The Associated Press

ISLAND PARK, IDAHO
Authorities say a 15-year-old boy hunting black bears with his father mistakenly shot and killed a 500-pound male grizzly bear in eastern Idaho.

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game says the father and son from California later that evening on May 5 returned to their family cabin and realized it was a grizzly bear.

Authorities say that the next morning they contacted Idaho Fish and Game to report what happened.

Fish and Game officials in a news release Thursday say the juvenile has been issued a warning and the father a citation for the taking and possessing a protected species.

A court date is set for June 1.

Officials say the carcass of the 9-year-old grizzly bear has been confiscated.

IDAHO

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/state/idaho/article78685112.html#storylink=cpy

He could be in for some expensive hurt. Island Park does have grizzlies and a hunter needs to be careful of what he shoots. If this was in an area where there aren't any, he could be excused, but not there.

Wait a sec . . . kid shoots gizz and father gets citation?

Kid - you're supposed to kill BooBoo, not Yogi.

Idaho has non-resident Jr-mentored tags. The kid has to be within normal talking range of a licensed adult. Since the adult is technically in charge and is responsible for keeping the kid from doing stuff like this, he gets the ticket.

It says right in the regs: Caution: grizzly bears may be encountered in
Units 64, 65, 66 & 67

I'm just trying to wrap my mind around shooting a 500 pound grizzly and not realizing it was indeed a grizzly until later that evening?

Good grief, that is pretty close to shooting an elk and thinking it was a mule deer.

There are lots of 500 lb Black Bears killed here every year.

It's the hunter's responsibility to know his quarry and identify/be sure of his target. If it was indeed a mentored situation, then the adult should pay the price.

It doesn't matter if it's a 250 lb grizzly just because there are lots of black bears around that size. If they couldn't tell the difference, they had no business shooting. Much less being out hunting black bears.

That happen down south of Baker,MT. Some guys shot a big bull elk and paraded it around town and stopped at the bar bragging about the huge mule deer they shot

While the bear wasn't all that big for a grizzly, it was 9 years old, clearly not a youngster. It would have the classic face and hump of an adult.

Well...15 year olds have done much worse. The guy turned himself in...still gets in some [bleep]...I bet it's the last time he or junior tells the truth to the COs

Just saying...

http://billingsgazette.com/news/sta...e1da577-c771-54c3-abe9-033bf7324d69.html

To give the guy a little benefit of the doubt, a llama in the shadows has a profile very much like a cow elk. They could be easily mistaken. OTOH, your average elk hunter would have to question why his elk had a fleece and toenails.

We have no details at all. They did have a cabin there. It's quite possible they'd already bragged to the neighbors who would wonder why the bear suddenly disappeared. It's also possible that one of the neighbors is who recognized it for what it was. We just don't know that stuff.

A Wyoming game and fish employee killed a grizzly two years ago. He is employed as a large predator specialist. And he shot across a highway. And he's still employed by the state.

I know a guide that had a client shoot a coal black grizzly thinking it was a black bear...

Alaska guide BTW

When I was about 18 or so, we had someone from Calif get a Shiras Moose tag in Utah.

The supposed hunter had never fired a gun before in his life. Had never hunted big game before. etc etc etc

His trophy was a ranchers roping horse.

Game and fish fined him. Confiscated his rifle. They informed the state of Calif which placed him on a 5 year hunting probation (no hunting).

And the rancher sued him for $25k stating the value of the horse and the cost to replace in.

I think all fines levied and suits settled cost him close to $50k

Think that was 1981.

Mistakes can happen, but also some people are too ignorant to make decisions, and shouldn't be hunting.
An example:
I was a teenager in a small community close to Mt. St. Helens before it erupted. This was the hunting season after the Columbus-day-storm, which uprooted millions of trees in our area... A "hunter" and his son-in-law from out-of-state decided to go hunting for a buck. (Their first hunt, by the way) They had their deer tags and rifles and started hunting the Toutle River drainage coming off Mt. St. Hel...
They wound up shooting 5 (yes, 5) cow elk which were blocked-in just like a corral in a small draw with trees down on the exits out of the draw.
They didn't know what to do with all the "deer", so their son-in-law drove back home and returned the next morning with his flatbed truck and a winch. They winched the bloated cows which had not been gutted onto the flatbed and drove them to the game department checkout to report their "deer" success.
The game warden in our area gave me this story the afternoon after it had happened... He looked like he could have used a stiff drink.
They lost their licenses, lost their guns, lost their vehicles, and had a very large fine.

I once mistook a really big porcupine on an open slope at a distance for a griz thru the spotting scope. Fortunately, we were hunting caribou or black bear....

Griz/brown bear and I have a deal. If they don't try to put big ugly holes in me, I won't to them either. Worked for 40 plus years, so far....

Including the neighborhood ones, who have left tracks on my sidewalk, in the flower beds, on the deck, in the bed of the truck, down the driveway....

I miss my dog. I have no idea what's going on out there anymore!

Porkies aren't protected, though, and there's no need to take a closer look before shooting.

Go hug one and get back to us...

Depeneds on where you live.

From: http://www.gf.state.az.us/i_e/pubs/ArizonaPorcupines.shtml

This persecution of porcupines continued through the 1950s and 1960s until 1972, when a wildlife manager in Flagstaff named Wayne Anderson recommended that the season be closed on what was no longer a problem animal. Almost no one objected, and the Arizona Game and Fish Commission agreed: Conditions had changed. The porcupine was no longer a noxious animal and has remained a protected species in Arizona ever since.

I remember when I was a young kid, a friend of my father told me that porcupines were protected in most of the northern New England states, the upper midwestern states and several Canadian provinces. I never checked into it, but his story was that they were protected because they were the only mammal that a man in a survival situation could reliably kill without a firearm.

In most states these days, anything not classified as a game animal is protected unless it is specifically designated as a nuisance.

They're not protected in Idaho. You just need a hunting license and the stamina to track them for many miles to hunt them.

Sure have alot of Porkeys here in Northern Michign!

His mentor on this hunt should pay the price. He to should have his lic taken away for some time. Maybe he'll learn what he's hunting in the future. No excuses.

Well, I'm not certain of the regs is Idaho (read: too lazy to look them up) but don't you have to have the hide sealed and skull examined (tooth extracted for age determination) anyway. My point is, he was necessarily going to bring the evidence into the fish and game department anyway.

Around here turning yourself in will get you a lot of leniency. Are grizzly bears an endangered species in Idaho?

Yes, Idaho requires that the hide and skull be taken to an IDFG office for tagging. Dumping the carcass will get you in a much deeper hole than admitting you screwed up.


They're endangered everywhere in the lower 48 where they're found. The feds MIGHT delist them in the near future but of course the anti's are fighting it. If they do, ID, MT, and WY will divy up the available tags and sell them for a very high price.

The late Dr. Charles Jonkel, considered for many years one of the top bear biologists on the planet, once said that even highly trained biologists couldn't always tell a grizzly from a black bear just by looking at one on the wild. Even some he darted during his research fooled him, and he handled hundreds of bears in his lifetime.

I saw one time either an 8 foot brown black bear or maybe it was a grizzly, I was never quite sure. Either way it would have been nice to tag that one......

It's not uncommon to have elk shot as mule deer. New hunters do it frequently, and we had several cases of that here in NV.

I took a guy who was about thirty years old hunting for his first doe hunt. I grew up reading the hunting and fishing magazines so I knew what I was looking for the first time. We jumped a herd of elk and this guy jerks up his rifle.
"Wait! Wait!" I exclaimed. "What are ya doin?"
"Well, we're here to hunt aren't we?"
"We're here to shoot a doe deer. Did you notice the color on those animals and their size?"
"Yea."
"You noticed they are about the size of a horse?"
"Yea."
"Well we are looking for something about the size of a very large German shepherd dog about the color of a tan chihuahua, okay?"
"Got it," he said.

So did he get his chihuahua?

So did he get his chihuahua?

grizzlies ? meh, overgrown rats.... don't know why people worship them