By Dave Hurteau & Chad Love

When a nearby sea lion stole 24-year-old Hai Nguyen’s bait as he fished along California’s Newport Beach, the enraged angler allegedly stabbed the animal with a steak knife, injuring it so badly it had to be put down. Nguyen has been arrested and could face a $25,000 fine and year in prison. Read the report here.

By Dave Hurteau & Chad Love

Preliminary data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s 2006 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife Associated Recreation has put numbers to a trend most of us were already well aware of: hunting and fishing participation is down. Recently some 300 representatives from 23 states and four Canadian provinces met in Flagstaff, AZ, to discuss the issue at the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies.

From The Republic:

Some of the reasons discussed at the meeting were complex rules and regulations, reduced hunting opportunities, age restrictions, a lack of encouragement or help for older hunters, increasing urbanization of the population, rising license and permit costs, difficult access to recreational lands and a perception that hunting and fishing is cruel and inhumane.

"And hunters are passive as to why they hunt. We are terrible at selling the product we have. We need to sell the sizzle of hunting and conservation."

Do you agree with Keck? How should we go about selling the sizzle?

By Dave Hurteau & Chad Love

Hunting in a muzzleloader-only unit in Idaho in 2004, Gary A. Lehnherr of McFarland, Wisconsin, shot a mule deer buck sporting a rack as big as any ever taken with a smokepole. Problem is, he shot it with a centerfire rifle—and has now pled guilty to that. Check out the full story and picture of the enormous rack here.

By Dave Hurteau & Chad Love

The news has been loaded with stories about illegal marijuana farms on public land. Now there’s one less farm and two fewer farmers, as Illinois and federal officials have arrested a pair of Mexican immigrants and burned up to 30,000 plants the men were growing in a Cook County forest preserve. Check out the story and video here.