Grizzly bear chased by pickup truck

It would have been fine with me if those two guys had gotten out of the truck. The bear might have cured them of that poor excuse for a life they are living.

If you take your eyes off the bear and scan the horizon in the video, it's clear that the truck makes a complete circle by about halfway through the video and then continues turning. In that complete circle, there is nothing that even faintly resembles a cow or calf.

Additionally, the mocking, derisive tone used by the occupants of that truck, in my opinion, is unworthy of ever holding a hunting license. And when they are waking up as long tenants in a small jail cell, perhaps they can eat breakfast to a similar derisive voice mocking them with, "Ooooh, big f'ing jailbird, getting tired . . . ."

But I suppose that would be cruel, wouldn't it? So, as I indicated, too bad they didn't simply step out of the truck and get cured of what ails them.

I'm not a hunter so I am not up on what happens to poachers but what I noticed was that a $6250 fine might worth risking if game tags for these big horn sheep are really that rare. Maybe I'm wrong but it appears to me that the penalties need to be much higher. Especially since at auction one of the tags brought $160,000. So to risk a $6000 fine seems like a no brainer to me if your ethics allow poaching.

Please don't think I'm condoning the action of these two criminals. I am not. I'm just saying without more knowledge of the system it appears that the penalties are way to low.

Sometimes I just don't understand people.

In most cases as would be expected they would not only loose the animal poached but also fined or even jail. Some cases they loose the weapon they shot it with. In certain cases when a poached animal is in transport they run the risk of losing the vehicle being used to transport. Which is the case with the grizzly. They should have their truck taken away. Or at least they should let the grizzly chase them and see if they can get away.

If you go back 100 years, most if not all animals were "poached" some almost to the brink of extinction. Not that it makes this situation any better, at least today we understand and realize the importance of conservation. Just another example of a couple bad apples that ruin it for the majority.

This is one thing I do not understand. They obviously shot these two rams because of the "trophy" mentality. How would you ever feel good about yourself knowing the facts. On top of that, a taxidermist by law needs your license/tag to even do a mount or any type of taxidermy on what you bring them. Anyway that opens a whole different debate.

They could clean up Malheur.

Poachers typically also lose any (legal) hunting privileges for some number of years. Sometimes for life. A second offense can often be a few decades in prison.

Some years ago I had a contractor who went to AK for a Bighorn. He came back with an almost full curl ram and had the head at the job site. Everyone else was raving about how nice it was until they asked me. I told them it would have looked a lot nicer on a live animal in the wilderness.