely different picture than what really happened that morning up on Lookout Pass makes me wonder — was it just a lack of writing skills or was writer John Adams working right along with the Wolves of the Rockies?

The article claims they sent an e-mail, but no one called. With so much going on with my wife in the hospital, I’ve been way too busy to monitor e-mails. In fact, I just returned from a sixth trip to the hospital in Seattle last night, logging more than 6,000 road miles in just five weeks.

The Northern Rockies are at war, the Wolf War. On one side, we have the true sportsmen who have fully funded wildlife conservation for more than a hundred years. On the other side, we have the “Johnny-Come-Lately” environmental and animal rights groups, such as Wolves of the Rockies, who have invested absolutely nothing toward maintaining healthy wildlife populations.  In their eyes, the wolf is everything. Stuck in the middle are state wildlife agencies, which now seem to have shifted into self destruct mode.

One way or another, all of this needs to end up in a Montana court of law.

Toby Bridges, of Missoula, runs a Web site called Lobo Watch.