Cass
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The largest grizzly bear ever shot in Alaska has been expunged from the records of the Boone and Crockett Club after a review of how it came to be killed back in 1998.
The keeper of records on the largest big game animals in North America, Boone and Crockett, has previously erased the records of animals found to have been killed illegally. But the Montana-based club says its latest act is unprecedented.
It's the first time a world record has been struck down, said Boone and Crockett spokesman Jack Reneau, and the decision further broadens the club's ethical position on what it considers "fair chase'' hunting.
The one-time world-record grizzly shot by Chugiak hunter David Malzac near the Toklat River just north of Denali National Park and Preserve was struck from the records, the club said, because of the behavior of two of Malzac's hunting companions. They used large-wheeled, off-road, four-wheel-drive vehicles called "swamp buggies" to hunt river corridors in the area.
Former Alaska Department of Fish and Game commercial fisheries biologist Louis Barton got upset about the use of those vehicles in 1998 after a overflight of the Toklat and Sushana rivers revealed a maze of tire tracks crisscrossing salmon spawning streams and sloughs. In some places, Barton said, it appeared someone had driven up and down the rivers.
"I saw the tracks, and I just couldn't believe it,'' Barton said. "I'd never seen anything like that before."
Barton, who spotted the tracks while doing an aerial survey of chum salmon stocks in October, reported the matter to the Fish and Wildlife Protection Division of the Alaska State Troopers and pushed for prosecution.
Troopers eventually charged Robert Caywood and Harold Bryant, owners of the custom-built buggies, with illegally driving in a salmon stream. Troopers also cited Malzac for illegally shooting the bear, but that charge was quickly dismissed.
All the parties involved agree there was never any indication Malzac violated state hunting laws. Troopers tried to make their case against him on the presumption that since he was with people breaking the law, the bear shooting must also be in violation. Malzac's attorney successfully countered that charge.
"Since it's not clear if Mr. Malzac himself ever drove either of the vehicles in the prohibited area,'' Boone and Crockett spokesman Reneau said in a press release, "Mr. Malzac was never charged with a crime.
"(But) the tire tracks caused by the hunting group's daily use of one or two buggies to cross the many braids, sloughs or springs of the Toklat and Sushana Rivers, plus traveling up and down in the waterways for many days . . . were well documented."
The use of the swamp buggies became a major consideration in the records committee's conclusion that Malzac would not have taken his trophy without the illegal use of his friends' vehicles, a violation of the fair-chase ethic of the Boone and Crockett Club.
"It shows that we take fair chase very seriously,'' Reneau said in a telephone interview.
Malzac, reached this week at the remote Indian Mountain radar site where he works, said he believes he has been railroaded. The 43-year-old hunter does not argue that the swamp buggies were driven across and along the banks of the rivers in question but said what happened wasn't much different than what happens along vehicle-accessible Alaska streams all summer long.
"They say it was unsightly, and we had tracks running up and down the river,'' Malzac said. "But the Knik River is the same way.''
And, he added, all of the tracks along the Toklat and Sushana were made before the salmon arrived in the rivers.
"I still have nothing to hide about what we did,'' Malzac said. "It makes us look like we were tramping through the river with no regard to the fish, but there's nothing that could be further from the truth.
"There were just a few fish in there. There were no thousands of fish like (Barton) claims. If there were thousands of fish, I'm sure we would have seen that. I saw two the night we were coming out with the bear, and that was it."
Malzac also contends he talked to Fish and Game biologists about hunting in the area beforehand, telling them what he and his friends planned to do. No concerns about crossing salmon streams were raised then, he said.
Biologists told him a permit was needed if he planned to use a bulldozer or other tracked vehicles but not for a wheeled vehicle, Malzac said.
"We were moose hunting, but all we saw were wolves and bears," Malzac said. "There's lots of wolves and bears there, but no moose.
"The bear was incidental. I was hunting for moose to fill the freezer. I wanted the meat. (But) we saw this bear on the way back to camp one night. I thought it was kind of nice so I shot him.''
Malzac said he simply wanted a bear hide for his home. Not until months later, he added, did a friend made note of the size of the animal and suggested he register it with Boone and Crockett.
"We did,'' he said, and pretty soon the proverbial bear scat hit the fan.
Barton heard that Malzac's bear had been recognized as a new world record and complained to the club. Barton said it was clear to him that Malzac had violated at least two of the tenets of the club's "fair chase'' policy -- one being that he hunted with people who broke the law, the other being that no one in his group showed respect for the area's fish and wildlife habitat.
Malzac's friends were cited for driving in a salmon stream and ended up pleading no contest. Malzac said he tried to get them to fight that charge, but they didn't think defending themselves was worth the costs.
"What's easier to do?'' Malzac asked. "Admit crossing a salmon stream and take a $600 hit and agree to probation for a couple years, or try to go to court for the $6,000 or $7,000," which is what he said the lawyers wanted to charge them?
Caywood, he said, simply didn't have that kind of money. And Bryant didn't want to risk the possibility of losing in court.
State prosecutors promised to ask the judge for a suspended imposition of sentence if a no-contest plea was entered, Malzac said. A suspended imposition removes charges from one's record after fines have been paid and probation served.
"(Bryant) is 72 years old, and he's never even had a traffic ticket," Malzac said. "Robert wanted to go to court, but he didn't have the money to do it. They took the cheap, safe route.''
The result, in Malzac's view, is that his chances at a world record disappeared along with those decisions.
"I don't care about the record now,'' he added. "They're a club. They're a private club. They can do what they want to do. ... (But) I don't want my name associated with running wild and being a renegade. We all know that you've got to conserve game.
"I had no idea we were doing anything wrong. (This) is never enforced until somebody gets a wild hair, as Barton has. We took a trail that's a historic trail and that's been in there since the turn of the century.
"You find out all the information you can find out. You think you're making the right decision. Then you find out something like this the hard way.''
Barton questions that. It is clear, he said, that people aren't supposed to drive vehicles in Alaska salmon streams. It isn't some new Fish and Game regulation but an established state statute.
"The Legislature saw the importance of this,'' Barton said. "People like to use ATVs. I don't have problem with that, but you've got to use it right."
Malzac, however, remains skeptical that he and his friends harmed salmon or salmon habitat, although he admits Barton "no doubt knows more about fish than I do.''
Still, he wonders why there are no photographs of damaged salmon habitat.
"All the pictures they took were up on the gravel bars,'' Malzac said. "It's a real braided river. I've never known fish to walk on gravel bars."
Fish might not walk, fisheries biologists counter, but they do spawn their young in gravel, and what happens to the gravel affects fish. Driving over it can crush eggs and alevins, the fish fresh from eggs. Stirring up silt by driving around in sloughs can end up choking salmon trying to survive through the development stages in the gravel.
Barton said that is the message he has been trying to get across since this dispute began five years ago.
"I'm hoping that the results of this issue will serve as a reminder to other hunters,'' Barton said. "I'm hoping something good comes out of this.''
-Cass
The keeper of records on the largest big game animals in North America, Boone and Crockett, has previously erased the records of animals found to have been killed illegally. But the Montana-based club says its latest act is unprecedented.
It's the first time a world record has been struck down, said Boone and Crockett spokesman Jack Reneau, and the decision further broadens the club's ethical position on what it considers "fair chase'' hunting.
The one-time world-record grizzly shot by Chugiak hunter David Malzac near the Toklat River just north of Denali National Park and Preserve was struck from the records, the club said, because of the behavior of two of Malzac's hunting companions. They used large-wheeled, off-road, four-wheel-drive vehicles called "swamp buggies" to hunt river corridors in the area.
Former Alaska Department of Fish and Game commercial fisheries biologist Louis Barton got upset about the use of those vehicles in 1998 after a overflight of the Toklat and Sushana rivers revealed a maze of tire tracks crisscrossing salmon spawning streams and sloughs. In some places, Barton said, it appeared someone had driven up and down the rivers.
"I saw the tracks, and I just couldn't believe it,'' Barton said. "I'd never seen anything like that before."
Barton, who spotted the tracks while doing an aerial survey of chum salmon stocks in October, reported the matter to the Fish and Wildlife Protection Division of the Alaska State Troopers and pushed for prosecution.
Troopers eventually charged Robert Caywood and Harold Bryant, owners of the custom-built buggies, with illegally driving in a salmon stream. Troopers also cited Malzac for illegally shooting the bear, but that charge was quickly dismissed.
All the parties involved agree there was never any indication Malzac violated state hunting laws. Troopers tried to make their case against him on the presumption that since he was with people breaking the law, the bear shooting must also be in violation. Malzac's attorney successfully countered that charge.
"Since it's not clear if Mr. Malzac himself ever drove either of the vehicles in the prohibited area,'' Boone and Crockett spokesman Reneau said in a press release, "Mr. Malzac was never charged with a crime.
"(But) the tire tracks caused by the hunting group's daily use of one or two buggies to cross the many braids, sloughs or springs of the Toklat and Sushana Rivers, plus traveling up and down in the waterways for many days . . . were well documented."
The use of the swamp buggies became a major consideration in the records committee's conclusion that Malzac would not have taken his trophy without the illegal use of his friends' vehicles, a violation of the fair-chase ethic of the Boone and Crockett Club.
"It shows that we take fair chase very seriously,'' Reneau said in a telephone interview.
Malzac, reached this week at the remote Indian Mountain radar site where he works, said he believes he has been railroaded. The 43-year-old hunter does not argue that the swamp buggies were driven across and along the banks of the rivers in question but said what happened wasn't much different than what happens along vehicle-accessible Alaska streams all summer long.
"They say it was unsightly, and we had tracks running up and down the river,'' Malzac said. "But the Knik River is the same way.''
And, he added, all of the tracks along the Toklat and Sushana were made before the salmon arrived in the rivers.
"I still have nothing to hide about what we did,'' Malzac said. "It makes us look like we were tramping through the river with no regard to the fish, but there's nothing that could be further from the truth.
"There were just a few fish in there. There were no thousands of fish like (Barton) claims. If there were thousands of fish, I'm sure we would have seen that. I saw two the night we were coming out with the bear, and that was it."
Malzac also contends he talked to Fish and Game biologists about hunting in the area beforehand, telling them what he and his friends planned to do. No concerns about crossing salmon streams were raised then, he said.
Biologists told him a permit was needed if he planned to use a bulldozer or other tracked vehicles but not for a wheeled vehicle, Malzac said.
"We were moose hunting, but all we saw were wolves and bears," Malzac said. "There's lots of wolves and bears there, but no moose.
"The bear was incidental. I was hunting for moose to fill the freezer. I wanted the meat. (But) we saw this bear on the way back to camp one night. I thought it was kind of nice so I shot him.''
Malzac said he simply wanted a bear hide for his home. Not until months later, he added, did a friend made note of the size of the animal and suggested he register it with Boone and Crockett.
"We did,'' he said, and pretty soon the proverbial bear scat hit the fan.
Barton heard that Malzac's bear had been recognized as a new world record and complained to the club. Barton said it was clear to him that Malzac had violated at least two of the tenets of the club's "fair chase'' policy -- one being that he hunted with people who broke the law, the other being that no one in his group showed respect for the area's fish and wildlife habitat.
Malzac's friends were cited for driving in a salmon stream and ended up pleading no contest. Malzac said he tried to get them to fight that charge, but they didn't think defending themselves was worth the costs.
"What's easier to do?'' Malzac asked. "Admit crossing a salmon stream and take a $600 hit and agree to probation for a couple years, or try to go to court for the $6,000 or $7,000," which is what he said the lawyers wanted to charge them?
Caywood, he said, simply didn't have that kind of money. And Bryant didn't want to risk the possibility of losing in court.
State prosecutors promised to ask the judge for a suspended imposition of sentence if a no-contest plea was entered, Malzac said. A suspended imposition removes charges from one's record after fines have been paid and probation served.
"(Bryant) is 72 years old, and he's never even had a traffic ticket," Malzac said. "Robert wanted to go to court, but he didn't have the money to do it. They took the cheap, safe route.''
The result, in Malzac's view, is that his chances at a world record disappeared along with those decisions.
"I don't care about the record now,'' he added. "They're a club. They're a private club. They can do what they want to do. ... (But) I don't want my name associated with running wild and being a renegade. We all know that you've got to conserve game.
"I had no idea we were doing anything wrong. (This) is never enforced until somebody gets a wild hair, as Barton has. We took a trail that's a historic trail and that's been in there since the turn of the century.
"You find out all the information you can find out. You think you're making the right decision. Then you find out something like this the hard way.''
Barton questions that. It is clear, he said, that people aren't supposed to drive vehicles in Alaska salmon streams. It isn't some new Fish and Game regulation but an established state statute.
"The Legislature saw the importance of this,'' Barton said. "People like to use ATVs. I don't have problem with that, but you've got to use it right."
Malzac, however, remains skeptical that he and his friends harmed salmon or salmon habitat, although he admits Barton "no doubt knows more about fish than I do.''
Still, he wonders why there are no photographs of damaged salmon habitat.
"All the pictures they took were up on the gravel bars,'' Malzac said. "It's a real braided river. I've never known fish to walk on gravel bars."
Fish might not walk, fisheries biologists counter, but they do spawn their young in gravel, and what happens to the gravel affects fish. Driving over it can crush eggs and alevins, the fish fresh from eggs. Stirring up silt by driving around in sloughs can end up choking salmon trying to survive through the development stages in the gravel.
Barton said that is the message he has been trying to get across since this dispute began five years ago.
"I'm hoping that the results of this issue will serve as a reminder to other hunters,'' Barton said. "I'm hoping something good comes out of this.''
-Cass
