Two arrested for poaching an elk in Yellowstone Park
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A Project of Sage Steppe Wild
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Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan’s Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of “Hiking Idaho.” He also wrote “Beyond the Tetons” and “Backpacking Wyoming’s Teton and Washakie Wilderness.” He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
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It will be interesting to see what happens to these two knuckle heads.
Ralph, I wish you would not offer, albeit unintentionally, any potential rationale for diluting the severity of these crimes by saying that they were perpetrated “just inside the Park’s northern boundary.” I’m familiar with the area and these scum were far enough in to know better. I like to harass the brook trout in Black Tail Creek and I can attest to the presence of poaching along the creek, well south of the Yellowstone, and within a couple of miles of the northern loop. No, it wasn’t carcass studies. I know poaching from fighting it on my ranch. The extent and type of cuts were unmistakeable. With the spread of these new and powerful circular carpenters’ saws that operate on rechargable battery packs, poaching is faster, easier, and more grotesque. To work quick and make their escape, the gutter trash use the saws to go in as soon as the elk stops moving. They even butcher the things from the outside in; it’s disgusting, even coming on the scene after the fact. Legal sportsmanlike hunting is one thing; but, any form of poaching deserves only one punishment …death by battery-operated circular saw.
I certainly didn’t want to leave a misimpression that they had accidentally wandered into the Park.
The worst poaching has always been near the Park boundaries. There is even an old trail north of the Park, near the boundary, but way back in, named “Poachers Trail” on old maps.