Townsend Elk Slaughter II

What the hell is wrong with people?!?! This is beyond pathetic. 45 vehicles? And we wonder why the media and animal rights activists are constantly bashing hunting and trying to shut it down? Slobs like these losers embarrass all of us. Pull their damn licenses and be done with it. The future of hunting and conservations doesn't need anyone who was involved in that! Hopefully MT gets it right on this one
 
I hunt on the other side of the hill from Townsend and stuff like this is a common occurrence every season. Something about a bunch of elk out in the open on the flats and people just lose their minds. It really kind of turns me off to elk hunting. They lose all respect for the animal and the hunt. If I've said it once I've said it a hundred times, We don't need more hunters, we need better hunters.
 
Big Foot said:
I was just about to post this. The fines for these offenses should be raised in my opinion. Embarrassing.
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It seems like they ought to be able to stop the herding with the vehicles via fines and enforcement, but the mob hunting is pretty ugly too and I'm not sure how to stop that with laws. I'm open for suggestions... any ideas?
 
Same crap show happens around Ennis too. In fact, even the Sun Ranch had a big shootout with wounded elk everywhere.........its damn ridiculous.

I heard similar thing happened in Dillon last week and a guy got shot in the face amongst the 15 bulls that got slaughtered after trying to cross a state section near private ranches.
 
That about makes me sick! I agree that these slobs are an embarrasment and can in no way call themselves hunters! We also have many like them here in Michigan, unfortunately.
 
Sounds like a lot of locals involved and good luck getting locals to turn other locals in. How sad.
 
“It’s not just a few anymore,” Flynn said. “I think it’s a lot of the local community. We have more elk than ever before, and the elk are lower in the valleys. In that situation, people have a tendency to not think things through.”
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I thought you guys didn't have any more elk because of the wolves :eek:

On a serious note though, this sucks. I'm with Rob on wanting to know how we can stop this. Things like this happen everywhere.
 
This has been going on for decades. I can remember my dad talking about the firing line at Gardner and the Blacktail. There were people who only carried a knife/saw and a tag with no gun at these events.
It may make some mad but if there are known places where the elk cross or migrate etc. maybe there should be no shoot zones. On the other hand there are lost hunting opportunities because elk congregate on private land and there are hunters who just drive the roads waiting for the elk to cross on public land and this is when the shoot outs happen. Could FWP run these elk off private to timbered areas I don't know the answer. Where can FWP draw the line if the elk are on public land other than shooting an illegal anima or to many or does FWP have all shooting stopped and escort the elk out of the area. I think the herding with vehicles is a hard one to prosecute.
 
Maybe going back to a permit system for cows after the first week where they limit the the hunters to 3 per day on a ranch, then run the hunt through February. That can be a slaughter, but at least it isn't a mob herding them with cars.
 
It seems this type of behavior is becoming more and more common these days. I don't know if its because elk are easily visible on ranches that do NOT allow access... which discourages hunters immensely or what...

I know it was frustrating trying to find my wife an elk... hiked our tails off, and on the last day you see elk in huge numbers grazing on private land behind large no hunting signs. Frustrating, but never in our wildest dreams would we attempt to break the law or be unethical hunters. Just gotta play by the rules... even if it sucks seeing most of the herd in that district staying on an island of unhuntable land.
 
Two thoughts, first we need to increase the trespassing fines for intentional trespass where an animal is actually killed. Make it $1000 or more and maybe that would deter some people.

Second, I saw where Wyoming has a rule on the Grand Teton elk hunt that you cannot fire more than one shot at a herd of running elk. Since we know that these elk in the flats tend to be in large close knit herds and that elk often do not drop on the shot but may run 100+ yds even with good shot placement, what if there was a law prohibiting firing more than one shot into a herd of more than 10 elk? I understand the enforcement difficulties but we need to find a better way of doing business or we will like see more landowners closing off their lands to all hunters.

Your thoughts???
 
It all boils down to hunter responsibility and ethics. The same thing happened near ennis this year; a gut started shooting 10 mins before shooting light into a big herd, people trespassing, wildy driving around trying to spook the elk. It was ridiculous. When some people see a large herd of elk, they just go crazy. Kind of like the gold rush I guess. Each hunter needs to take the high road and constantly do what is right. I don't know how many times I've passed on shots simply because the elk were bunched up and there was not a clean kill shot on one animal. Hearing this type of thing makes me sick and gives responsible hunters a bad name.
 
I don't see any rule/law making preventing this type of thing. Hell, they are already breaking a myriad of rules/laws. The only ones that will really be hampered by any rule/law trying to eliminate this are the ones that aren't currently breaking the rules.

That said, I would be for stiffer and in some cases much stiffer penalties for breaking the rules already on the books. And increased enforcement presence in the areas where this is known to occur.
 
I drove through the Cameron check station a couple weekends ago, mid day. The gal working said they'd had 10 bulls come through, 5 were confiscated. ?? Warden was parked along the road with a stack of cow elk carcasses on his flatbed.
 
1_pointer said:
I don't see any rule/law making preventing this type of thing. Hell, they are already breaking a myriad of rules/laws. The only ones that will really be hampered by any rule/law trying to eliminate this are the ones that aren't currently breaking the rules.

That said, I would be for stiffer and in some cases much stiffer penalties for breaking the rules already on the books. And increased enforcement presence in the areas where this is known to occur.
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We have a warden problem in MT, in that we don't have enough of them. Legislature refuses to allow increased warden presence and demands cuts in the form of a 4% universal vacancy savings and now they want to cut more spending from the budget, with FWP being squarely in the cross hairs. IF we want to end this kind of crap, we need a strong warden force and increased presence from enforcement in areas we know that this kind of stuff happens.

If you want to help ensure that the people involved in these kinds of activities get what's coming to them, then support the license revamp that will be working it's way through the legislature, especially when it gets to the Appropriations committee. Otherwise, this problem will only grow.

I ran in to Kelly a week or so ago and he is looking at legislation. He wasn't clear on what he was going to do, but he had some ideas that he was working through with the department. We'll see what they look like.
 
This is like clubbing seal pups. Sure, achieves population control but is not hunting. Is shooting. Toss in careless gun handling, trespassing, etc and this is going to end up on YouTube as an example of "hunting" to fire up people and voters who may have previously not had much opinion about hunters.

This sort of event creates harm that Randy's show is not able to undo. Nor can Maneater undo. These shows, as good as they are, are seen by thousands and mostly are seen by hunters. A YouTube video can be seen by millions.

Disgusts me to the core to see these shoots take place in the guise of hunting.
 
Seems like this is one of those carrot or the stick things. To me, I don't see a good way to make the carrot appealing enough, so I think it's time to break out the stick.........

I think we should expand the authority of game wardens. At this point the only statute in the MT Criminal code that game wardens can enforce is Criminal Trespass, IIRC. I would think if you gave the game wardens the ability to not only cite for the Game violations (shooting from roads, party hunting, illegal harvest, Harassing animals with a vehicle) and expand that to also include weapons violations in the MT criminal code or something like criminal negligence that would help. Also, you could include alcohol and drug related offenses that game wardens have no ability to control currently. I would be willing to bet that there were more than a few open containers in vehicles at this shootout...

Either that, or a joint prosecution between the game wardens and the county sheriff. I believe this situation needs more than just fish and game citations. To me there just isn't enough support for the Wardens that are out there.

Or, take one of these shootouts and make an example of it. If people start hearing about vehicles being seized for herding animals with a truck, that may help. I don't think that fines and loss of hunting privilege alone are going to stop these events. Throw the book at them and see what happens.
 
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