WOW
Look at what I almost missed.
Let me see here; we have outlaws, breaking laws, and an outcry to ban the legal uses.
I hear calls for stiffer laws, but has anybody read the write up about the albino cow moose in the Idaho Citizens Against Poaching trailer? That was a felony, and the guy got off with a misdemenor. Stiffer laws didn't help there.
Ithaca
Do you know where I left my closing statement back in december? It applys to Buzz in this instant.
Let's see, I checked with the big book of knowledge and found that Montana covers about 147,046 square miles, and if you divide that by the "70" game wardens that cover the state, I'm sure that the one investigating this group of criminals had nothing else happening in his approximately 2100 square mile area. Get real people.
These guys were using ATV's on closed ground - ILLEGAL.
Hunting at night with spotlights (whether plugged in or not) - ILLEGAL.
Killing more then they're limit - ILLEGAL.
Using rifles with silencers to commit a crime - ILLEGAL.
Where does the logic of outlawing ATV's fit in here? They were already breaking the law, and don't care what anybody else thinks. In this instance making it illegal to ride ATV's had already happened. Didn't seem to solve much there, did it.
Let's look at the possibility that if ATV riding had been LEGAL in the area. Maybe some LEGAL riders would have discovered the dead animals (more often), and been able to report it to the game warden, and he may have been able to solve this sooner (bullets, hides/hairs, tire tracks...).
These guys, it seems to me are not lazy, nor stupid. They had a plan, and evidently it worked for quite some time, and were aided by the fact that the area was closed.
Hey guys, I'll be back for a while.