Utah Officials Investigate Stolen Elk Claims After Three Hunters Put Arrows into Same Bull 🙋

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's worth reading about so far this week:

• I call dibs! - Utah officials get to the bottom of stolen elk claims 🙋

• So, I started blasting - Alaskan man shoots himself while fending off bear 🐻

• Only in Alaska - Two people were attacked by a wolf while in traffic 🐺

• Denver students new AI project - A new system for detecting deer collisions before they happen 🚘

• Sweden goes all in - In the face of protests, the bear hunt goes on 🖕

ETHICAL? WELL, THAT DEPENDS
UTAH OFFICIALS INVESTIGATE STOLEN ELK CLAIMS AFTER THREE HUNTERS PUT ARROWS INTO THE SAME BULL

I can’t decide if this whole debacle was the result of bad communication, bad shooting or simply a combination of both.

Following some pretty hefty claims that a Millard County Sheriff's deputy stole a bull elk from under another hunter, Utah officials stepped in with an investigation to get to the bottom of it. The accusing hunter, Mayson Smith, stated “I shot this bull today with [an] over the counter archery tag. I bedded it down after I shot and was giving it time to pass,” he wrote in a Facebook post on Aug. 17.

Smith went on to say that he ran into another hunter while waiting around for the bull to die and that by the time he went to find it, it had already been claimed by Millard County Sheriff’s Deputy Mike Blad. The story quickly went viral on social media with many calling foul play on the part of Blad, despite him being the one who put the finishing shots into the bull.

This all changed, rather quickly, once another party stepped forward with their own video evidence from the day’s hunt in a video entitled  “What really happened on 8/17…”

🔫 An Alaska hunter was mauled by a brown bear and shot himself during the scuffle.  A 32-year-old Alaska man is now recovering after being treated for wounds resulting from both a brown bear attack and a gunshot wound. 

Tyler Johnson and his father were attacked by a bear on the Resurrection Pass Trail near the town of Cooper Landing according to Alaska State Troopers. Traipsing through tall grass, the man stated that they seemed to have startled the bear before it immediately charged at the two of them. As he was under attack, he was fortunately able to get to his 10mm and started  “unloading like a motherf–kr” into the bear – accidentally injuring himself. Luckily, he was well prepared and was able to make himself a makeshift tourniquet as they were waiting on emergency responders.

🐺 Two people have been injured in a wolf attack along an Alaskan highway. According to reports, two people were attacked outside of their vehicle while waiting for a pilot car along a stretch of Alaskan highway that was under construction. Alaska’s Department of Public Safety said the wolf fled the scene after it was shot at by another motorist. Troopers went on to say that the two motorists that were attacked did not feed the wolf, but they do believe this to be the cause of the problem.

Construction workers in the area had spotted the wolf multiple times prior to the incident, but were unsure if it belonged to a pack.  The animal was “observed by motorists walking in the roadway going from vehicle to vehicle as if it had been fed before,” troopers spokesman Tim DeSpain said.

🤖 A group of Denver high schoolers invented a new AI-powered thermal dashcam to help reduce vehicle collisions with deer. While most every mention of the term “AI” causes me to fight off every urge in my body to run into the mountains and never come out, in this case, it might be actually being used for good. A group of students from the STEM Highlands Ranch in Denver are working on a dashcam device capable of detecting possible wildlife collisions using artificial intelligence.

Utilizing a Flir infrared camera, the device is used to take a constant stream of captures of the road ahead of the car. The images captured would then be fed through a chip programmed with an AI model created by the students. During the filtering process, the artificial intelligence, having been previously trained to recognize deer shapes, would alert the driver using LED light flashes inside the vehicle when a deer was detected within 500 feet.

The initial prototype won the state level Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Contest and the final prototype is just about ready to be tested in a real world situation.

QUICK HITS // ^{_{FROM AROUND THE WEB}}

Deer hunting season in Iowa is fast approaching. With new rules, here is what to know: The hunting and trapping season is right around the corner, and the 2024-2025 season brings new rules and regulations for hunters. Read more at Des Moines Register.

Virginia State Parks to offer deer hunting opportunities: Hunting opportunities range from open hunting in designated areas to managed deer hunts. Hunters can also reserve stands or zones on a first-come, first-served basis using the Department of Conservation and Recreation’s online system. Read more at 8News.

Vermont bear hunting season starts in September:  Vermont Fish and Wildlife has some reminders about bear hunting regulations ahead of the season that starts next month. Read more at WCAX.

Tennessee’s Free Hunting Day is this Saturday: The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) announced that Free Hunting Day will be Saturday, August 24, which coincides with the opening day of squirrel season. Read more at WKRN.

Here's where Pa. still has antlerless deer licenses and how hunters can share venison: Round 4 of Pennsylvania’s antlerless deer license sales begins Monday morning and a program in which hunters can donate their extra venison is having a record year. Read more at GoErie.

Deer dies of EEE virus in Connecticut: State officials said a white-tailed deer that exhibited neurologic symptoms in Lisbon died on Aug. 12 after being infected with eastern equine encephalitis, or EEE. Read more at NBC Connecticut.

Game and Fish continues to monitor brucellosis in elk: Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s efforts to collect biological samples for study and testing and once again, the Game and Fish acknowledge that hunters are the most critical component of the equation.  Read more at Sheridan Media.

CONTROVERSY // ^{_{THIS WEEK’S SH*T DISTURBER}}

🖕 Sweden flips the anti-hunting lobby the bird and carries on with their brown bear hunt as planned. Much like here in America, there was a time in Sweden when brown bears were hunted to near extinction. Once again, similarly to here in America, sound wildlife management practices brought them from the brink of extirpation in the 1920s, to record-breaking population levels in 2008.  Since then, the large bruins have been managed by ways of annually allocated hunting tags, but as with anything that seems to be going a little too good for those that happen to be in opposition to it, the anti-hunting crowd is starting to get rowdy. 

With claims that these hunts will wipe out the population or, dare we say it, attract ‘trophy hunters’, they continue to grow stronger in their resolve. They claim that if things continue, they could approach a reduction of nearly 40 percent of the all-time high levels of bears recorded back in ‘08. At this moment in time, that claim is nothing other than a hunch - an assumption that tags allocations will never change.

During last year’s hunting season 722 bears were killed in Sweden. However,  this year’s tag allocation of 486 is a near 33 percent reduction in available tags. Which tells me, someone in Sweden’s wildlife department (whatever that is) seems to be doing their job. At least for the moment. 

VIDEO // ^{_{SOME THINGS JUST HAVE TO BE SEEN}}

🐉 Watch a Komodo Dragon swallow a damn goat whole. I live in Florida and we have some wild sh*t here. But if one of these things ever gets released into the wild down here, I AM OUT.

🍽️ Some dude just totally ruined this mountain lion’s dinner. Watch as some dude rolls up on a mountain lion about to chow down on a deer and tell him off. Yelling from his car, he commands the cat to “get out of here” and it listened. The deer got up and walked away. No word on how long it took the cat to come back and finish the job after the good Samaritan was gone though…

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CAMP TALK // ^{_{BEFORE YOU GO}}

We get a lot of questions and comments on here, and we figure it’s time to repay the favor. As part of our new Camp Talk section, we’re going to ask you, the reader, your opinion on some serious (and not so serious) topics to close out each newsletter.

Last week I asked, We're working on a story about the 10 MILLION gun owners in this country that are NOT registered to vote.

With that in mind, are you planning to vote this November?

To which 93% of you answered Hell yes

Here’s today’s question…

Oh, and one more thing…