I don’t know the Wyoming man who ran a wolf down with a snowmobile, taped her mouth shut, took photos with her and paraded her into a bar. My mama would say there’s a special place in Hell for people who treat animals so poorly.

I don’t condone the mistreatment of animals in any way but hear me say this: the actions of one fool ought not color the perception held of an entire group.

Hunters and anglers are as disgusted by this man’s behavior as anyone. Anti-hunting groups have taken the gift-wrapped gem he presented to them on a silver platter and run with it. It has made their job discrediting the hunting and ranching community even easier.

With wolves in Colorado killing four more yearlings, as confirmed by Colorado Parks and Wildlife on April 18, bringing the confirmed total to six head, its easy for anti-rancher types to lump all ranchers into the same pile as the Wyoming fool. Please don’t make this mistake.

It isn’t so, though. And it’s also not a reason to rip wolf management from the hands of the state of Wyoming and give it to the Feds or to introduce animal rights laws stemming from the actions of one that would have unintended consequences for many. It’s no reason to vote for the slew of misguided, uninformed initiatives floating around in the name of “animal welfare.”

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Typically, Wyoming does not release the names of individuals involved in wolf hunting, per statute — likely because wolf management and hunting is such an emotionally charged topic. We’re seeing something similar in Colorado. Some, though not all, ranchers who are being affected by wolf kills of livestock are asking CPW to protect their anonymity. In conversations I’ve had with exhausted ranchers who are in the middle of calving season with wolves circling their herds in the wee hours, one of the main concerns is not the media so much as it is those who want to blame them for the livestock losses. Correct. They don’t want to be blamed for wolves killing their livestock. Wolves they voted fervently against and wolves they’re spending inordinate numbers of hours and dollars to deter.

Each rebuttal written about any coverage of wolf depredation has been met with the mention of a few things: ranchers are eligible for compensation of up to $15,000, nonlethal deterrents are available at no charge, and they can legally protect their livestock if a wolf or wolves are caught in the act. Though these are not wrong, they’re less than comforting.

Ranchers are eligible for compensation for confirmed kills, though this does not account for cattle stress that results in lower weights and reproduction rates. It doesn’t account for the hours upon hours they are investing in additional supervision. And it doesn’t account for the pit in their stomachs as they check cows each morning and wait for their turn to find blood in the snow. It’s not about the dollars, I assure you and I can attest to that through my own exhausted, cow poop-covered experience.

Nonlethal deterrents are available, though they are only effective for a finite amount of time and they are major drains of resources to install and maintain. If you’ve ever untangled a Christmas inflatable in a windstorm, or a flag in springtime winds, you can only imagine maintaining miles of fladry in open fields, high winds and a foot of snow. Range riders are a solution the Department of Agriculture is considering, but the area they’re trying to protect is vast and, if they do come upon a wolf attacking livestock, waving their arms and yelling is their only option to stop the attack.

Though ranchers have been told they may legally use lethal force to protect cattle in the midst of an attack, there are serious holes in this logic, the least of which is not that most attacks happen in the early morning hours in the dark, when it is illegal to shoot. Range riders are not authorized to shoot wolves caught in the act either and for anyone to catch wolves in the act, they’ll have to be in the right place at the right time.

Ranchers, in hushed tones, have admitted they don’t want wolf advocates to accuse them of livestock losses because they didn’t do enough or didn’t use enough nonlethal deterrents or didn’t time their fladry correctly — or any other blame cast upon men and women trying to make a living. Ranchers in wolf country have become pawns in whatever wild Jumanji-like game of chess the Polis administration is playing and ranchers are depending upon the reasonable voters in zip codes where the people outnumber the cows to stand with them.

Rachel Gabel writes about agriculture and rural issues. She is assistant editor of The Fence Post Magazine, the region’s preeminent agriculture publication. Gabel is a daughter of the state’s oil and gas industry and a member of one of the state’s 12,000 cattle-raising families, and she has authored children’s books used in hundreds of classrooms to teach students about agriculture.