BigGameHoundsmen.com

I am circulating a petition that would allow persuing and hunting bears with hounds in the state of Wyoming. We have contacted our local legislature representive and are in the process of creating a bill for him to present. I would appreciate any help or valuable information from houndsmen to help us accomplish this task.

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I will gladly sign your petitian, but I can tell you your efforts might be for naught. I have discussed this the last 10 years with biologists, wardens and the game commision and none of them think it will ever pass. As I said I will gladly sign it and I will help you in anyway I can. I don't know any congressmen, but do know Gov. Mead and a lot of people in Game and Fish. Good luck

I would be interested in hearing some of your past experiences with this issue. We know we are up against a big battle but i feel the bear situation is changing every year. I hope persistance will pay off. We are trying to address all issuses before they arise.

I will gladly speak to you at length about this over the phone. There is too much to post. (307)388-5411

I am running for Montana state legislature, and intend on carrying similar legislation here in Montana. As for the Fish Wildlife and Parks, (Montana's fish and game commission) they too do not support the idea. The reason for that is money! The FWP is paid massive sums to take care of problem bears and they know full well that hound hunting will remove many many hours of their overtime and even alleviate the need for a few wardens, since bear complaints are such a massive part of their responsibility.

Consider this, they are paid hundreds of thousands each year to respond to bear complaint calls, harassing, trapping etc of problem bears, but if we chased them with hounds, then the bears would be conditioned to avoid people and populated areas, and the sound of dogs means trouble. One major obstacle is the concern over grizzly bears. What they refuse to consider is that chasing them would actually benefit them as a species, the number of bears euthanized, both griz and black, would decrease significantly. One more point of interest is that in Idaho, hound hunting is the lowest harvest rate of the five classifications of harvest types. Bait, spot and stalk, incidental take, hound hunting and stand, hound hunting ranks at the very bottom at 16% harvest rate with baiting ranking highest.

wyoboy350, I hadn't forgot about you and the questions you brought up concerning bear hunting with hounds in Wyoming. As per our phone conversation a couple weeks ago I promised to get back with you about why the WG&F will not allow bear hunting with hounds. I spoke with the WG&F headquarters in Cheyenne and the same points I disscussed with you on the phone are the main reasons they will not allow it. I will list those points here so others that wonder why it is not allowed will understand WG&F's reasoning behind this. The first point as I mentioned to you on the phone is the grizzlys in the state. We are very close to getting the grizzly's delisted and that is something that takes priority. If bear hunting is allowed with hounds it would bring attention to bear hunting in general and it could cause issues with the delisting of the grizzly. The second point is we have always allowed black bears to be hunted over bait. And even though I personally do not agree with baiting, the WG&F believes there will be conflicts between houndsmen running bears off of legal baits and bait hunters. As I said on the phone it is very difficult to propose changes in regulations, but if you are willing to try then the best things to do is to attend the public meetings the WG&F have to voice your oppinions and concerns. The bear regulations are revised every 3 years and unfortunately they were just revised last year so it will be 2 more years before it will be up for revision again. If you have anymore questions feel free to give me a call.

If u need any help with that i would be more than happy to help you with it

Not everyone is an expert, even if they claim to be.

All you can do is try. Don't leave out the politicians. They are where most of the money comes from, even if they don't make direct decisions. Follow the money.

Get the outfitters on board, they have a lot of pull.

I'm in, let me know if I can do anything

I am in any help i can provide let me no.

Has this ever been revisited?

Any updates?