So if you want to take a wolf in Idaho this year?

You can’t trap, you can’t bait, you can’t use dogs and you can’t hunt around Fish and Game big game feeding sites.

You can shoot members of Ketchum’s celebrity Phantom Hill pack, which love to hang out along Idaho 75. But is that really fair chase?

In 2008 a Wyoming man chased a wolf 35 miles on his snowmobile before he shot it. He considered fair chase.

Do you?

It’s not clear that tapping into the radio-collars of wolves with a personal transceiver is illegal or legal. But Fish and Game urges hunters not to kill wolves with radio collars since it costs so much money to get them on.

Biologically none of these issues matter. It a matter of perception and of that long discussed but often ignored subject of hunter ethics.

Wolf advocates will likely go to court soon and take a shot at stopping the hunt altogether. They will be talking about genetics, metapopulations and pack dynamics.

U.S. District Judge Donald Malloy is going to have to decide whether Idaho’s 220 wolf limit, the Nez Perce’s 35 and Montana’s 75 is an immediate threat to the region’s wolf population and whether he thinks there is a good chance that wolf advocates will win their case in the end.

Meanwhile no matter how he rules, there’s a good chance that some wolves may be killed this year by Idahoans anyway. Fish and Game has issued a wolf kill permit to ranchers in the Sawtooth Basin. It allows 12 people to kill up to three wolves because of livestock depredations in the area.

These are wolves that occasionally have been easy to spot and have promoted a lot of tourist interest in the valley. But will these wolves be harder to spit after the shooting has started.

Here's what Idaho Gov. Butch Otter said about that issue:

"You know there both sides that say once you shoot at them they’ll be awful hard to catch again and get another shot at them and that may be true but we’ll find out."