'Shoot, shovel and shut up'? As wolves kill more cattle, ranchers say it's time to get tough [View all]

Standing among his cattle in a broad green pasture, beneath a brilliant blue sky about an hour north of Lake Tahoe, rancher Dan Greenwood surveyed the idyllic landscape and called it what he feels it has become: a death trap.

Behind him, a 3-month-old calf that had been mauled by wolves the night before lay in the grass with deep wounds on its flanks. Two of its legs were so badly injured they could barely support the calf’s weight when it tried to stand. The animal’s agitated mother paced a few feet away.

Greenwood wrapped his hand around one of the calf’s ankles and gently rolled it onto its back to inspect the savage bite wounds.

He was trying to decide whether to give the calf another day to see if it could recover enough to keep up with its mother — or put it out of its misery before the wolves returned to finish the job.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-05-30/as-wolves-kill-more-cattle-california-ranchers-say-time-to-start-shooting