Montana's early wolf season in four remote hunting districts produced a puzzle.

Hunters in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness around Cooke City shot nine wolves, nearly swallowing the 12-wolf quota for most of the southern half of the state. But in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, hunters in an area three times the size shot only three wolves.

Granted, there are lots of complicating factors when comparing the two areas. The Beartooth has lots of open vistas on the edge of Yellowstone National Park, giving lots of wolves little cover. The Bob Marshall has thicker forests next to Glacier National Park, where wolves are more dispersed.

What will happen Sunday, when roughly 12,000 hunters with wolf tags have almost the entire state in which to shoot?

"We're real interested in finding out how successful hunters are going to be," said Ron Aasheim, spokesman for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. "We really want to learn what is this going to do, affecting wolf distribution and wolf behavior. Will we be effective in taking some wolves that are livestock predators? Will they avoid livestock?"

Aasheim said the FWP Commission considered rearranging the quota distribution after the Beartooth hunt, but decided against it. That means there are 40 wolves remaining to be legally shot in Wolf Management Area 1 (northern Montana above Missoula, Butte and Great Falls), three in Wolf Management Area 2 (southern half of the state east of Interstate 15), and 22 in Wolf Management Area 3 (east of Dillon and south of Missoula).

The small remaining hunt in the Yellowstone Zone frustrates Harrison rancher Bob Sitz. For him, it means his region won't know if livestock-harassing wolves might be affected.

Montana ranchers score wolves by numbers of livestock killed, or with more difficulty, livestock value lost to the predators. A confirmed wolf-killed cow will be compensated at full market rate. A suspected kill gets paid at half that. For Sitz, the problem is how to account for lower animal weights, reduced pregnancies, and extra fence maintenance and protection efforts caused by wolves stressing his cattle.

"We're going to have to get used to living with wolves, but it doesn't have to put people out of business," Sitz said. "When they kill something, I expect to kill them. I feel it's an eye for an eye."

Wolves will also not be hunted on any of the state's seven Indian reservations. Only two, the Flathead and Blackfeet reservations, have significant wolf presence.

Both tribal governments have given close consideration to the wolf situation, but come to different responses. The Flathead Reservation draft wolf management plan leaves wolf killing in the hands of tribal wildlife authorities, with no public hunt authorized.

The Blackfeet plan does allow for a public hunt, but doesn't need one this year, according to tribal wildlife biologist Dan Carney.

"The plan says about

30 percent of the wolves we know are here would be available for harvest," Carney said. "But this spring we had some management action, and took more than 30 percent of the wolves. So this year, we did not have a hunting season on wolves."

Montana is also watching Idaho's wolf season, where hunters have killed 76 of the 220 allowed wolves since the whole state opened up Oct. 1. All those results will influence how the 2010 hunting seasons are structured.

"Even if we take 75 (wolves), we know the wolf numbers are going to increase," Aasheim said. "We will still have more wolves on the landscape than we do right now."

Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at rchaney@missoulian.com.