Proving yet again that they are ahead of the curve in terms of a utopian society, earlier this month the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) targeted a 30-year-old video game character.
In the new Nintendo 3DS game Super Mario 3D Land, the always youthful and ever happy plumber Mario uses a fur tanuki suit to fly. PETA finds this disgusting. According to the PETA website “When on a mission to rescue the princess, Mario has been known to use any means necessary to defeat his enemy—even wearing the skin of a raccoon dog to give him special powers. Tanooki may be just a "suit" in Mario games, but in real life, tanuki are raccoon dogs who are skinned alive for their fur. By wearing Tanooki, Mario is sending the message that it's OK to wear fur.”
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks reported today that a collared wolf was recently shot on private land in southeastern Montana under a defense of property law (the wolf had attacked two lambs).
While a wolf getting shot in Montana doesn't typically make a gripping headline, this particular wolf traveled more than 300 miles from where he was originally collared.
The 2.5-year-old black wolf was collared in 2010 near Jackson, WY and was killed outside of Hammond, MT. Over the course of the wolf's journey, researchers lost his radio signal and the young male ended up off the radar.
While most of America was enjoying Thanksgiving vacation last week, big things were happening in the world of grizzly bears. Or, rather, big things were staying the same.
A federal court ruled that grizzlies in the Yellowstone region will remain classified as a “threatened species” on the Endangered Species List, according to multiple news sources. The ruling has implications for hunters, ranchers and big game populations.
The government had originally planned to remove grizzlies from the Endangered Species List after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service noted that grizzly populations are now substantial enough to be managed by individual states.
For the first time in over two years, a jaguar has been spotted in Arizona. Hunting guide Donnie Fenn, his 10-year old-daughter, and an unidentified friend were running Fenn’s dogs after mountain lion the Saturday before Thanksgiving in a remote canyon in Cochise County when the lead dog caught a scent.
Fenn detailed the action during a press conference held at the Arizona Game and Fish Department’s Tucson office last Tuesday. "In a matter of a couple of minutes, the dogs blew out of the canyon and were going fast.
I jumped back on my mule and headed up the canyon, and by then the dogs were about three-quarters of a mile from us.” When Fenn closed the gap to 200 yards he immediately knew what his dogs had treed. “I pulled my camera out, zoomed in, and I could tell right away it was a jaguar. It was big and spotted."
The Good: A man in Kalispell, Montana went black bear hunting.
The Bad: It wasn’t bear season.
The Bear: The bear the man shot wasn’t a black bear; it was a grizzly.
An unidentified man (Please note that unlike abcmontana.com, where information for this story was obtained, I do not refer to this individual as a hunter) plead guilty in Lincoln County Justice court this week to shooting an endangered grizzly bear and hunting in a closed season.
It wasn’t the one that got away. It was the one that was taken away.
Earlier this month the crew of the Apollo accidentally snagged a gigantic 881-pound tuna in their trawling gear as they were setting out their nets. Apollo owner Carlos Rafael told the Cape Cod Times that the catch was actually a fluke. “They [the crew] probably got it in the midwater when they were setting out and it just got corralled in the net. That only happens once in a blue moon.” Fortunately Rafael had purchased several tuna permits for just such an occurrence. As required by the permit, Rafael immediately called the bluefin tuna hot line to report the catch.
The red wolf was declared extinct in 1980. So how did one wind up at Diane Pulliam's house in Florida? And is it the real deal? Authorities aren't sure.
It's tough to distinguish red wolves from their taxonomic cousins. Based on Pulliam's hasty snapshots, her backyard visitor could indeed be a red wolf--or just a coyote, depending on whom you ask.
“I only shot at the animal after it attacked my wife and scratched me,” is how Louis Goosen of Cape Town, South Africa justifies his shooting a baboon in his garage last week. The 77-year-old said he was working in his garage when he turned to see a baboon staring him down. “It must have been four feet high, it gave me the fright of my life.” Goosen said in an interview with www.iol.co.za.
According to Goosen, the baboon ran into his kitchen where it was quickly followed by a troop of nine more baboons. The South African vermin then ransacked the kitchen. Goosen quickly retrieved his gun and popped off six rounds into the air to scare the animals. The troop scattered at the shots.
There’s a bill before the Pennsylvania House of Representatives Game and Fisheries Committee that would finally give Keystone State sportsmen the right to hunt on Sunday. If the Game and Fisheries committee passes the bill, it should cruise through the House and Senate to Governor Tom Corbett’s desk. The committee vote could come as early as this week. Currently, Pennsylvania is one of 11 states in the U.S. that have some sort of restriction on Sunday hunting, and is one of six (along with Virginia, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Delaware) that outlaw it entirely. House Bill 1760 is sponsored by the chairmen of the House Game and Fisheries Committee, Rep. John Evans, R-Erie, and Rep. Edward Staback, D-Lackawanna.
Theodore Roosevelt wanted to kill a lion. The 26th President of the United States had grown up on adventure stories of Africa. As a boy he collected biological specimens in his New York apartment. As a young man he moved out West to ranch, hunt and write about the natural world. He had seen war, raised a family, rose to the highest elected office in the land and hunted nearly every kind of game North America could offer.
Still, he had not pursued what he affectionately called, "the great tawny, maned cat." From his desk in the White House, TR planned what would become the largest safari ever to work its way through Africa. And he relied heavily on his old friend, the English hunter Frederick Selous.
