For the last 17 of my 30 years trapping career, I have been involved in Predator Control Management on livestock In the course of trapping, calling, denning and flying, you get to sec a lot of livestock and wildlife deaths caused by predation. You are out at all times of the day and all season. You cover 3000-4000 square miles so you see predation over a large geographical area.

After having raised both fox and coyotes in captivity, you learn that fox require 1-1 1/2 pounds of meat per day and coyotes require 1 1/2-3 pounds of meat per day. Obviously, when pups arc in the growing cycle, they can eat more, similar to a human teenager.

Most hunters today only hunt a few days or weeks out of the year and usually, only in the fall of the year. Much of the deer and antelope predation occurs heaviest from December to Jury: a time when few hunters are in the field. Predation is hard to observe because many times in one to two nights, all that may be left are some hair and stomach grass contents.

I have many times been called to sheep pastures where 1-40 head of sheep have been killed in 30 days, weighing 30-80 pounds each. Even in an open, low grass pasture there are no heads and few bones or other parts that can be found; only some scraps of wool. The coyotes, foxes, eagles, skunks, ravens, magpies, etc., have cleaned up and drug off almost every shred of evidence. The same occurs with deer and antelope fawns.

In our efforts to protect 33,000 range sheep, we annually remove 1300-1400 fox and coyotes. Simply do some simple arithmetic and figure that for each 1,000 coyotes, 365 days at 3 pounds of meat per day (and sometimes they eat more or less) and often waste carcasses that arc consumed by other animals and birds or simply left to rot But at 3 pounds on 1,000 coyotes for one year, you have 1,095,000 pounds of meat eaten, not counting the pounds of meat consumed by other animals or left rotting in the hot months. That is a lot of deer, antelope, sheep, calves, rabbits and mice. It should be pointed out that a pair of coyotes feeding a litter of 6-8, requiring say 18 pounds of meat per day, it is hard to catch that many pounds and number of cottontail rabbits, etc. It is a lot easier to just get one deer fawn to cover for the day or for two days. Keep in mind that this is required day after day.

Recently I attended a Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Game Hearing. I heard the statement that some antelope fawn counts were as low as 20%. It was attributed to the drought! What a statement! It is true that on drought years, predation increases due to vegetative cover and the height of the cover. But, no biologist in this state has done any study proving that any antelope or deer have been found in numbers, dying of thirst! The fact that sportsmen tolerate these unsubstantiated excuses is appalling. Yet study after study prove that predators eat large numbers of game. But to acknowledge to the sportsmen that yes, predators ate your game, would cause them to divert large portions of their budgets spent on pet projects to be used on predator control and take the accompanying heat from the Anti Kill community. Politics run

game departments, not sound wildlife management, any more.

If sportsmen want more game, they will have to holler for it! In Alaska, it is said they manage their game 90% for the predator and 10% for the sportsmen. I have noticed that the un-said policies of many game commissions in the lower 48 states do likewise. Everytime there is a shortage of game, they manage us, not the predator

Let me give you an example that has occurred to trappers. We have been regulated and trappers individually quoted on bobcats so that we have not been allowed to harvest over 6,000 bobcats over the years. These same bobcats had a fur dollar value of 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 million dollars...lost revenue to the state's trappers and keep in mind a dollar turns 7 times in an economy, so 7-10 million dollars lost in revenue and taxation! Yet Montana studies proved each bobcat radio collared, killed antelope and turkeys, etc. How many dollars in lost sportsmen revenue was lost by the thousands of antelope and turkey licenses not sold????

Sportsmen realize coyotes and bobcats kill sheep, but they fail to realize that, when not near or killing sheep, they are busy killing something else, which is not just rabbits and mice.

We all recognize the values for regulating, harvesting, and managing all wildlife, but today, with the almost end of a fur trade, hundreds of thousands of predators are no longer being made into garments. Their management is going to be required to keep the game herds growing and stable. At one time, 600,000 coyote pelts were used per year. One super bad

winter can upset the balance with a winter kill-die off of deer and antelope, can put the numbers low enough that predators, unmanaged, can put them in control of the game populations. It happened with the ducks (drought and habitat) and it happened with the pheasants.

Here, where we manage our predators in this southeastern corner of Montana, I have had the luxury of seeing most does with two fawns and have even noticed 1 doc (deer) with 3 fawns. I have seen a doc antelope with 4 so far into mid August. These are around bands of sheep where all coyotes have been removed. Anyone who doesn't know the values of coyote, fox, bobcat, etc., control, just look at the statistics and think of how many lost Boone & Crocket trophies.

Craig O'Gorman has spent the last thirty three years in the outdoors as a hunter and trapper. He has documented many of his finding with photographs