So it would be fair to say that I’m not a huge fan. The Nuge needs to kill so bad he ends up doing most of his “whacking and stacking” in pens. Not hunting, not even close. But somehow he anointed himself our official spokesman. I don’t think he speaks for me, and I’ve never been particularly sure he even understands hunting as I see it. Anyway, he pled no contest a couple of days ago to a negotiated deal on 3 game violations in California.

Rock star and gun rights advocate Ted Nugent was fined $1,750 Friday in Yuba County Superior Court after pleading no contest to a charge of baiting deer on his hunting show “Spirit of the Wild.”

Yuba City attorney Jack Kopp, representing Theodore Anthony Nugent, entered the plea to Department of Fish and Game charges of baiting deer and not having a deer tag “countersigned” at the closest possible location, said Deputy District Attorney John Vacek.

Nugent, who did not appear in court, also illegally shot an immature buck on the show but was not charged, according to Fish and Game.

The rest of the news story is here.

Again, I’m not a fan of Ted and his act, but I don’t have the level of hatred this story has exposed in some of the more hardcore hunters in the online community. Take a look here.

In my line of work I sometimes marvel at the disconnect between those who go to jail and those who should go to jail. Fortunately for the world at large, a Dallas judge got it right when he sentenced Robby Rose to 15 days in jail for cheating during a recent bass tournament. It seems he stuffed a lead weight into the fish before weigh in hoping to win a $50,000 bass boat.

You can find more on the story here.

Well, since I told you about this story yesterday I thought I’d tell you that Mr. Lewton was acquitted today of the felony charges. I’m not surprised from the outside looking in but it is always difficult to make judgments about cases you haven’t seen or heard. Here’s the Montana Standard article.

RED WING, Minn. (AP) A Cannon Falls man accused of poaching a world-record eight-point buck has pleaded guilty to three charges and was sentenced to 245 days in jail.

Troy Alan Reinke had claimed he found the buck already dead when he was hunting in the Cannon Falls area last Halloween night. But the 33-year-old had already taken two deer, the legal limit in the area.

The deer had the highest-scoring eight-point antlers ever measured by several methods.

Reinke got credit for 120 days already served in jail on a separate matter. He also must pay $1,500 in restitution and $583 in fines, forfeit his bow and the deer’s rack, and give up the right to hunt large and small game for five years.

Here

And the more interesting story is that of John Lewton. Apparently the Montana Fish and Wildlife people got a tip that this taxidermist and video maker was illegally guiding sheep hunters. So they sent one of their agents under cover with an extremely coveted tag for the Missouri Breaks region, one of twenty opportunities such tags made available in all of 2009. The undercover agent arranged to hunt with Mr. Lewton and eventually killed a 204″ monster. Apparently up to that point the state had only gathered evidence of a handful of misdemeanors and many Montana hunters are wondering why such a wonderful animal had to be killed for a relatively minor crime. Some months later the agent did further the crime by agreeing to sell the ram to Mr. Lewton, making an illegal sale of wildlife which is a minor felony. It seems like an entrapment defense to me, but I haven’t seen the evidence or watched the trial. Not surprisingly, the defense made an issue of the unnecessary killing of the ram. As of today the case went to jury, so stay tuned for a result. If you want to read more you can follow the coverage at the Montana Standard.

I’ve been getting a bunch of google hits regarding the Behenna trial and appeal because of this post that I wrote in September. At the time I was only posting because I was concerned about the absurd amount of half-truths being put out there regarding the case, and I wanted a platform to express my hatred of Bill O’Reilly and Phil Kline, even in passing. There is apparently some future in hating Phil, he’s getting ready for an ethics hearing before the Kansas Supreme Court. That’s a story for another day.

Anyway, Mr. Behenna has had his sentence reduced twice, once by the Army’s parole board, and once by the governing body of the 101st. His appeal is ongoing. For more information on the appeal you can follow my link to the previous post.

This may come as a surprise to you, but I generally dislike big law firms. It’s strange because in law school we, as students, were filled with propaganda regarding how great the money was, how long or short the partnership track was, how big so-and-so’s clients are, etc… First and second tier law schools are subtly run by big firms, from introductions the first day, to the career services department. It didn’t help that a significant amount of the top grads take these jobs, fostering a belief that one must work to be worthy of the great legal sweatshops. Sadly, I couldn’t care less about the physical or physiological cost of working at one. Those students generally wash out anyway and frankly, they knew what they were getting into. What really bothers me about the big firm mentality is their belief that one should bow before their superior resources. Not knowledge, resources. Both lawyers and lay people can be a victim to this.

So take, for instance, Boingboing.net who was threatened with untold hellfire and an otherworldly legal fusillade if they did not remove a picture from their website. The picture was part of an advertisement from Ralph Lauren that portrayed a female model who was unhumanly skinny. The author at boingboing suggested that it was photoshopped saying, “Dude, her head’s bigger than her pelvis.”

So what would you expect in this situation? How about you threaten to sue the author that said something accurately negative about your ad? Of course. It couldn’t be that they are right, could it? But this type of thing happens every day. What’s unique about this case is that boingboing was not willing to be bullied. They responded with what seems to be the correct legal defense, and also offered to post any legal filings along with, “copious mockery”.

Three cheers for them. America would be better, and the legal system would be better, if more people were brave enough to stand up to a spurious legal threat.

So David Clark apparently likes to fall turkey hunt in his home state of Arkansas. Good times right? Well it would have been except the state canceled the season due to a poor hatch this past summer. Bad times, but what can you do with a poor hatch? Well Mr. Clark filed suit, twice actually. The first time he apparently filed in the wrong county. A judge denied his motion to reinstate the hunt while the parties prepare the case, but apparently there will be a more in-depth preliminary hearing before the scheduled October 26th opener.

You can read more about it here.

If you’ve been reading my blog for any time at all I’m sure you know my disgust for those “hunters” who kill animals restrained in pens. So it may come as a surprise to you that I’ve been a member of Safari Club International for a few years now. SCI maintains the tame-animal record books and at least historically has been the only major organization to give haven to that fringe element of the outdoor world. Even today a brief look at their magazine shows that a significant amount of their advertising and corporate sponsors are tame animal farms…

So what gives? Well, as I became a more diverse hunter I realized that, despite the whole tame animal killing thing, no one else supports real hunting like SCI. No one has done more to provide free range opportunities in developing markets and countries that have limited sport hunting tradition. No one has spent more time and money defending the relatively rare North American hunts like polar bears. Maybe I’ll never get a chance to do some of these things, but I enthusiastically support those who do.

Finally, they are on the ground level for many local hunts and hunting opportunities. To that end they filed suit in New Jersey yesterday (10/14/09) in an effort to get black bear hunting reinstated in New Jersey.

Despite the best efforts of the state’s Fish and Game Council (Council), New Jersey’s Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has refused to approve a new comprehensive black bear management policy (Black Bear Policy) that includes hunting as a management strategy. Under New Jersey law, without a policy in place, the State cannot hold a black bear hunt. The Commissioner’s inaction has lead to a drastic increase in bear incidents state-wide since the last bear hunt in 2005.

SCI President Larry Rudolph said, “A well regulated hunt is essential for the sound and responsible management of black bear in New Jersey and for the safety of the general public. The goal of our lawsuit is simply to put legal pressure on the Commissioner and the Council to take the necessary action to adopt a Black Bear Policy. Forcing action on a policy will allow the Council — the people entrusted under New Jersey law to manage wildlife — to decide whether a hunt is both the appropriate means of managing the state’s bear population and a valued recreational experience

Here is the whole release.

From an interview Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gave to a reporter from C-Span:

I mean there’d be a, you know, a defense or public defender from Podunk, you know, and this woman is really brilliant, you know. Why isn’t she out inventing the automobile or, you know, doing something productive for this society?

I mean lawyers, after all, don’t produce anything. They enable other people to produce and to go on with their lives efficiently and in an atmosphere of freedom. That’s important, but it doesn’t put food on the table and there have to be other people who are doing that. And I worry that we are devoting too many of our very best minds to this enterprise.

The rest of the piece from Law Blog, here.

If you are at least moderately aware of the world around you I’m sure you know that last year the Supreme Court used the 2nd Amendment to invalidate a very restrictive gun law in the District of Columbia. Good times, right? Well it’s not that simple. See DC is not a state, so it’s rules are uniquely federal in nature. As such, the court only ruled that the federal government cannot take the right to keep and bear arms away from the people, but the various state and local governments can.

Totally bizarre right? Well it is the result of a long, tortuous line of cases that started before the Civil War when states rights were far stronger than they are today. Since that time the court has included many of the rights you are aware of through the fourteenth amendment to include all governments, but they have been handled individually. That brings us to McDonald v. City of Chicago, a case before the court during this term. The question at hand is simple: Does the 2nd amendment right explained last session in District of Columbia v. Heller apply to state and local governments?

Here’s some good legal analysis on the history and possible outcomes.