40 Antelope killed by Outfitter

[yanceytaos]

I most recently heard of antelope being slaughtered by guide and outfitter Neil Trujillo in March while in Cimmaron New Mexico.I could not believe what I had heard.I spoke to the game and fish and they knew of the incident. I spoke also to a G&F Officer that also confirmed the 39 antelope were shoot by Trujillo.( UNOFFICIAL THE NUMBERS ARE HIGHER )What you hear next may trouble most New Mexico Sportsman. The antelope were shot with shotguns , chased by an ATV into a single wire fence that took some antelopes by the head with such force it ripped the horns off the skull. The problem one would ask is why can an outfitter/guide the profits from the sale of landowner tags have the right to hide behind the state and do this legally. According to the Department of game and fish responce on Channel 4 news Tuesday night they used all resourses they had before allowing this to happen. Well as a antelope depredation tag owner me and my son ( 13) 2 tags I really think the depredation office and officers should be put to trial on job performance. The antelope would have been humaney shoot processed and consumed by a paying New Mexico sportsman and his son. The money I would have spent to by food,lodging,processing fee would put money into the state.The units 41,42,44-49,53-58 have a total of 300 tags for a three day hunt. The total killed from Trujillo are over 12% of the total rifle hunt. The G & F have called me back to explain but they just us the same old excuse that it was an isolated incident.I would just like to see things done correctly and I am not an angry one time person because I dont draw tags either I just by landowner permits when i have to. I just dont like the fact of this landowner using his property to draw in animals to hunt to make him a lot of money oneday and then say the animals are not welcome now so I will just break every rule of hunter ethics and kill them the next day. Please eveyone if we let this go the G&F will know that they can continue to make huge mistakes along they way as we pay for them.Each tag from residents provides yet another fee for $3.00 page 5 to permanently develop solutions to chronic wildlife nuisance problems in the state. The money sure has been spent wisely to keep all depredation tag money in the purse strings 61.00 per and then not user the money's made for the Depredation Damage Stamp 3.00 per resident 10.00 for non residents.But dont get me started on the ratio of tags given to out of state hunters.Let your voice be heard. Lea Halm Raton 445-2311 Depredation Oficer Jerry Ratcliff 751-1533

Thanks
Concerned Sportsman
Yancey Ranspot
Taos,New Mexico

 

[mossback50cal]

I read about this on another site, and everyone there were condoning it!! Personally, it makes me sick to my stomache. Ill make that call.

 

[JFWRC]

Yancy-

#1) This is awful and should not have happened
#2) Where did you get that Neal Trujillo was an outfitter?

It is my understanding that he is a landowner that was having big problems keeping the animals off his wheat. I do not condone this action at all and its very sad that nothing was done to transplant these animals with their great gene pool.

 

[NMHUNTNUTTG]

Its over at bow site .com , but everybody isn't condoning it there. Most just run thier mouths as in most cases. It wasn't handled the very best nor do I agree with what he did , but at the same time he got tired and frusterated so he took matters into his own hands.Everybody here who is a NM resident damn well knows how effective the majority of the Game & Fish is.I'm not bashing the game wardens who are underpowered with huge amounts of miles to keep eye over , but I am saying that the NM Game and Fish as a dept. is getting worse every year. Bruce Thompson and the rest of the Governor Richardson appointies are simply pathetic and do only as much as needed to appear as if making an impact to NM. After the governor is out then the next un qualified shmoo comes in to head up the Game & Fish , another set of problems will occur, and again the wildlife of NM takes a back seat to the all mighty $$$$...Land owners will continue to fight with the G&F, Land owners will still not want unpaying people on thier land , sportsmen will still talk crap about land owners/ranchers and will still take jabs at the Dept. G&F...AND SO THE STORY GOES, THESE ARE THE DAYS OF OUR LIVES,,,,BLAH BLAH, BLAH

 

[mossback50cal]

NMHUNT, I agree with you that the gamewardens are far undermanned. But this type of stuff should not happen. I was in my favorite deer unit the other day, and what did I see? Hundreds of cows grazing all the grass off the mountains on national forest. Yes they pay for grazing rights, but we can do nothing about the cows. Farmers and ranchers are paid for game animals grazing on their crops, even though it isn't anywhere as much as cows do. Yet they can just kill them because they feel like it??? But I bet if it was during season and he had landowner tags he wouldn't mind them on his land!! Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this????????

 

[NMHUNTNUTTG]

No your not the only one who sees the wrong in his actions.The law that allows land owners to just kill off big game needs to be updated or re-done or something , but the law needs to still help the person in need and keep the wildlifes best interest a priority.Just blazing away with shotguns is not the right action , but it got the attention....

 

[264winmag]

A data point on warden resources.
About 2 months ago I went out to a friends ranch with a warden to do a survey for obtaining land owner Oryx tags. He said that the amount of miles he could drive durning a month had been reduced due to fuel prices. I bet they have been reduced even more by now.

We took my truck.

Take a kid hunting. You will enjoy it more than they do!

 

[coolarrow1]

Here's the video courtesy of the nmdgf.
http://video.ap.org/v/Legacy.aspx?p...-ba4e-4410-a212-5c8766a12a50&f=NMALJ&mk=en-ap

 

[jamaro]

I just got of the phone with Dutch Salmon one of the game commissioners... He basically said that because it is legislation that they can only influence the issue when it comes up next year. He agreed that this needs to be changed.
It is called the Tim Jennings Law and it was passed during the Johnson administration...

J-
PS... From what I can tell Sportsman really got screwed during the Johnson Administration... grrrrr....

 

[jasn]

They should've issued over the counter antelope tags (if allowed in the area). They could've probably even compensated the landowner a portion with all the $ generated or for access to the hunters.

In AZ, the over the counter elk tags were issued to remove unwanted elk heards, and most all of the elk will either be out of the area or shot by now if they aren't already! At $115 per residen and $595 per NR, that's a lot of $ going toward AZ wildlife (and last I heard they'd sold thousands of tags).

 

[nmelk13]

http://farm.ewg.org/farm/persondetail.php?custnumber=009167660

 

[gb2hunt]

They Did This And Did Not Arrested.New Mexico Game Wardens Should Be Ashamed Of Them Selfs And The Law! Gordon RAM4G

 

[nmbullfighter]

>They Did This And Did Not
>Arrested.New Mexico Game Wardens Should
>Be Ashamed Of Them Selfs
>And The Law! Gordon RAM4G
>


theres not much they can do..Its the law that a landowner has the right to depredate any game damaging his property. and yes, to farmers any animal eating his crops is damaging his property and his way of life..There will always be a conflict of interest between landowners, farmers and sportsman. The game wardens shouldn't be ashamed. ##### happens. Deal with it

 

[gb2hunt]

Not A Good Law ! Deal With It! Kind Of Hard To.Good Answer For A Hunter!Or Landowner!Maybe Thats Why I Dont Hunt In N.M. Gordon RAM4G

 

[yanceytaos]

Hey Larry,

Neil Trujillo has 5 pieces of property and currently 15 antelope landowner tags. He takes clients out hunting and also profits from Elk and Deer tags as well. The state has spent a large deal of money putting high fences around some of his fields which he now uses to hold animals and call in hunters. So him doing this now and using his wheat fields as an excuse then using them to bring in game during the season is the problem. Him and his father Maggie Trujillo should loose the landowner permits if he is killing animals. That is why he is awarded land owner depredation tags to comp him for his losses.

I hope you are well. Watch channel 4 tonight at six 4/21/08


Yancey

 

[RabidRattleSnake1]

I think that this guy (and any others that use this law) should forfeit any future tags they would receive otherwise. Lets say he would get 5 land owner tags a year that he could profit from and he killed these 39 goats. He should forfeit the next 7 years of tags and only get four in the eighth year. These guys using this law would think twice about killing game animals if the system worked this way. They would only kill the animals as a last resort.

 

[m1fan]

Sad...

 

[30inchbuck]

It is in the G&F rules that since he did this - yes he looses all LO tags.

 

[RabidRattleSnake1]

Cool, I wasn't aware of that. Where is it stated? Still not enough if you ask me.

 

[gb2hunt]

At Least Some Good Come Out Of It.Hopefully He Will Lose His Guide License! If He Has One.Gordon RAM4G

 

[JohnQPubic]

LAST EDITED ON May-05-08 AT 08:26PM (MST)[p]First of all, to blame the Game and Fish on this deal would be misguided. For starters Trujillo is not an outfitter, but he has received landowner tags for elk and antelope. Under the new Elk (landowner) system of the past few years, he would not be able to complain about (or kill) elk and still receive landowner tags (but this is not yet the case under the antelope system). This is one of many changes to the laws and regulations that the Game and Fish has been able to push through in recent years, and they continue to put their limited influence behind fixing the laws further. Leaving all political views aside (mine and yours)-rest assured that game species and sportsmen are much better off under the current political regime than the last one, especially when it comes to the depredation laws. to be honest, that's hard for me to hear myself say, but it's true.

Neil Trujillo used to kill elk on a regular basis under the depredation laws (lots of em), all the while receiving landowner tags that brought in more money for him than he was ever loosing to the elk. That effort payed off for him, when the game department built him a $200,000 game proof fence around the bulk of his 900 acre farm a few years ago. With that in mind, he purchased a new property 18 months ago and has set into killing antelope in an effort to blackmail the Game and Fish into fencing that property too.

The notion of bringing in depredation hunters is also not something that the Game Department can impose on someones private property if they are not open to it- There are a lot of things that could be done to minimize the impact of antelope grazing (as if they actually had a real impact in the first place), assuming that is something the landowner genuinly wants to do.

I challange anyone with a real understanding of the situation to find fault in how the Game Department has handled the Trujillo problem from start to finish. You can call them and complain but you'll be preaching to the choir. I encourage everyone to call your local representative in the State Roundhouse (while we have some momentum) and complain (loudly) about a crappy law that doesn't benefit anyone but a few big-fish landowners who happen to run in the same circles as the guys who made the law.

 

[mozey]

...good to see you back, JohnQ.

 

[BIGBULL48]

JohnQ Thanks for more info on the Antelope situation, there is always more behind the scene than what we see in news releases.
-Dittos on...good to see you back, JohnQ.
Don't know if you ever saw my thank you on the Unit 2B thread
from last deer hunt season, if not ...... thank you! Check it out if you have time.

 

[Ropinfool]

I think if the "behind the scenes stuff", such as the fence was made more public, many more people would complain very loudly. I was unaware of that as i'm sure most of the public was.