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Here’s what’s worth reading today, Tuesday, January 12, 2021:
The Savage Murder of Warden Neil LaFave, Part 1
Brown County District Attorney Donald R. Zuidmulder knew who brutally murdered Neil L. LaFave on Sept. 24, 1971, at the Sensiba Wildlife Area northwest of Green Bay, Wisconsin. He just needed to prove it.
LaFave, 32, a wildlife technician and game warden with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, was shot repeatedly in the face with a .22 rifle. His killer then left the wooded marsh, returned with a shovel and a .30-06 rifle, and decapitated the dead warden. He started the grisly task by blasting LaFave’s neck at least six times with the high-powered rifle and then severing what remained with the shovel blade. He buried the body and head in separate shallow graves several yards north of the murder site.
Although Zuidmulder, then 28, knew the murder weapon was a Remington .22, he also knew that rifle wasn’t the key to his case. That distinction belonged to the .30-06, also a Remington. If investigators could find the killer’s deer rifle, Zuidmulder felt sure he could prove Brian Hussong, a 21-year-old, murdered LaFave on the warden’s 32nd birthday. Hussong was of European descent and described as a “weird, skinny, gangly guy” by another conservation officer.
Hussong, a notorious poacher and violator, had a history of confrontations with LaFave, including a citation the previous autumn for shooting a pheasant out of season. In fact, when LaFave didn’t arrive home for his surprise birthday party that evening, his wife immediately suspected he had been harmed by Hussong. The poacher’s often-bizarre behaviors scared those who knew him, and his lawyer later described him as a paranoid schizophrenic.
Hunting groups worried sport is ‘under attack’ in Washington state
Hunting is under attack in Washington — at least that’s the assessment of Kim Thorburn, a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife commissioner from Spokane.
Stricter regulations passed in recent years, a new lawsuit and the appointment of two fish and wildlife commissioners has hunters and the lobbyists who advocate for looser hunting restrictions up in arms.
“I’m pretty upset about what’s going on,” she said. “We’re looking at hunters as an enemy.”
Thorburn points to a recently filed lawsuit looking to outlaw spring bear hunting and last year’s ban on coyote-killing contests. In 2019, the WDFW ended a popular antlerless deer hunt in Eastern Washington.
“They just come one item at a time,” she said.
Wolf expansion in Wyoming curtails puma population
It was February 1999, and a pack of five wolves had just made their way into the National Elk Refuge in northwest Wyoming. The new pack, which had moved south from Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, drew thousands of tourists as the animals spent much of their time out in the open in a valley on the refuge.
“It caused total mayhem as people started flooding in to see wolves,” said Mark Elbroch, Puma Program Director for Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organization.
It didn’t take long for the wolf watchers to spot another predator on the landscape — a female cougar with kittens that remained visible on the same landscape for roughly 40 days.
“It was only because of wolf watchers that that cat was seen in the first place,” Elbroch said.
Lawsuit to ban bear baiting in Idaho, Wyoming can continue
A federal judge on Dec. 25 for the second time rejected a Trump administration request to dismiss a lawsuit filed by environmental groups seeking to ban using bait to hunt black bears in national forests in Idaho and Wyoming.
The groups say allowing the use of bait violates environmental laws because hunters have ended up killing at least 10 federally protected grizzly bears attracted to the bait.
The Trump administration argued the lawsuit should be dismissed because last summer it withdrew some mid-1990s documents on which the lawsuit is based.
But U.S. Magistrate Judge Candy Dale in rejecting the administration’s request last week said those documents were used to create the 1995 hunting rule that remains in effect.
The U.S. government’s national policy targeted in the lawsuit allows states to decide if hunters can use bait for black bears in grizzly habitat, including national forests. Idaho and Wyoming allow the practice.
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