A
AntlerKing
Guest
Antler craze has hunters going too far
Skip Knowles
The Salt Lake Tribune
Utah's new spring deer and elk season is winding down, and wildlife officials, game herds and the landscape are finally getting a break.
What, you missed it? The new season has no size or bag limits and requires no license, and you can bag all the trophy animals you want.
All wildlife officials ask for is a little fair chase. But that's too much for some folks caught up in the shed-antler hunting craze.
A harmless activity by foot or horseback has become a destructive one on critical winter ranges such as Wallsburg Wildlife Management Area near Deer Creek Reservoir because of illegal ATV and four-wheel drive use, says Steve Flinders, central region biologist.
People have gone horn-nuts and torn up the land and harassed winter-stressed wildlife.
In Utah, the Great Depression was the good old days for the game herds. Hardly anyone could afford bullets, gas or boots to go hunt. Bucks grew old with enormous, heavy racks that now collect dust in rural gas stations.
Utah's deer and elk should pray for an economic downturn. These days people -- and not just hunters -- can pay $7,000 for an ATV or propeller-driven paragliders to hunt antlers, and have idle time to chase deer and elk from February to June.
More and more, they are literally chasing them, pushing animals to knock their antlers off long before an enzyme eats off the antler material at the base of the horn and the animal is truly ready to shed.
Another badly needed proposal to ban antler collecting before April failed to pass this spring, because of enforcement questions.
Too bad. Harassing wildlife or four-wheeling off trails is illegal, but the antler craze is rife with cheaters.
Even East Coast news media such as the Wall Street Journal assign reporters to cover the spring horn-rush at the elk refuge near Jackson Hole. What spectacle: Officers using hounds to track camouflaged smugglers, vehicle chases, caches of horns hidden in trees, people lined up with horses days in advance. People do wind sprints to get in shape "for the season."
Matched sets go for hundreds of dollars on ebay, and antler chandeliers for thousands.
For a hunter, finding an antler is something special. A gleaming mass of ivory laying in the forest shows an extraordinary animal made it through. Horns have an aura of grace, beauty and wildness and, like wildflowers, some folks feel they should be left for all to enjoy, not for the first person who can come along and snatch them.
But most, like Flinders, love the "other" hunt.
"It gets you out in the spring, gets you in shape, you see some animals," he said. "There is nothing worse than having invested time in horseback or on foot only to run across four-wheeler tracks where they should not be."
Bravado and bragging rights drive the Utah rush, he said.
"Who wouldn't want a matched set of 400 [point] class elk horns?" he said.
Every day, he sees people scouring the hillsides of Spanish Fork Canyon.
"Every waking moment, people are trying to keep tabs on animals, trying to be first," he said.
He sees fences cut and four-wheelers outfitted with brush guards for running through sage.
Utah's high buck-doe ratios and limited-entry areas provide a wealth of monster horns, and with more people "buzzing" animals on paragliders each year, the problem will grow.
Flinders recently learned a sheep-hunting outfitter bought three paragliders.
"It's competitiveness, human nature, 'Gotta find more, gotta find bigger, than everyone else,' " he said.
Skip Knowles
The Salt Lake Tribune
Utah's new spring deer and elk season is winding down, and wildlife officials, game herds and the landscape are finally getting a break.
What, you missed it? The new season has no size or bag limits and requires no license, and you can bag all the trophy animals you want.
All wildlife officials ask for is a little fair chase. But that's too much for some folks caught up in the shed-antler hunting craze.
A harmless activity by foot or horseback has become a destructive one on critical winter ranges such as Wallsburg Wildlife Management Area near Deer Creek Reservoir because of illegal ATV and four-wheel drive use, says Steve Flinders, central region biologist.
People have gone horn-nuts and torn up the land and harassed winter-stressed wildlife.
In Utah, the Great Depression was the good old days for the game herds. Hardly anyone could afford bullets, gas or boots to go hunt. Bucks grew old with enormous, heavy racks that now collect dust in rural gas stations.
Utah's deer and elk should pray for an economic downturn. These days people -- and not just hunters -- can pay $7,000 for an ATV or propeller-driven paragliders to hunt antlers, and have idle time to chase deer and elk from February to June.
More and more, they are literally chasing them, pushing animals to knock their antlers off long before an enzyme eats off the antler material at the base of the horn and the animal is truly ready to shed.
Another badly needed proposal to ban antler collecting before April failed to pass this spring, because of enforcement questions.
Too bad. Harassing wildlife or four-wheeling off trails is illegal, but the antler craze is rife with cheaters.
Even East Coast news media such as the Wall Street Journal assign reporters to cover the spring horn-rush at the elk refuge near Jackson Hole. What spectacle: Officers using hounds to track camouflaged smugglers, vehicle chases, caches of horns hidden in trees, people lined up with horses days in advance. People do wind sprints to get in shape "for the season."
Matched sets go for hundreds of dollars on ebay, and antler chandeliers for thousands.
For a hunter, finding an antler is something special. A gleaming mass of ivory laying in the forest shows an extraordinary animal made it through. Horns have an aura of grace, beauty and wildness and, like wildflowers, some folks feel they should be left for all to enjoy, not for the first person who can come along and snatch them.
But most, like Flinders, love the "other" hunt.
"It gets you out in the spring, gets you in shape, you see some animals," he said. "There is nothing worse than having invested time in horseback or on foot only to run across four-wheeler tracks where they should not be."
Bravado and bragging rights drive the Utah rush, he said.
"Who wouldn't want a matched set of 400 [point] class elk horns?" he said.
Every day, he sees people scouring the hillsides of Spanish Fork Canyon.
"Every waking moment, people are trying to keep tabs on animals, trying to be first," he said.
He sees fences cut and four-wheelers outfitted with brush guards for running through sage.
Utah's high buck-doe ratios and limited-entry areas provide a wealth of monster horns, and with more people "buzzing" animals on paragliders each year, the problem will grow.
Flinders recently learned a sheep-hunting outfitter bought three paragliders.
"It's competitiveness, human nature, 'Gotta find more, gotta find bigger, than everyone else,' " he said.
