Friday, July 25, 2014

Poaching...Murder?

That's a question that I've been thinking about the last few days and DO NOT claim to answer here and now. I was just having a thought...

In 1994, Charger, a majestic bull elk that patrolled the streets of Yellowstone, was gunned down. His corpse was found a few days later---his antlers had been hacked off. Here's a picture of Charger:


A few weeks later a taxidermist in Utah thought a set of antlers someone had just brought in to him bore a resemblance to the eulogistic article about Charger he'd just read. After some animal DNA investigations (seriously), CHAD BEUS was charged with killing Charger. He was fined $30,075 and sentenced to six months in jail. Here's an article about the lab that helped snare the young Beus.

Would anybody be surprised if Chad Beus would be arrested again for poaching? That he would be banned from hunting in 24 states for nearly a dozen years? You don't need to be a cynic to make a guess about killers. It took until 2005 before he was caught again.

Having to hunt for sustenance for you and your family is one thing. Elephants for tusks, elk for antlers, sharks for their fins...and then, how easy is it to reconcile that with all the violence that we mete out onto each other?

Anyway, all this is some background for when I start using chadbeus as a pejorative term synonymous with scumbag, you'll know where it came from.