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November 13, 2009 by
A Minnesota man with a criminal history is suspected of illegally killing a massive-racked whitetail buck that could be the largest 8-point ever recorded.
Last week, Minnesota conservation officers seized the antlers involved in the case and on Thursday, Nov. 12 filed charges against Troy Reinke, 32, of Cannon Falls, Minn. Reinke was charged by the Goodhue County Attorney’s Office with 13 counts, including exceeding his limit and failure to register a deer.
According to the complaint, Reinke admitted to conservation officers that he shot a small doe and a small buck on separate dates in early October, and failed to tag or register either. Reinke said he shot the large 8-point buck, on Halloween evening.
State conservation officers confirmed that a scoring form utilizing Boone and Crockett measuring indicated the deer had a gross antler score of 190 5/8 and net score of 185. The only deduction was a small “kicker point” on the rack’s right side.
Though there is no specific Boone and Crockett category for 8-point whitetails, the largest 8-point typical on record was taken in Michigan and scored 183.
Rob Drieslein, editor of Minnesota Outdoor News reported that Chuck Corcoran, the Hampton, Minn., taxidermist who handled the deer for Reinke, said the buck field-dressed at 269 pounds.
“And it’s just a rack you’ve got to see to believe,” Corcoran said.
During their investigation, conservation officers seized a bow, two deer racks, the meat from the three deer, and the hide from the large buck.
Related media reports coming out of Minnesota indicate that Reinke has previous convictions for domestic assault, theft and fishing with too many fishing lines. According to court records, he served 120 days in jail recently for his second domestic assault charge.
Officially, Reinke has been charged with:
-Two counts of gross misdemeanor, transport of illegally taken big-game animals;
- One count, gross overlimit of wild animals;
-Two counts, misdemeanor, failure to register deer;
- Two counts, misdemeanor, failure to validate a deer license;
- Two counts, misdemeanor, untagged big-game animal;
- Two counts, misdemeanor, take overlimit of deer, and;
- Two counts, misdemeanor, take or hunt deer without a license.
If convicted on all counts, Reinke could face $19,000 in fines, up to a year in jail and revocation of his hunting license.
Investigating officers said they were initially alerted to the alleged poaching through a tip from a concerned sportsman.
A trial date has not been set.
[ Read Full Post ] November 10, 2009 by
Here’s a story to file under the Newshound’s heading of “be careful who you pick a fight with.”
It’s also a great indicator that the whitetail rut is well underway in the state of Wisconsin.
A 7-point buck point obviously chose the wrong adversary in his testosterone-induced attempt to exhibit male dominance when it challenged a 640-pound concrete elk statue in the yard of Mark Brye in rural Viroqua, Wisc.
Brye told outdoor writer Bob Lamb of the LaCrosse (Wisc.) Tribune that each morning he looks out in his yard at the stately bull elk given to him by his son and daughter because he likes to hunt elk out West. But one morning last week, the bull, well, wasn’t exactly standing upright.
The massive molded ungulate was instead resting on its side, its antlers broken and scattered in pieces on the ground.
And there, some 20 feet away, lay the 180-pound lifeless buck, its skull crushed from its repeated impact with the unforgiving lawn ornament.
Brye snapped a photograph to document the bizarre battle and its aftermath.
“I could tell the buck poked the statue a couple of times by the chipped paint on it,” Brye said, adding that the deer must have rammed it like a mountain goat because of the damage inflicted to its own antlers and body.
A Wisconsin DNR conservation officer investigated the unusual incident and tagged the buck for the family’s personal use. The resulting venison tenderloins will undoubtedly generate plenty of stories as they are savored as table fare at the Brye household in coming months.
And what about the battered bull elk?
Brye says he might attach the buck’s antlers on the bull to mark the fateful November battle, though he’ll need some help to return the heavy statue to its feet.
“I can’t tip it back up until I get a whole bunch of guys to help me,” he said.
[ Read Full Post ] November 10, 2009 by
Investigators in Ohio believe rising unemployment and a tough economy is driving some ginseng diggers in the state to illegally harvest the root on private land and out of season.
For the past month, State Wildlife Officers from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) Division of Wildlife have been contacting many Ohio ginseng dealers and diggers as part of an ongoing investigation.
To date, Ohio wildlife officers have identified more than 30 individuals and 60 violations of Ohio law relating to ginseng root harvesting. As the investigation continues, authorities say formal charges will likely include digging ginseng without landowner permission, collecting or possession of ginseng during the closed season, failure to maintain accurate records and failure to certify ginseng prior to export.
The perennial herb is one of the most sought-after medicinal plants in the world. American ginseng occurs from Quebec, Canada, west to Minnesota and south to Georgia and Oklahoma.
Ohio certifies about 3,000 pounds of ginseng for export annually. There are 46 licensed ginseng dealers in the state with an estimated two to four thousand diggers. The number of diggers/harvesters varies annually depending on market conditions.
Last year, 3,626 pounds of ginseng were legally harvested in Ohio and sold to dealers at around $400 a pound. The value of the dried wild root fluctuates, and was as high as $1,000 per pound in 2007.
[ Read Full Post ] October 29, 2009 by
In a story from: www.spinner.com
A teenage folk singer was attacked and killed by two coyotes in a national park in eastern Canada.
Taylor Mitchell, 19, was attacked while she was hiking alone in Cape Breton Highlands Park, Nova Scotia, when she was attacked by two of the animals on Tuesday. She died of her wounds on Wednesday.
Nearby walkers heard her screams and alerted park rangers, who arrived on the scene and shot one of the animals. The other has yet to be found.
A police spokesperson said the two coyotes were "extremely aggressive" when rangers arrived on the scene.
"Coyotes are normally afraid of humans. This is a very irregular occurrence," Bridgit Leger, a spokeswoman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, told Reuters news agency.
Mitchell was airlifted to hospital in Halifax but died there. Paul Maynard of Emergency Health Services said she had been admitted with multiple bite wounds on her body.
"Words can't begin to express the sadness and tragedy of losing such a sweet, compassionate, vibrant, and phenomenally talented young woman," Lisa Weitz, Mitchell's manager, said. "She just turned 19 two months ago, and was so excited about the future."
Mitchell's debut album 'For Your Consideration' had been recorded earlier this year and the artist had been on a tour of eastern Canada when the attack occurred.
"She was so young and talented -- her big dreams were a perfect match with her big, kind heart," said Michael Johnston, the album's producer.
Biologists said attacks by coyotes -- also known as prairie wolves -- were extremely rare because the animals were usually very wary of humans. The area of the park where the attack happened has now been blocked of as officials try to find out what caused the attack.
[ Read Full Post ] October 14, 2009 by
There may be some argument among National Football League faithful, but probably no pro football fan base includes more hunters and shooters than the Green Bay Packers. Where else but Lambeau Field can as much camouflage and blaze orange garb be seen in the stadium on a Sunday afternoon?
This week the Packers announced a “Hunting Down Hunger” campaign to raise money, awareness and venison donations for state food pantries and relief efforts.
The Packers are selling a special line of hunter orange and camouflage hats emblazoned with the team’s trademark “G.” Five dollars from the sale of each hat will be contributed to state food pantries and other hunger relief efforts.
In addition, Cheesehead hunters will again giving their excess and unwanted deer to the Wisconsin Deer Donation program, which has provided more than 3.1 million pounds of ground venison for needy state residents.
Packers “Hunting Down Hunger” gear may be seen at: www.packersproshop.com.
[ Read Full Post ] October 9, 2009 by
The Pennsylvania Game Commission’s veterinary consultant this week recommended the statewide prohibition of scents and attractants utilizing deer urine in an effort to prevent the spread of chronic wasting disease into The Keystone State.
Walt Cottrell, PGC chief veterinarian, told the Pennsylvania Game Commission during its regular October meeting Monday that nine states are presently considering banning deer urine use by hunters because of its potential to spread chronic wasting disease.
Recent scientific findings indicate that CWD can be spread by excreted prions (altered proteins) found in the waste of infected animals, long before the disease is manifested in cervids like deer and elk.
First identified in Colorado in 1967, CWD has been found in Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, South Dakota, Montana, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Utah, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Wyoming and the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. No cases of CWD have been identified in Pennsylvania.
The disease is spread from one deer to another through saliva and other bodily fluids, along with food that has grown in CWD-contaminated soil. The proteins that carry CWD are excreted in both feces and urine, and once they reach the soil, according to Cottrell, become 700 times more infectious.
In his presentation to the Commission, Cottrell said he would recommend and support an immediate ban on the use of deer urine, as well as the feeding of deer with food that may have been grown in CWD-contaminated soil from other states.
The Commission did not act upon Cottrell’s recommendations.
[ Read Full Post ] October 6, 2009 by
A Fort St. John, British Colombia bowhunter saved his bacon last week by plunging one of his hunting arrows into the neck of an attacking grizzly bear at his Kechika River hunting camp.
The action began when Rory Chapple, 39, heard the telltale huffing sounds of an agitated grizzly bear coming toward him. Though he was armed with his hunting bow, there was no time to nock an arrow, much less draw, aim and fire.
As the bowhunter back-pedaled and the sow grizzly moved closer, he concluded his only defense was to use one of his hunting arrows as a lance. When the grizzly made its lunge, Chapple jabbed—Zorro style—and the broadhead-tipped arrow sliced the bruin’s throat, inflicting enough damage to thwart a further advance.
“It was a glancing blow but as soon as that arrow struck home, she went from gnarling and growing and huffing at me to gurgling,” Chapple said.
The father of two and president of his local archery club escaped the ordeal with ripped pants, a sore back, and a whale of a story to tell.
[ Read Full Post ] October 2, 2009 by
Supporters of a dangerous ballot initiative aimed at banning the use of traps to manage furbearers on public land in Montana have been cleared to begin acquiring the 24,400 petition signatures necessary to qualify the measure for the 2010 general election.
The Montana Secretary of State’s office concluded last week that Florence-based Footloose Montana has until June 18, 2010 to obtain signatures from 5 percent of the total number of qualified voters in Montana, including 5 percent in each of the 34 legislative house districts. That translates into approximately 24,337 signatures to land the initiative on the November 2010 general election ballot.
The group claims it seeks to ban trapping on public lands in the state for “scientific, public health and safety activities.”
Terri Knapp, communications director for the Secretary of State, said the initiative has been titled I-160 and bears the official name “Montana Trap-Free Public Lands Act.”
“The petition has been approved for signature gathering,” Knapp said. “This is a statutory amendment by initiative.”
[ Read Full Post ] September 21, 2009 by
The results of a groundbreaking new study indicate that chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer and elk may be spread by excreted proteins found in the infected animal’s feces.
The report, published in the September 9 issue of the journal Nature reveals that CWD-symptomatic prions (or modified proteins) are found in the droppings of deer months before clinical symptoms of the disease are seen in the animals, according to the research team, at University of California, San Francisco and the Colorado Division of Wildlife’s Wildlife Research Center.
Deer, elk and moose inadvertently consume feces and soil in the course of their daily grazing. Given this, the team set out to determine whether the animals could develop CWD through long-term consumption of contaminated feces.
Researchers measured the amount of prions contained in the feces of orally infected deer up until the time they became symptomatic and then calculated whether prolonged exposure to the concentrations of prions in these feces would be enough to cause the disease.
“Our findings suggest that prolonged fecal prion excretion by infected deer provides a plausible explanation for the high level of transmission of chronic wasting disease within deer herds, as well as prion transmission among deer and other cervid species. Our work may also explain transmission of scrapie prions among sheep and goats,” says senior author and Nobel laureate Stanley B. Prusiner, MD, UCSF professor of neurology and director of the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases.
[ Read Full Post ] September 11, 2009 by
It was a Tuesday morning, and for the first few hours of it, what distinguished it from all other late-summer Tuesday mornings was the weather. If you hunt, you know what I mean. It was the day when summer turned to fall. The cadence of the cicadas slowed with the falling temperatures on the night prior; the morning skies premiered in clear blue; the slight chill gave way to the warmth of the day—and then Osama bin Laden’s henchman, Mohammed Atta, destroyed it all.
At 8:43 a.m. on September 11, 2001, I was waiting for the traffic light to change on 23rd St. and Madison Ave. when Atta hit the throttles on American Airlines Flight 11 out of Boston and powered it into the north tower of the World Trade Center. I know because I heard and watched it happen. All of it—the sirens, the fire, the second plane, the building disintegrations— everything. My friends perished in the building, one of my buddies from my deer hunting club is a fireman; his sister, another member of my hunting club, worked for the medical examiner’s office. I prayed for them.
Eight years later, the memories remain vivid. The only salve for that horrible Tuesday morning was the Saturday after when I got into the woods and began to heal, albeit just a bit. I have not healed—likely never will. I will also never forget, nor should any of us. Remember where you were on 9/11? Please share your thoughts on this most memorable of all days.
[ Read Full Post ]
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