Tuesday, March 2, 2010

More "Sportsmen"

Yesterday's Great Falls Tribune posted the following Associated Press story:

Landowner, 10 hunters sentenced in poaching case

Two things caught my attention.


  1. The "outfitter" was fined a total of $170 dollars, and the "hunters" were fined nearly $14,700 plus nearly $6000 in restitution.  It would seem that the leader of the group should have been fined more.  Maybe there is something missing in the story, but $170 seems cheap.
  2. Poachers always seem to lose their hunting and fishing rights in cases like this.  It's never made sense to take hunting and fishing privileges from poachers.  Maybe it's just me.
A long-time friend and retired Montana Game Warden Larry Davis used to refer to folks like that as "Sportsmen," and he always made "Sportmen" sound like something unpleasant that was stuck to his shoe.