Hunters across Montana had killed less than half the quota of wolves set by state biologists as of Sunday, the end of rifle season for deer and elk.

The state Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks had recorded that hunters had shot 99 wolves by Sunday across 14 management units. The quota was reached in only one wolf district, the large unit that stretches from just east of Butte to the North Dakota state line.

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Here’s the lead-in from an AP article discussing this . . .

Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials say Montana’s 2011 general big game hunting season will end Sunday evening, as planned, while wolf hunting will continue at least through the end of the year.

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Heading into the final week of the big game hunting season, the deer and elk harvest picked up but still lags behind last year’s numbers while the wolf harvest is approaching quotas for a few Northwest Montana hunting districts.

Northwest Montana has six wolf hunting districts with a combined hunting quota of 71 wolves.

For District 101 covering the area between Libby and Kalispell, hunters have taken down 15 wolves out of a quota of 19 for the district.

In District 130 covering the area east of Kalispell including the Swan Valley, nine wolves have been harvested; the quota is 12.

And in the North Fork’s District 110, one wolf has been harvested out of the quota of two.

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Here’s the lead-in for part 1 . . .

When wolves first made a comeback into Glacier National Park from a pack coming down from Canada, I did a lot of research on their past history in the U.S. Few people have much past knowledge on what has now become the “new” game animal, so let me share some surprising facts:

Before the white man came, there were wolves in every state of the union, and the first bounty on them was placed by the Plymouth Colony in 1630. Lewis and Clark’s journals of 1804 mentioned the “great numbers” of wolves, with especially large populations in what is now the Billings area.

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And for part 2 . . .

The cattlemen weren’t sitting idly by waiting for the legislature. Many of them started or stepped up their own efforts of poisoning carcasses, hiring professionals and, of course, every cowboy on the range had orders to kill any coyote, wolf or bear on sight.

In 1895, a new $3 bounty law was passed, and the Miles City newspaper reported 3,300 wolves killed by April, but this was later proven slightly high. A total of 5,866 hides were turned in for bounty in 1896, but the wolves were getting smarter and doing such things as not returning to a kill, avoiding traps and taking off at the sight of men on horses.

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So far this hunting season, hunters have taken 44 wolves in Montana.

The overall statewide quota is 220 wolves spread across 16 hunting districts.

In Northwest Montana’s six districts, a total of 17 wolves have been harvested; the quota of allowable wolf kills is 71.

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A federal appeals court has turned down an emergency request by wildlife advocates seeking to stop gray wolf hunts underway in the Northern Rockies.

In a ruling Tuesday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the emergency injunction sought by three advocacy group but said it would consider the request during oral arguments scheduled for next month.

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A group of wolf advocates have requested an emergency halt to wolf hunting in the Rocky Mountains, one week before the general rifle season begins in Montana.

The Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Friends of the Clearwater and WildEarth Guardians want to return the gray wolf to federal Endangered Species Act protection.

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It’s open season for hunting wolves across much of Idaho’s backcountry.

The state’s second public hunt started Tuesday in the 13 separate hunting zones across the state.

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Environmentalists have asked a federal appeals court for an emergency injunction to halt wolf hunts scheduled to start in a few weeks in Idaho and Montana.

The request filed by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and other groups with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was made public Saturday. The groups want the hunts canceled until the court issues a decision in an appeal filed Monday challenging a federal judge’s ruling allowing the hunts to go forward.

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Strongly disagreeing with his own decision, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy on Wednesday upheld a congressional rider removing gray wolves from Endangered Species Act protection.

Barring a successful appeal, the decision means wolves are delisted in Montana and Idaho, and those states may go ahead with their scheduled wolf hunting seasons this fall.

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Related story: Groups to appeal wolf ruling to 9th Circuit