PINEDALE (WNE) — The 2020 wolf-hunting season in Wyoming’s trophy game management area closed as the New Year began last week, with only 31 gray wolves taken from a limit of 51.

Last year, Wyoming Game and Fish sold 1,987 licenses to resident hunters and 234 to nonresidents for a total of 2,221.

All but one of 10 Wyoming Game and Fish hunt areas closed on Dec. 31; Hunt Area 13, Whiskey Mountain, remains open through March 31 with one wolf reported taken from a quota of three.

Only Hunt Area 10, Rim, with a limit of six wolves, closed with a full harvest on Oct. 26.

Game and Fish manages gray wolves, which are delisted from the Endangered Species Act, in the trophy-game management area outside Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. In the state’s predator area, where Game and Fish does not manage wolves, 24 were reported taken in 2020.

Pinedale Game and Fish biologist Ken Mills is currently working on the 2020 Wyoming Gray Wolf Report, expected out in early April. New 2021 wolf-hunting limits will be reformulated after more data are gathered, Mills said.

The wolves not taken by Dec. 31 will be part of that calculation.

In 2019, Game and Fish set a total harvest of 34 wolves with 26 taken — one illegally — that season.