By DOUG SMITH, Minneapolis Star Tribune

It was double trouble for two brothers in northwestern Minnesota, who separately crashed through thin ice in their new vehicles last week.

Both survived to tell the tale.

Keith Kubista hunkered among trees in the rugged Bitterroot Valley of southwestern Montana, a high-powered rifle in hand, hunting wolves this fall.

He howled. Wolves in a creek-bottom below howled back.

"It sends a chill up your spine, just like when you hear an elk bugle," said Kubista.

But over three days, Kubista and a hunting companion never saw a wolf.

Congressional budget cuts have defanged the federal wolf-control program in Minnesota, stunning state officials who say they aren't allowed to trap, kill or remove wolves that prey on livestock or pets.

The recent changes would effectively end efforts to control a growing population of wolves that killed record numbers of pets and livestock last year.

The bad news continues for Minnesota's moose.

The population of the iconic animal in northeastern Minnesota has declined again, based on the latest aerial survey this winter by the Department of Natural Resources.

Federal sharpshooters have begun destroying a herd of about 700 elk on a farm in southeastern Minnesota where chronic wasting disease (CWD) was discovered this year.