Entomologists with the Idaho Department of Lands and the U.S. Forest Service spent this fall sampling selected trees for infestations of tiny wingless insects that can have devastating effects on fir stands in Idaho and the region.

The insects are called balsam woolly adelgids (BWA), and they are not native to the United States. Their feeding interrupts the tree’s ability to produce sapwood as it grows, causing chronic decline and eventual mortality.

Coupled with environmental stresses such as drought and fire, BWA infestations could dramatically affect forest composition in the Pacific Northwest. All true fir species are susceptible, but subalpine fir could suffer the greatest impacts in the region.

The data collected will help forest professionals understand how our forests will change with the presence of this invasive insect. Results will aid in predicting impacts in newly affected areas, help identify high-risk forest stands, and inform forest management efforts.

Evidence of BWA infestation includes swellings on branch twigs (called twig “gouting”) caused by insect feeding, and the presence of tiny, white, fuzzy-looking adult BWAs on the bark. The waxy, wool-like threads they produce for protection cause the adults’ fuzzy appearance.

The BWA fieldwork this year is part of a long-term monitoring study to track the impacts of the insect as an infestation progresses. The IDL and USFS entomologists installed research plots in 2008, and forest health professionals have returned every five years to assess the health of trees within the plots. 

In addition to the ongoing study in Idaho, entomologists serving Utah and Montana also installed new plots to begin tracking BWA effects as it spreads into those regions.

To help curb the spread of the insect, the public is encouraged not to move potentially infested firewood, nursery stock or logs.

Checking in at check stations, why there is a proxy statement in your wallet and a refresher on the motorized hunt rule — here’s what you need to know before you head outdoors.

Deer opener update

Deer season opened under rainy and snowy conditions in Southeast Idaho on Oct. 10, but precipitation didn’t dampen the success of those hunters who hit the hills. In fact, opening day of 2018 showed a modest increase in hunter success over last fall’s opener, a trend that continued over the weekend.

2017 hunting seasons were affected by an exceptionally severe winter that year. Mule deer fawn survival was extremely low in many areas of Southeast Idaho during the winter of 2016-17, and in some parts of the region, adult deer mortality was high. Bottom line, fewer deer — especially two-points — were available to hunters last fall.

Contrast that to the 2018 hunting season thus far — a milder winter of 2017-18 has contributed to a higher fawn survival, explaining the higher number of yearlings coming through check stations. So far, check station data shows that two-points make up a significant portion (48 percent) of the total mule deer harvested, whereas the total percentage of yearlings harvested during the same time frame last year was only 17 percent.

It takes more than one mild winter for a mule deer population to recover or achieve the age class distribution of previous years, but it looks like mule deer numbers are at least heading in the right direction. Final check station data will be provided at the end of the season later this month.

Check stations are not optional

What happens to hunters and anglers who “blow by” a check station on the way to or from the field? They could see the flashing lights of Fish and Game enforcement in their mirrors. That’s because stopping at a check station is required by law for those who are hunting or fishing, even for those without harvested game.

Check stations are a great way for Fish and Game staff to talk to hundreds of sportsmen and sportswomen, and those stopping at check stations should feel free to ask questions or make suggestions. The information that is collected is crucial for understanding what hunters and anglers are seeing in the field, and it allows us to better manage your wildlife resource. Our goal is to get the data we need, answer your questions, and get you on your way quickly.

Here are a few reminders to make your check station visit pleasant, quick and efficient: If you have harvested game, Fish and Game staff will want to look at the animal, and your license and tag. It will save you and them time if the animal is easily accessible. It takes a few minutes to collect all the data we need, so feel free to shut off your vehicle and step out to stretch your legs.

Please use caution when pulling into and out of a check station. Keep an eye out for hunters and staff walking around the station, and be careful if you are pulling out onto a busy highway.

Failure to fill out a proxy statement

A common mistake of hunters is the failure to complete a proxy statement when required. If you’re transporting game for someone else, you must have a completed proxy statement that provides information about whose animal you are transporting and gives you permission to do so.

Don’t have a proxy statement form? Check your wallet. It’s probably there, crammed in with your license and tags. That’s because in 2018, proxy statements were issued to hunters at the same time they purchased their tags.

If you threw yours away, blank statements can be found in any of the Fish and Game regulation booklets available at Fish and Game offices or at your favorite license vendor.

Refresher on motorized vehicle rule

If you are hunting big game in a unit with the Motorized Hunting Rule in effect, you cannot use your motorized vehicle as an aid to hunting. Some hunters think this just means that they can’t shoot a gun or bow from the seat of their four-wheeler. But it also means that you cannot travel on off-road trails with your ATV to transport hunters and hunting equipment, to get to your favorite ridge or to actually hunt or otherwise aid in a hunt. In areas with the MHR in effect, ATVs can only be used as an aid to hunting on roads open to full-sized vehicles, like your pickup truck.

There are some exceptions. Hunters can use their ATVs to retrieve downed game or to take in or pack out a camp — but they must stay on trails open to travel and they cannot hunt while doing those activities.

The MHR does not apply to hunters with disabilities provided they are holders of a valid disabled person’s motor vehicle hunting permit.

Remember, not all hunt units have the MHR, and it does not apply to private property or to those who are not hunting big game.

The MHR is intended to manage conflicts among hunter user groups and address the vulnerability of big game and trophy species.

Still have questions? Visit our website at idfg.idaho.gov/hunt/access/motorized-vehicles or give your nearest Fish and Game office a call.

Jennifer Jackson is the Regional Communications Manager for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, southeast region.

A tragic fourth straight year of record-breaking grizzly bear mortality in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) has been compounded by the concurrent tragedy of increasingly frequent human maulings and deaths.

Most of these injuries, fatal or otherwise, have involved big game hunters and outfitters involved in close encounters with bears. The rash of resulting media coverage has duly given ample space for quotes from wildlife managers.

According to their narrative, human deaths and injuries during recent years are directly attributable to a burgeoning population of fearless aggressive grizzlies that have expanded into “unsuitable” habitat.

The only remedy is to kill more bears, including essentially all that currently occupy the ecosystem periphery, preferably through a trophy hunt. End of story.

Except it isn’t the end of the story. Nor is it even particularly accurate. Most importantly, this official rendering assiduously ignores emerging dynamics that are more likely to be the true cause of escalating bear deaths and human injuries.

As a result, managers have deprived themselves of important insights potentially yielding solutions that both sustain the GYE grizzly bear population and increase human safety.

Worse yet, a fixation on politically and ideologically expedient messaging by government officials deceives the public and polarizes the debate.

So what are the facts? Certainly, many more grizzlies are dying and significantly more people are being injured. The distribution of the GYE bear population has also increased substantially during the last decade plus.

But we have few if any more bears now than we had 15 years ago. With roughly the same number of bears spread over a larger area, average densities of grizzlies are axiomatically lower than in the past, although obviously higher in certain places.

Most important for understanding the mounting conflicts between bears and especially hunters and livestock producers, grizzly bears in the GYE are eating more meat from elk, bison, and cattle than they did 15 years ago — in fact, orders of magnitude more meat from cows and substantially more meat from gut piles and other remains left by hunters.

They are also eating a lot less whitebark pine seeds and cutthroat trout, which were both staple foods not that long ago; both eliminated in a mere few years largely by predators and pathogens unleashed directly or indirectly by humans.

There can be little doubt that Yellowstone’s grizzly bears are eating more human-associated meat in compensation for catastrophic human-caused losses of key native foods.

For good or bad, we’re also providing dietary alternatives, often in the form of foods that we prize or claim as our own. Even corn occasionally fills the bill, exemplified by the recent decent of bears on a corn maze near Clark, Wyoming.

Putting this all together, we likely have more grizzlies on the periphery of the Yellowstone ecosystem, especially on the east side in Wyoming where losses of whitebark pine were earliest and most severe.

But we don’t have more grizzlies overall. We also very likely have bears more assiduously seeking out grazing allotments and the environs frequented by big game hunters on a quest for much-need high-quality food in the form of livestock and gut piles.

Predictably, all of this more frequently brings grizzlies into conflict with people and, catastrophically for the bears, more frequently in contact with people who are well-armed and/or intolerant and/or well-connected to regional politicians.

Catastrophically for the people, especially hunters, more of them encounter grizzlies under circumstances that lead to attacks, either by bears defending themselves or bears laying claim to meat they logically think of as their own.

But slaughtering bears will not resolve this problem nor, more certainly, foster the long-term survival of Yellowstone’s population of grizzly bears.

These bears are already imperiled by isolation, genetic impoverishment, exploding human populations, and the unfolding holocaust being unleashed by climate warming.

A trophy hunt and increasingly lethal management of conflicts will only add to this intolerable burden. Yet, human safety is a paramount consideration.

There is a way out of this conundrum. First, state wildlife managers need to take their heads out of the sand and acknowledge what’s happening.

Second, they need to abandon the politically partisan, if not cynical, narrative seemingly designed for little else than justifying trophy hunting opportunities for a very small minority.

Third, government managers need to mandate implementation of well-proven coexistence techniques on federal jurisdictions while more actively encouraging adoption of these same tools on private lands.

None of this is rocket science. But it does require honesty, integrity, augmented investment of resources, and service of the broader public interest rather than the interests of a privileged few.

David Mattson grew up in the Black Hills of western South Dakota, the grandson of pioneers who settled in the region during the early 1900s. Much to the chagrin of his sheep-ranching mother, he went on to spend his career studying large carnivores, including grizzly bears in the Yellowstone ecosystem and mountain lions in the Southwest. His fieldwork in Yellowstone spanned 1979-1993, including a stint overseeing field investigations for the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team. During recent decades, his interest in policy has taken him to positions with the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He currently lives south of Livingston, Montana.

A study of sturgeon in Hells Canyon determined a significant portion of the long-lived fish have hooks and other fishing tackle in their digestive tracts, but they seem to be able to process and pass the metal without harm.

Fisheries biologists with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and the Idaho Power Company scanned more than 2,000 sturgeon with metal detectors and used a portable X-ray machine on about 450 of them to document the prevalence of fishing tackle in the bellies of the fish.

They found about 21 percent of the sturgeon they examined had tackle in their bellies. Many of the sturgeon were captured multiple times during the four-year project. Recaptured fish with fishing tackle in their systems passed the metal in about 492 days on average. Recaptured fish ingested new metal about every 575 days on average.

The study, published by the American Fisheries Society, showed that fish with metal in the digestive tracts weighed slightly less than sturgeon of the same size without metal. However, the differences in weights were slight, suggesting the metal may affect their ability to feed or process food but not to a degree that would harm them on a population level.

The study also determined that most of the hooks and other fishing gear found in sturgeon were likely the result of the fish feeding on baited hooks that remained in the river after they had been snagged on rocks and broken off rather than from sturgeon deeply swallowing baited hooks still attached to fishing rods.

Joe DuPont, regional fisheries manager for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game at Lewiston and an author of the study, said the results show there isn’t a need to require anglers to use gear less prone to deep hooking and that metal ingested by sturgeon is not likely to limit the population of the popular game fish. Idaho and Oregon have long required anglers fishing in the Snake River to release sturgeon.

“We found fish with hooks in them versus not are pretty much in the same condition as far as length and weight,” DuPont said. “We also found they are cycling the hooks through them.”

The metal eventually breaks down from oxidation.

DuPont said one sturgeon sampled during the study had 14 pieces of fishing gear in it. He said that fish, caught in the fall, appeared skinny and he wondered if it would survive the winter. However, the fish was recaptured in the spring and had passed most of the metal and returned to a normal weight.

“Even in dire situations like, that they can live through it and recover fairly rapidly,” he said.

At one point in time, fisheries managers were trying to get sturgeon anglers to voluntarily change to circle hooks that are less prone to being swallowed deeply by fish. DuPont said based on the study, a rule change requiring circle hooks is not needed.

Several years ago, the department also implemented a rule that required sturgeon anglers to use sliding weights that are attached to the main fishing line with lighter-test line. Using a slider to attach the weight allows it to drop off if the main line should break for any reason. If the weight becomes snagged on the bottom, sliders allow anglers to break the lighter-test line and retrieve the hook. Under either scenario, it reduces the chance of leaving a baited hook anchored to the river bottom.

DuPont said the sliding weight rule will be maintained. It’s unclear if the rule makes a big difference in sturgeon survival, but it may do some good, he said, without hindering the ability of anglers to catch sturgeon.

The study found that most of the metal in sturgeon was related to sturgeon fishing instead of the smaller hooks used for bass or steelhead. DuPont said it’s likely the smaller hooks and gear associated with bass and steelhead fishing are easier for sturgeon to pass, although that finding wasn’t part of the study.

JACKSON, Wyoming — Nick Lufkin’s Sunday morning started off ordinarily enough, and around 8 a.m. he let his dog Chuy out to do his business.

For the Lufkins everything was normal at their Francis Way abode north of Jackson, Wyoming, but that was quickly and tragically interrupted.

Lufkin’s son, Kai, spotted a mountain lion lingering in the yard. Soon they’d learn there was a small pride of cougars — a lioness and her two grown kittens — bunched up in their yard.

Nick Lufkin grabbed his rifle and bolted outside in hopes of recovering Chuy.

He heard a final yip from out of sight that he later learned presaged the end for the featherweight 5-pound pooch. One of the big cats had grabbed Chuy (pronounced “chewy”) by the head, quickly killing the 5-year-old Morkie (a Maltese/Yorkshire terrier cross) that had the demeanor of a bulldog. The lion stashed Chuy alongside a mostly eaten mule deer that had been cached — unknown to the family — under the deck of an outbuilding studio on Lufkin’s 3-acre lot.

“I heard a bark, and that was about it there,” Lufkin said. “He went and took on three mountain lions. It didn’t pan out for the little guy, but bless his soul because I was about to send my 13-year-old son out to rake leaves.”

Lufkin’s family remained indoors, but he soon found himself in his own precarious situation.

Running around the house to the front yard, the 20-plus-year Jackson resident, raised on a Wyoming ranch, found himself face-to-face with the cat family. The adult, he guesses, was 10 to 15 feet away, staring intently.

“I had my rifle,” Lufkin recounted, “and I yelled at them — ‘Hey!’ They did not move. … They had no fear. It was really nerve-racking.”

He blasted a warning shot into the ground near the feet of the lioness.

“It didn’t even run away,” Lufkin said. “It just turned around and then slowly walked into the tall grass. I cranked another shell in, and at this point I was going to shoot it.”

The cat family, however, had padded out of sight and would not return.

Later that morning Wyoming Game and Fish Department Warden Jon Stephens investigated and set some cage-style traps intended to take the cougars alive. That decision, Game and Fish Large Carnivore Chief Dan Thompson said, was made partly because of the dog killing, but also because of the bold behavior.

“It’s a behavior that piques our interest,” Thompson said. “We felt that, because it was a cached situation, that we had a chance to capture these animals.”

The three traps, baited with the deer remnants, were pulled the next morning untouched for fear that if they were left out they’d attract an opportunistic bear that has been making the rounds in neighborhoods near Jackson Hole Golf and Tennis Club.

Pulling the trap is a testament to the fact that humans are sharing territory with megafauna, including an array of big carnivores, in the sprawled-out subdivisions and ranches that dot the landscape between Highway 22 and Grand Teton National Park.

Coexistence is the goal, but it doesn’t always work. Bears routinely end up raiding ornamental fruit trees and getting into garbage cans. The Pinnacle Peak Pack of wolves in recent years has regularly taken advantage of the beefy bovines being reared by some of Jackson Hole’s last working ranches. And Chuy’s death is not the first time a family dog has been the casualty of lion predation in the immediate area.

“We’re not going to blame them for being in an area with deer,” Thompson said, “but we certainly don’t want to see any more dogs get killed.”

Penny Maldonado, who directs the Jackson-based Cougar Fund, urged residents to be aware of factors that could increase the chance that a lion is nearby, be it deer in their yards or decks that cats see as shelter.

“It’s a very, very difficult situation,” Maldonado said, “because there are people that are scared, and there is kind of a primal fear to living amongst wildlife.”

Lufkin is accustomed to living with wildlife and espouses tolerance of the critters they share the landscape with.

“It’s almost second nature to us,” he said. “Even my kids are very aware of it. I’ve taught my kids how to look for signs — if they see a bunch of birds move or horses in the area acting up.”

But he found the lions’ behavior this past weekend to be worrisome.

“You expect it,” Lufkin said. “But the one thing with this incident that really has me concerned is that the mountain lions didn’t show any fear toward humans.”

Chuy, who belonged to Lufkin’s daughter, Sabby, will go down in family lore as a hero, because it was his bathroom break that alerted the family to the potential danger out their back door.

“If they didn’t run from me when I fired my shot,” Lufkin said, “what would they have done to my son with a rake?”

A “mountain Morkie,” in Lufkin’s words, Chuy had the run of the neighborhood, which he could access through his dog door. Over the fuzzy pup’s five years, Lufkin said, he batted 0-for-4 when it came to tussles with wildlife. A trampling from a moose once almost did the brazen dog in, but snow evidently softened the blows. A fight with a “packrat” that made its way into the Lufkin residence didn’t go so well, and sent Chuy scampering away after a bite on his nose. A mother robin once produced the same response, Lufkin said, divebombing and “rolling” Chuy, who was pursuing the songbird’s flightless chick.

Chuy also made plenty of friends in the neighborhood, especially next-door neighbors Sally and Frank Johnson.

Sally Johnson heard a distinctive meowing from her bedroom the night before Chuy’s demise, and when Frank peered out the front door he told her he could make out what was probably “just a cat” through the darkness in a flower bed.

It was a rather big cat, they’d learn.

Because they’re frequent travelers, the Johnsons didn’t take on a new pup after their last dogs passed on, but Chuy filled part of the void by regularly wandering next door for a petting.

To avoid confusing the little fella which house was his, they wouldn’t feed him. But on Sunday morning the Johnsons attended services at St. John’s Episcopal Church, the day set for the Blessing of the Animals, and dog biscuits were being doled out.

Frank snatched up one of the snacks, with his furry neighbor friend Chuy in mind.

“We got home, and there was no dog,” Sally Johnson said. “It was sad.”

Several years ago, my son and I were hunting in an area that was really remote. It had taken from 4 to 7 a.m. to hike into an area that pre-season scouting indicated we would find several mule deer bucks. We spent the rest of the morning waiting in the rocks above a small meadow watching does and a spike buck grazing just outside the tree line.

At about 11 a.m., we saw a more mature buck cross the meadow, chase the spike buck off and then disappear into the tree line. We thought we had a pretty good idea where he was going, so we decided to stay high and skirt around to the other side of the meadow and see if we could get a shot at him.

As we got up to move around the other side of the meadow, all the does bolted into the tree line. At first we thought they had seen us but decided that we were far enough away, and inside of the tree line, that we shouldn’t have spooked them. As we were looking to see if we could see what had startled them, a lone hunter came into the meadow, seemly unable to walk a straight line, but kind of staggering from one side to the other. My son Mike, was the first one to say what we both were thinking, “I think that guy is in trouble.”

We forgot about the buck and started down the hill calling to him. He finally turned and acknowledged us and stood there until we reached him. He immediately asked if we had seen his father.

He was sweating profusely, which made us think he had been walking nonstop for some time. He also was dizzy and was having trouble keeping his balance. so we had him sit down before he fell down.

I thought he also looked dehydrated so I looked for his water bottle or canteen in his backpack. There was none, so Mike pulled a water bottle out of his day pack and proceeded to have him sip water for a few minutes. After about 30 minutes and an energy bar plus both Mike’s water bottles and one of mine, he was a little more coherent and told us that his father and he had left their car about where we had left our truck the night before and had gone around different sides of the mountain expecting to meet at a place near our camp. He said neither his father nor he was carrying any water or food because his father said they wouldn’t need any.

It was obvious to us that the man was lost, had wandered aimlessly and had become disoriented and dehydrated, while heading farther away from where his father expected him to be.

Mike’s cellphone didn’t have any reception in the meadow so Mike carried his backpack and we both helped him back to our camp making him rest at intervals along the way. By the time we got back to camp, he had finished my second bottle of water and half of another energy bar. We still had no cellphone service.

I thought he still looked like we ought to get him checked out at a medical facility in Soda Springs, but his father was waiting for him at our camp where he had helped himself to a couple of bottles of water in the bed of our truck.

His father said he would take his son home to Pocatello and have him checked out at the hospital if he was still dizzy when they got home.

That experience has always haunted me because if we hadn’t seen that guy, he would have continued staggering and would have collapsed somewhere his father wouldn’t have thought to look for him.

However, Some very important lessons were reinforced on my mind that day.

1. Always hunt with someone.

2. Learn to use a topographical map, GPS and compass and carry them with you always.

3. Carry a small flashlight and extra batteries and bulbs in case it gets dark on the way back. Flashlights that emit 70 lumens or more are easier for others to see up to a mile away.

4. Pick out landmarks that are easy to see to guide you back to camp or your vehicle.

5. Your body can’t function properly if you don’t feed it. Carry a bag of raisons, nuts, M&M candy and dried fruit along with water.

6. Wear a pack with matches, firestarter materials, clothing, food, water and a light tarp that can be used for shelter.

In addition, leave word with someone where you are going and when to expect you back.

Always be prepared for changes in weather or unanticipated delays when hunting or camping and hiking in the backcountry, and as the shift sergeant on the old NYPD Blues used to say, “Let’s all be careful out there.”

Smokey Merkley was raised in Idaho and has been hunting since he was 10 years old. He can be contacted at mokeydo41245@hotmail.com.