Idaho Shed Hunter Busted with 1,000lbs of Illegal Bone

The weekend might not be here yet, but your favorite dispatch from the great outdoors is. 

So grab your coffee or whiskey (no judgement) and let's get caught up on the outdoor news and views from the past few days. 

Here's what caught our eye this week...

• Bone daddy goes down - Idaho shed hunter busted 🚔

• 100 MPH mallard - Researchers clock speeding mallard on his way to Canada 🦆

• Mo’ elk - Wisconsin establishes second elk herd, ready for hunt 🔖

• An elephant in Montana - Escaped elephant drops a deuce in Butte 🐘

• Blowin’ the doors off - Minnesota DNR uses dynamite to blow up deer stands 🧨

THE BONE DADDY GOES DOWN
IDAHO SHED HUNTER BUSTED WITH 1,000 LBS OF ILLEGAL BONE

It would seem as though the very problems we experienced with market hunting all those years ago are now plaguing us again, this time in the form of discarded bone. As prices for antlers continue to climb, what started as an off-season pastime for many has turned into a for-profit scheme for those looking to bend the rules to make a buck. 

An Idaho man has been handed down a $6,100 fine and a three-year hunting ban for illegal shed hunting on both Wyoming’s National Elk Refuge and the Bridger-Teton National Forest during closed season. The defendant, 31-year-old Jonathan Lee Cox from Twin Falls, Idaho, pled guilty after trying to move about $18,000 worth of bone he collected last spring.

“The defendant pled guilty to a felony charge of the attempted transport and sale of more than 1,000 pounds of poached antlers, valued at roughly $18,000,” the FWS press release reads. “Illegally collecting and selling antlers is a violation of the federal Lacey Act, which prohibits the transportation and sale of illegally obtained wildlife. The state of Wyoming also forbids off-season antler collection from public lands west of the Continental Divide.”

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🦆 The 100 MPH greenhead - As trailers filled with cars with northern tags continue to leave my fair state of Florida, so too do plenty of migrating bird species. Traveling by ways of the four main highway systems of the skies, or flyways, millions of bird species across the country make their way north for the warm summer months. While we take a generally relaxed approach to policing these flyways, there are many that watch them closely by ways of GPS tracking technology.

Monitoring this year’s migration, researchers from the Cohen Wildlife Ecology Lab at Tennessee Tech were taken aback when they clocked a drake mallard traveling at a speed of 99.3 miles per hour. According to the lab’s social media, in addition to breaking the top speed record, the mallard was able to cover 600 miles in just 8 hours. For the mathematically inclined (not me), that’s an average speed of over 75 mph during that flight time. Good luck matching your gun speed to this fella when he tears by your blind next fall.

🧸 Rare Grizz Euthanization - Grizzly predation in the Cowboy State is nothing new. This is especially true in the western part of Wyoming where over 1,000 grizzlies disperse from Yellowstone (park, not ranch) and get into all kinds of trouble. But in other areas, like a chunk of private land in Ten Sleep, located in the basin of the Bighorn Mountains, grizzly bears are generally unheard of and haven’t been established there for over a century.

That all changed last weekend when wildlife officials were called to investigate a case of livestock predation. They later learned that it was, in fact, a grizzly bear that had been roaming around the ranch for about a week before taking down a cow. Officials made the decision to euthanize the displaced bruin and attempt to learn more about where he came from. According to a release by WGFD, the bear traveled some 80 miles east of the “Demographic Monitoring Area,” — what they define as “the area considered biologically and socially suitable for grizzly bears.” While stories like this one about bears dispersing across whole basins is nothing new, Game and Fish Director Brian Nesvik maintains that “the Bighorn Mountain Range is not suitable habitat and the department is not interested in allowing grizzly bears to occupy this area.”

🔖 Mo’ elk, mo’ opportunity - If you were hoping to tag an elk in Wisconsin this fall, your chances just got a whole lot better. With incredibly strong calf recruitment (nearly 90% of calves survive their first birthday), the state’s DNR has announced that they will be adding additional available tags and a new hunting area this year. With the state’s second herd establishing itself quite nicely, the Black River herd in central Wisconsin is established enough to sustain a hunt of its own. While the exact number of tags still remains a mystery, we do know the total will be higher than the usual 8-10 tags allotted since the hunt was established in 2018. 

The 40,000-or-so would-be applicants will have to wait until the board’s May 21-22nd meeting to find out just how good their chances of drawing a tag will be. 

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💅 Getting our nails did: Watch as a deer burst through the window of a Minnesota salon.

🐘 An elephant on the loose in Butte: There’s a lot of things we can expect to see in Montana, but an elephant? Residents in Butte were treated to an escaped elephant tramping down the road before reportedly dropping a deuce on someone’s lawn.

THE BOYS LET ‘ER RIP
MINNESOTA’S DNR OPTS FOR DYNAMITE TO DESTROY DEER STANDS LEFT IN STATE FOREST

In what some are citing as an unnecessary use of explosives (is there really such a thing?), members of Minnesota’s DNR are in a bit of hot water after using dynamite to blow up a pair of old deer stands.

The incident took place in Bowstring State Forest in northern Minnesota, within earshot of local residences. The stands had been located within the boundaries of the Leech Lake Reservation and the owner of the stands, who has chosen to remain anonymous out of fear of possible repercussions, happens to be an enrolled member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. 

The DNR’s forestry team was dispatched to the region to dispose of a couple of old deer stands that were left there unlawfully – a problem that is nothing new to public land. Rather than hauling them out in pieces, the decision was made to blow them up using dynamite, leaving pieces of wood and other debris in their wake.

According to local resident Kent Parks, of Deer River, debris from the incident still remains months after the detonation which happened over the winter.

“I found the detonator cord they used. It makes absolutely no sense to have done this,’’ he said…

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Where there is mud and pain, the AK will remain. How long it takes a Great White to cross an ocean. The hilarious reason Ben Franklin wrote an essay about farting. The incredible Navajo code talkers that helped win WWII. The world’s most underrated beer.

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A rare piebald sighting by paddlers down here in Florida.
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