Wrist-slap fines for poaching have long been a problem. Serious poachers—or even casual “thrill killers”—are often willing to risk getting caught if they know retribution won’t be too bitter a pill to swallow. In response, many states have amped up the penalties for poaching or other wildlife violations, and one of the more recent ways they've done this with whitetail poachers is to use a fine-calculator based on the buck’s antler size. Here’s a story detailing the new system.

What are your thoughts on this system? Should poachers get whacked harder if they target large whitetails, or should the size of the buck’s antlers have nothing do with poaching penalties? Personally, I feel that the fines are a great idea, as most of the poaching activity in my area is focused on older, larger bucks. But I’ve talked to some hunters who feel that stiff penalties should exist no matter the animal’s B&C score.

Anxious to hear your thoughts on this topic, and feel free to chime in with your state’s policy on fining poachers. [ Read Full Post ]

Robert Ruark, writing in his journal about some particularly good African trophy that he had hammered, noted that it was “…collected, but not earned.” He believed, as many hunters do, that there should be a certain amount of work you put into bagging an animal or else you don’t really deserve it. This is a nice sentiment, but of course it is nonsense. You expect to have to work, and if you do work very hard and get something good as a result it is more rewarding, but that’s as far as it goes. Despite our touching belief that hunting is a matter of skill and perseverance, a lot of it is sheer dumb luck.

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From the Missoulan:

Officials say a downed power line near Eureka in northwestern Montana electrocuted more than a dozen animals over a period of months, including a wolf that was "still warm" when it was found earlier this month.

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We all know there isn’t much love lost between hunters and anti-hunters, but nobody wishes anybody any real harm—except when some crazy anti-hunter does wish us real harm and a newspaper has the poor taste to print his wish. Then it’s the hunters, in this case the National Shooting Sports Foundation, who take the high ground.

From the NSSF website:
Shameful is the word that comes to mind for the Burlington Free Press and its decision to print a reader's anti-hunting letter. . . . that was written in response to the Vermont paper's story about the opening of moose hunting season. . . .

Here's the letter:
Take a Few Hunters Along with the Moose
On this beautiful day we learn that about 1,251 hunters are taking to the woods with legal permits to "pursue prized quarry." Certainly the members of various humane organizations do not approve. I suggest that before the next annual killing season, other residents be awarded legal permits to kill hunters who will be out to kill these beautiful, non-destructive animals. Or the government could just rule out all this primitive killing.

The NSSF asked for an apology and got one, as well an... [ Read Full Post ]

From The Spokesman Review:
Instead of raising more revenue, a fee increase hitting out-of-state hunters and anglers has resulted in less money flowing to the Idaho Fish and Game Department this year.

“Usually in Idaho we sell out right away when it comes to our nonresident deer and elk hunters, and at this time we are not sold out and we’re seeing a lag,” said Fish and Game Director Cal Groen. “We have tags left over.”

Hunters from outside the state cited the fee increase, the poor economy and the state’s growing wolf population as reasons they’re staying away this year. [ Read Full Post ]

Every year, thousands of Oregon sportsmen apply for just a dozen mountain goat tags. Old enough to apply for big-game permits for the first time, 12-year-old Matea Huggins drew the rare tag and filled it with a great goat.

From the Baker City Herald:

“We should have bought Matea a lottery ticket too,” [her father] said. “We could have been rich and had a nice goat. . . .”

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From the Standard-Examiner:

It was a classic case of the hunter becoming the hunted on the Oct. 17 season  opener of the Utah deer hunt, as the 48-year-old Syracuse resident [David Garcia] found himself face to face with a full-grown, 150-pound mountain lion. . . .

"When I saw her, it sent a chill through my spine that I can't explain. I was trembling," Garcia said. . . .

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From the Pioneer Press:

Kelly Holmin, 12, is a seventh-grader in Nicollet, Minn., who loves playing the flute and volleyball and just plowed through the teen-lit "The It Girl" book series.

"Definitely not a tomboy,'' her father, Jeff, a taxidermist, said of his eldest daughter. "She's kind of a girly girl who likes to wear makeup already."

A girly girl who shoots a Ruger Hawkeye rifle and just became the youngest Minnesotan to shoot a bull moose?

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I know this is Whitetail365, but I also know you guys appreciate a good mule deer story when you see one.

From Nevada’s The Record-Courier:

Most hunters would agree that a 250-yard kill shot on a large, four-point buck in the high desert country of Elko County is a pretty good take, even better when the hunter turns out to be 75-year-old great-grandmother Doris Bauman.

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Talk about your bad luck, from Denver’s CBS 4 News:

A hunter attacked by a grizzly bear in southern Montana also had the misfortune of being shot in the arm by a companion trying to stop the attack. . . .

Park County Sheriff Allan Lutes says his office looked into the shooting of the hunter and found no negligence. . . .

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Finn Aagaard, who was a hugely popular writer on guns and hunting and who left us, much too early, in 1999, was a great storyteller as well. Not long before his death, he sat down with a tape recorder and recounted his early days in Kenya, as a kid, in the bitter campaign against the Mau Mau, and as a professional hunter.

Aagaard, who loved to hunt, and was responsible either directly or indirectly for the death of who knows how many animals, imposed strict limitations on himself about pulling the trigger. He did not hunt predators for himself, either in Africa or later when he moved to the U.S. He did not allow shooting to see something die. By the time he recorded the tape, as he says, he simply was not interested in seeing anything more dead animals on the ground.

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From the Choteau Acantha:

[O]fficials on Tuesday said that a pheasant hunter from Alaska shot and killed a sow grizzly in dense brush east of U.S. Highway 89 and about 8 miles north of Choteau on Monday. . . .

[Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks game warden Rod] Duty said the hunter was probably 20 feet from the bear when he saw her. He said the hunter told him she was on her feet and took two big lunges toward him. He fired three times at her with a 20-gauge semi-automatic shotgun, Duty said. The third shot, including the wad, hit the bear in the forehead and brought her down, fatally wounded. . . .

Duty said on Tuesday that the case appears to be a self-defense shooting.

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