Mule deer don’t just wander through the Boulder, Colo., neighborhood where I live. They drop fawns in our backyards. They browse on almost everything. In Table Mesa, surrounded by open space, it’s a love-it-or-leave-it situation. Don’t like Odocoileus hemionus eating your garden? The solution is simple: move. Venison is not an option. When I moved […]
Wildlife
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
Hunters close ranks, and minds
In a few states it is still legal to attract bears with bait for the purpose of shooting them. I call it “garbaging for bears,” and, as an avid hunter, find it repulsive – basically assassination. But this is not an article about garbaging for bears. It is an article about the slow, painful maturation […]
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
Tough love for hunters
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Before coming to Outdoor Life, Stephen Byers worked for Rolling Stone and Men’s Journal. Since his highly publicized resignation from Outdoor Life last summer, he’s been writing a novel and shopping “ever so selectively” for another top editorial slot. Byers talks about his days […]
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
The WLFA: ‘Who are these guys?’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. When Tony Jewett first heard that the late Mollie Beattie, at the time U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director, was trying to ban hunting in the nation’s wildlife refuges, he became alarmed and outraged. The news came in a 1993 “alert” from the Wildlife […]
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
What happens when two tree-huggers meet a tentful of hunters
Last November, I joined Nez Perce tribal biologist Timm Kaminski on one of his difficult “hunter education” trips into the southern Bitterroots on the Idaho-Montana border. His job: to walk into tents of heavily armed hunters and tell them about the possibility of wolves showing up in the woods. He has to ask hunters questions […]
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
Wilderness has a new foe: snowmobiles
SEELEY LAKE, Mont.- The February drizzle has done little to dampen the spirits of the crowd here for the Snowmoblivious festival. Snowmobile aficionados from as far away as Washington and Colorado bounce along the shoulders of the main street and buzz through the woods on groomed trails. “We’re out with the whole family,” says one […]
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
‘Good’ rancher goes berserk with an assault rifle
MEETEETSE, Wyo. – A rancher known here as a good steward of his land has been charged with illegally firing on a herd of elk with an assault rifle Jan. 16, leaving at least 10 animals either dead or crippled. Game wardens say they cannot recall another slaying of so many big game animals all […]
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
‘Un-logging’ the national forests? It might just happen
Should conservation groups be able to buy federal timber just so they can leave it standing? Three environmental organizations recently posed that question in a formal petition to the Secretary of Agriculture, whose department oversees the Forest Service. Currently, the Forest Service designates only logging outfits as “responsible bidders’ on tree sales. But with their […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
Idaho says no to grizzlies
Idaho says no to grizzlies An Idaho agency has become the biggest opponent of a plan to bring grizzly bears back to the state. At the Idaho Fish and Game Commission’s January meeting, Twin Falls member Fred Wood said that the group should tell the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service it “flat-ass’ opposes the agency’s […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
Go native
Native plants are enjoying a new celebrity with Western gardeners, landscapers and conservationists. But just what makes a plant a native? Art Kruckeberg, a botanist at the University of Washington and a founder of the Washington Native Plant Society, says the short answer is this: Natives are plants that were here before European contact. The […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
A tragic blend of wild and domestic
“Rowdy,” born in a cage at a Texas roadside circus and sold as a wolf-hybrid pup to a 10-year-old boy in Colorado, used his mouth the way people use their hands. As he grew larger, Rowdy would drag the boy around his pen by an arm or a leg. It was all in good fun, […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
‘Ugly’ addition must go
When it comes to enforcing scenic easements on private property within Idaho’s Sawtooth National Recreation Area, the Forest Service plays hardball. The agency went to U.S. District Court in March 1995, when it discovered a barn-style addition to Kenneth and Sharon Walker’s A-frame. The Forest Service had paid previous owners of the property $26,000 in […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Hunters need young blood
Generation X doesn’t hunt. That’s the conclusion of a National Shooting Sports Foundation’s recent survey, which found that only 8 percent of hunters are between the ages of 18 and 24, down from 17 percent in 1986. The last decade has seen the percentage of hunters in the 25-34 age bracket drop as well, down […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Injunction lifted in the Southwest
A 16-month logging injunction on national forests in New Mexico and Arizona was lifted by a federal judge Dec. 4. Judge Roger Strand ruled that the Forest Service had completed a biological opinion on how its forest plans would affect the threatened Mexican spotted owl. The decision means the agency can proceed with logging in […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Sting nets bird killers
In today’s booming black market for migratory bird parts, a single bald eagle feather can fetch $100. Given such prices, it’s not surprising that a two-year U.S. Fish and Wildlife sting operation netted 35 individuals and businesses allegedly involved in the killing and selling of protected migratory birds in Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. The […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Green hate in the land of enchantment
A hate movement has grown up in northern New Mexico, fueled by decades of Forest Service mismanagement and sensational media coverage (HCN, 12/25/95). It has fostered an unusual alliance across racial barriers to oppose conservation on federal lands. The political alignment became visible more than a year ago during a Christmas candlelight demonstration organized by […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Bringing back the bighorn
The West’s native sheep scramble for a foothold
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Macho rams ‘take a walk on the wild side’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. In the social system of wild sheep, the ram with the largest horns rules. Not only does he breed most of the ewes, but he is followed around by an admiring throng of lesser males. It is not surprising, then, that bighorn rams are […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Not Mary’s little lamb
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. We who drink in rhymes about Mary’s little lamb and Bo Peep’s docile flock with our mothers’ milk have a hard time seeing wild sheep objectively. Our perceptions of this animal are inevitably colored by the stupid, meek, defenseless creature domestication made of it. […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Desert sheep aren’t exactly thriving
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The discovery 300 years ago of a pile of over 100,000 horns at a native village in what is now Arizona suggests that the four subspecies of wild sheep collectively known as desert bighorns were once as numerous as their alpine relatives. Desert sheep, […]