Armed men in camouflage drove their muddy vehicles out of Western towns in droves this month, with or without deer and elk in tow. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department staffer Mike Thompson says his state used to put hunters on the spot by asking drivers at a check station near Missoula to queue up, choosing either a “Successful hunters’ window or one labeled “Unsuccessful hunters,” a choice that probably led to “psychologists flourishing and investing in choice real estate.” Thompson says that in jest, we think.
These days hunters can protect their self esteem by avoiding the question. The Bonner Check Station sends “Hunters with game” toward the right, “other” hunters to the left and nobody mentions the word success or defines it. Thompson says gameless hunters should blame El Niûo since that excuse “works for most everything these days.”
Some hunters never give up, even if it’s at night and they’re shooting from inside a car. That’s a legal no-no and unsporting to boot. In Utah, state wildlife officers use decoy deer that look so lifelike a photographer once spent 45 minutes taking a picture of one. More sophisticated types are likely to see “Trixie” the doe or “Otis’ the bullet-riddled buck as faux and yell “Nice try!” before driving off. Though attempting to kill protected wildlife is a misdemeanor and punishable by up to $1,000 and six months in jail, Utah wildlife officers find the last day of hunting season – and no success – can send some hunters over the edge. “One poacher shot a decoy six times and only stopped because the head fell off,” reports the Salt Lake Tribune. Another poacher, state wildlife employees sadly report, became so incensed when “his’ deer failed to fall after being shot, that he attacked the decoy with a shovel.
But hey, ungulates can be aggressive, too. After a hunting moratorium was declared in 1993 on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington, a band of elk decided to retake its historic winter range. Thanks to the retirement community of Sequim, elk habitat there had been transformed into “green expanses of fertilized lawns garnished with ornamental trees and shrubs,” reports the Seattle Weekly. The elk chowed down. Then they crossed – and recrossed – Highway 101 to nibble on the hayfields of farmers. Car accidents mushroomed. When state game officials attempted to herd the herd back into the foothills, “They almost beat us back to the lowlands,” one agent reported. Tranquilizer guns were tried next, followed by transplantation to an area on the peninsula that needed more elk for hunting. But residents of Brinnon, near the transplant area, soon complained that the transplants were corrupting their local elk, which had begun chomping on shrubbery and lurking about the outskirts of town. The solution: a reinstatement of limited hunting of the entire Olympic elk herd. But hundreds of suburbanites found this idea outrageous, including the Sequim police chief, who said allowing an elk hunt in residential neighborhoods was surely “an accident waiting to happen.” The controversy convinced officials to call part of the elk hunt off; that leaves some homeowners and Sequim elk continuing to compete for turf.
Would you vote for a candidate without a dog? In Boulder, Colo, city council candidate Adam Kaplin thought not, reports the Boulder Weekly, so he borrowed one – a golden retriever to be exact – and posed for campaign ads with the photogenic canine. Some people thought this attempt to communicate family values with a rented pet was, well, cheesy, but history tells us the dog-eared ploy can work. When vice-presidential candidate Richard Nixon displayed his dog Checkers on television, viewers throughout America reportedly melted.
Dogs can be used in precious ways, and for many people they are precious, perhaps more precious than gold. In Humboldt County, Nev., the owner of a cocker spaniel and collie became so enraged after his pets fell into the leach pond of a gold mine that he allegedly attacked one of the mine employees with a knife. The Humboldt Sun reports that while Charles Miller of Bend, Ore., finally retrieved his dogs from the waste pit, he also acquired two charges of assault with a deadly weapon.
To a self-professed bag lady traveling through Salmon, Idaho, however, weapons make for good service. “An armed society is a polite society,” the woman told the Idaho Falls Post Register. “I go into a store with my guns and it’s ‘Yes, ma’am’ and ‘No, ma’am,’ and everything I say is funny.”
Heard around the West invites readers to get involved in the column. Send any tidbits that merit sharing – small-town newspaper clips, personal anecdotes, relevant bumpersticker slogans. The definition remains loose. Heard, HCN, Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428 or betsym@hcn.org.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Heard around the West.
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