never wolf account jim beers 113010

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NEVER…a true wolf account from Sunday November 28, 2010

by Jim Beers 11/30/10

Please read the following account by Scott Rockholm of a very recent wolf encounter by a lady in the Panhandle of Idaho. Note especially the last two sentences.

Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2010 07:44:44 -0800

Here is a report from a friend of mine. This horrific event happened yesterday evening. This is what we will be faced with, and the destruction of our wildlife is the reason these things will happen.

Wolf Encounter – Saturday, November 27, 2010
Name: Karen Calisterio
Time: Approximately 4:35 PM
Place: 1519 Moses Mountain Road, Tensed, Idaho 83870 (Driveway)
Conditions: Dusk, snowing, snow covered ground
Details:
About 4:30 PM, I, Karen Calisterio, and my husband, Ed Calisterio, arrived home from Coeur d’Alene to find our driveway too deep in snow to drive our car in without risking getting stuck. My husband decided not to take a chance and went to a friend’s house nearby (about 3‐1/2 miles) to borrow his plow to clear the driveway. I was tired and wanted to go on home while he did this so I said I would just walk up to the house while he went to get the plow. Our driveway is about 1/3 mile long from mailbox to house. I had walked up our driveway before and had my snow boots on and a warm coat so figured I would be fine. I was carrying my large canvas purse so checked the mailbox, put the mail in my purse and started up the driveway. I was about ¼ of the way up the driveway when I heard my phone ringing in my purse and tried digging for it but couldn’t find it in time to answer it. From my call log on my phone that call came in at 4:33 PM. After standing there for a few minutes fumbling through my purse to find my phone, I saw it was a friend and figured I’d just call them back when I got to the house as it was getting dark. I decided to put my phone in my pocket so I wouldn’t have to dig for it again in case Ed needed to call me for any reason. As I started up the driveway again, I saw, what I thought was 2 dogs at the crest of the driveway before it turned to go to the house. At first I thought it was my 2 dogs, but they seemed too big to be my dogs. I thought well maybe because I’m looking uphill at them and its getting dark they just look bigger. However, they just stood there and didn’t bark which I thought was odd behavior for them. They usually bark at everything. I called out to them but they didn’t respond like my dogs normally do and they still didn’t bark, but they started walking towards me. Then suddenly I saw 2 more coming with them and instantly said to myself, “oh shit, I don’t have 4 dogs, these are wolves”. I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and called my husband in a frantic and said, “get back here fast, there are wolves in the driveway and they’re coming towards me.” He said to keep my phone in my hand, don’t panic and he was turning around to come back. This call was placed at 4:37 PM and lasted 27 seconds. For a second, I started to turn and run back down the driveway then thought, “I don’t think I’m supposed to run.” Then I started crying, saying to myself, “I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do”. I turned back around so could keep watching the wolves and walked backwards as fast as I could. They kept coming towards me, but they didn’t appear to be running. It was getting dark fast. At 4:39 I tried calling a neighbor but he didn’t answer. At 4:40 my husband called back and said that while he was rushing to get back, he slid into a ditch and was stuck at the bottom of the mountain and had help coming and would be there as fast as he could get there and to stay calm. This call lasted 11 seconds. The wolves then went into the bushes. I couldn’t see them anymore and I couldn’t tell where they went or what they were doing. At 4:41 he called me again to make sure I was still ok and I stayed on the phone with him for 30 seconds. My phone was nearly dead and I was trying to preserve all the battery I
had. It seemed like an eternity and I was scared to death that the wolves had circled me in the surrounding bushes. I had a long wool coat on and remember thinking, “I wonder if that would protect me from their sharp teeth”. I prayed and I cried. At that point I really thought I was going to be eaten alive. At 4:43 I finally reached another neighbor by phone who said she’d be there as fast as she could get there. I stayed on the phone with her for 43 seconds. She came quickly and I could see her lights coming but it seemed like an eternity. I started moving as fast as I could to the end of the driveway hoping they’d be afraid to attack me if they heard her coming. At 4:49 PM my husband called me back but it went straight to voicemail. At 4:53 I called my husband and told him that the neighbor had got their and that I was safe and that she had 4‐wheel drive and was taking me to the house. He said that he was on his way up the hill with the friend who was bringing the plow but said he’d have to go back down and get the car after they plowed the driveway and made sure I was ok. As my neighbor was driving me up the driveway to the house we could see all the tracks in the headlights. You could clearly see how far they had advanced towards me before going into the bushes.
When I got to the house I found my dogs to be under the house. It took quite a bit of coaxing to get them to come out.
When my husband and another friend got there, they plowed the driveway on their way up but said they saw the tracks going off to the side. My husband got his 4‐wheel drive pick‐up and went back down to pull the car out of the ditch and a neighbor drove my car home. It continued snowing. We went down with a flashlight and guns and tried to see if we could tell where they went or where they came from but the snow had covered most of their tracks, there were tons of tracks going in all directions but not well defined, mostly indentations in the snow at this point since so it had continued snowing. I was hoping to be able to tell if when they went into the bushes had they circled me or had they taken off. Our hayfield is a frequent wintering ground for area elk as it borders forest land. Just a few days before Thanksgiving, we had counted about 40 head of elk in the field next to our house at dusk. We also have a large pond on the lower side of our driveway where the deer and elk water. We think it was the elk herds in the area that may have drawn the wolf packs in.
This was the most frightened I can ever remember being. I will never walk to my mailbox again. If I breakdown I will never leave my car.

Scott Rockholm
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More than the loss of big game animals to wolves;
More than the loss of all sorts of livestock to wolves;
More than the loss of all manner of dogs to wolves;
More than the loss of safe hunting, trapping, and fishing opportunities to wolves:
Indeed, more than the loss of anything except human lives to wolves or the role of wolves as vectors of diseases and infections that threaten the lives of humans, pets, livestock, and other wildlife --- those last two sentences say it all about why wolves should NEVER be a federal responsibility and why the first and foremost responsibility of state government regarding wolves must always be to provide the sort of wolf presence, if any, desired by LOCAL COMMUNITIES.

When any government imposes wolves, in this case by force, on local communities it not only disregards why this country was founded; it violates and destroys the very basis on which this country was founded. When The Declaration of Independence (written to explain to all Colonists during the Revolutionary War why we were fighting) states that “all men” “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” such as “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” and “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” it undoubtedly meant to make any governmental action such as wolf imposition unjust and therefore impossible. This woman has had her “Life, Liberty and pursuit of Happiness” not only threatened, she has had her “unalienable Rights” endowed by her “Creator” severely diminished forever by an unjust government.

Consider just a tiny fraction of all the limitless “Nevers” she faces in addition to those two she mentions in those last two sentences.

“Never” again to:

- Go outside your home, alone, at night.
- Let dogs out alone at night.
- Let children walk to neighbors or to school, alone.
- Let children camp in the yard.
- Let children go fishing or camping or trapping alone.
- Let children take out the garbage at night.
- Sit on your porch alone in the evening.
- Carry in groceries (the smells) alone.
- Go anywhere without a cell phone.
- Treat a dead cell phone battery as a minor inconvenience.
- Let kids play in the dirt in the yard (potential disease infections like anthrax and Neospora caninum.
- Let the dog lick your kid’s face or sleep with them (again many diseases).
- To think you shouldn’t (or don’t need to) carry a gun.
- To think you could kill a very dangerous and deadly animal threatening you or your family without risking jail, a fine, and the loss of more rights.
- Experience the peaceful and safe rural environment that you and your parents once knew.
- To look at your children and grandchildren and believe you are leaving them a world and Country as good as or better than the one left you by your forbearers.

May Our Creator helps us all as government, utilizing unjust “power”, seeks to deny our unalienable Rights. Especially those of us living in rural America.

Jim Beers
30 November 2010

Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist,
Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Eagan, Minnesota with his wife of many decades.