Fresh Sign

Fresh Sign
by David King

Predators Overtaking North of the Border
What’s up with all of the attacks?

VANCOUVER – A kayaker from Port Moody was in a life-and-death struggle as a hungry wolf came out of the bushes and attacked him on a remote North Coast beach. With the wolf clinched to the kayaker, they fought and struggled for several minutes as he suffered bites to his leg and hands as he tried to pry its jaws apart. The 31-year old kayaker eventually was able to dragA the wolf down to his kayake where he managed to get a large knife out and stab the wolf repeatedly until the wolf finally retreated. He called for help on his marine radio and was fortunate to get rescued from a nearby resort. The wolf was killed with a shotgun blast.

VANCOUVER – A man saves a boy from an attacking mountain lion at the family’s cabin near Clinton, B.C. The boy was walking to the outhouse when the cougar attacked him from behind. The boy’s screams alerted friends and they ran outside to help. As blood was all over the boys head, Mark Peterson started to punch, kicked and eventually choked the cat into releasing the hold he had on the boy’s head. Screaming and yelling at the cougar, they were able to get the boy to safety, and was eventually air lifted to the hospital. He underwent surgery at B.C. Children’s Hospital where he suffered claw marks and bites to his head, face, neck and upper chest. He should make a full recovery.

GRANDE PRAIRIE - An Alberta man was surveying an area near Grovedale when he accidentally got in between a grizzly bear and her cubs. The sow attacked the man and a struggle ensued. Miraculously the man had a large knife with him and as the bear was biting his arm and legs, the man managed to stab the bear three times and escape the attack. Suffering severe injuries, the man hiked almost a kilometer to a road where he got help. Authorities found the grizzly bear dead less than 100 feet from the attack. They are searching to find the orphaned cubs.

Utah Mountain Goat Tops in Lower 48

In the fall of 2006, hunter Craig Rippen and outfitter Shawn Labrum embarked on a pursuit for a record billy. They returned from that hunt not only with the new state record Rocky Mountain goat, but they also returned from the Boone & Crockett convention where Craig’s goat was the second largest in the recording period. Furthermore, they received the news that this massive billy scoring 54 2/8 B&C is also the largest mountain goat ever taken in the lower 48 states! We featured the story on Craig’s hunt in our March/April 2007 issue of Hunting Illustrated.

Outfitter Shawn Labrum has guided on many trophy big game animals. You can see many of his great hunts on his two DVDs titled Wild Mountain Mule Deer and Wild Mountain Big Horn Rams. You can order them through our Video Vault.

Numbers

63,618-Number of U.S. fires so far in 2007

6,556,419-Total number of acres burned in the U.S in 2007

708,641-Acres burned in Utah

38,500-Tons of hay needed to
feed nearly 9,700 animals misplaced due to Utah fires

1-Number of days it took
to burn 160,000 acres from the Milford Flat fire in
central Utah

*Information as of 8/22/07

Dateline

Biggest Fires in U.S. History

October 1825 - Maine fires burned 3,000,000 acres; 160 lives lost
1845 - Oregon fire burned 1,500,000 acres
October 1871 - Wisconsin and Michigan fires burned 3,780,000 acres; 1,500 lives lost
September 1881 - Lower Michigan fire burned 2,500,000 acres; 169 lives lost, 3,000 structures destroyed
February 1898 - South Carolina fires burned 3,000,000 acres
August 1910 - Idaho and Montana fires burned 3,000,000 acres; 85 lives lost
October 1918 – Minnesota fire burned 1,200,000 acres; 450 lives lost, 38 communities destroyed
1988 – Yellowstone fires burned 1,585,000 acres
October 2003 – California fire burned 275,000 acres; 2,400 structures destroyed, 15 lives lost
2004 - Alaska fires during 2004 burned over 6.38 million acres
March 2006 – Texas fires burned 907,245 acres; 80 structures destroyed, 11 lives lost

More Guns, Less Crime
The ability of law-abiding citizens to possess firearms has helped reduce violent crime in America

According to a study recently released by Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, worldwide gun ownership rates do not correlate with higher murder or suicide rates. In fact, many nations with high gun ownership have significantly lower murder and suicide rates. In their study entitled Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide? A Review of International and some Domestic Evidence, Don B. Kates and Gary Mauser bring out the notion that more guns actually do lead to less crime and disprove “the mantra that more guns mean more deaths and that fewer guns, therefore, mean fewer deaths.” Here are a few excerpts from their findings:

“Norway,” they note, “has far and away Western Europe’s highest household gun ownership rate (32%), but also its lowest murder rate. The Netherlands,” in contrast, “has the lowest gun ownership rate in Western Europe ( 1.9%) … yet the Dutch gun murder rate is higher than the Norwegian.”
“murder in Europe was at an all-time low before the gun controls were introduced.” As the authors note, “strict controls did not stem the general trend of ever-growing violent crime throughout the post-WWII industrialized world.”

Citing England, for instance, they reveal that “when it had no firearms restrictions [in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries], England had little violent crime.” By the late 1990s, however, “England moved from stringent controls to a complete ban on all handguns and many types of long guns.” As a result, “by the year 2000, violent crime had so increased that England and Wales had Europe’s highest violent crime rate, far surpassing even the United States.” In America, on the other hand, “despite constant and substantially increasing gun ownership, the United States saw progressive and dramatic reductions in criminal violence in the 1990s.”
“the fall in the American crime rate is even more impressive when compared with the rest of the world,”

The reason that gun ownership doesn’t correlate with murder rates, the authors show, is that violent crime rates are determined instead by underlying cultural factors. “Ordinary people,” they note, “simply do not murder.” Rather, “the murderers are a small minority of extreme antisocial aberrants who manage to obtain guns whatever the level of gun ownership” in their society.

Therefore, “banning guns cannot alleviate the socio-cultural and economic factors that are the real determinants of violence and crime rates.” According to Dr. Kates and Dr. Mauser, “there is no reason for laws prohibiting gun possession by ordinary, law-abiding, responsible adults because such people virtually never commit murder. If one accepts that such adults are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than to commit it, disarming them becomes not just unproductive but counter-productive.”

Did YOU Know…
Brought to you by Boone & Crockett’s On-line Trophy Search
www.boone-crockett.org

Did You Know…that out of the top ten Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep listed in the record books, six of them (including the top four) are from Alberta, three from Montana and one from British Columbia. Out of the top 100, 34 are from Alberta and 36 are from Montana.

California Republican wants cap on hunting licenses
Should we get the feds involved?

U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican has introduced legislation that would reduce the high-priced nonresident hunting license fees charged by Western states, where most of our federal lands are found. The bill — called the Teddy Roosevelt Bring Back Our Public Lands Act — suggests American hunters who want to shoot an elk, bear or other big game not normally found in Eastern or Southern states should be able to do so on federally owned Western lands without having to pay increased non-resident tag fees.

Hunter claims that Teddy Roosevelt wanted federal hunting and fishing lands to be available for everyone. These lands now include 190 million national forest acres and 258 million acres run by the federal Bureau of Land Management. They are not the exclusive domain of state legislatures who increasingly want to reach into the pockets of visitors to such federal lands. Hunter wants no state to charge more than $200 for a big-game hunting license for use on national forest or BLM property. The $200 fee would help recoup the few dollars states spend to help manage certain federal lands. The legislation has been referred to the House Committee on Resources.

Top Ten

Top Ten
European Countries Gun Ownership

1 Poland 1,500
2 Hungary 2,000
3 Russia 4,000
4 Greece 11,000
5 Switzerland 16,000
6 Austria 17,000
7 Denmark 19,000
8 Sweden 24,000
9 France 30,000
10 Germany 30,000

*Rates given are per 100,000 people, according to data available

Tags: Fresh Sign, HI32

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