Guides should better protect against scavengers: judge

A Yukon territorial court judge has recommended that professional guides take some precautions

A Yukon territorial court judge has recommended that professional guides take some precautions against scavengers when temporarily leaving part of a kill in the field, lest they find themselves charged with wasting meat when a bear gets to the carcass before they do.

Judge Michael Cozens made the comments during his decision on the case against two guides, Brett Ackerman and Oneil Baillargeon, who were accused of wasting the better part of a moose.

The two men, employed by Lone Wolf Outfitters, were guiding a pair of American hunters in the Livingston Creek area in September 2007.

One of the hunters shot a moose. The guides field dressed the carcass, took the quarters, the backstrap and the antlers and left the remaining meat at the kill site; intending, the guides told the court earlier this year, to return for it the next day.

The antlers and backstrap, they took to camp. The quarters were taken to a nearby airstrip, where they were hung in a pole shack.

When Ackerman returned to the kill site the next day, the sound of wolves howling near the site sent him packing.

In his experience, he told the court, their calls indicated a bear had chased the pack off the meat and was now likely guarding it. Not wanting to get into an altercation with either a bear or a pack of wolves, he turned back.

A few days later, a pair of conservation officers showed up in the hunting camp. They saw the trophy antlers and backstrap, and wanted to know where the rest of the animal was.

The guides showed them the quarters, which were about three kilometres away from the camp, and explained that the rest was still in the field.

When answering one of the officers’ questions, Baillargeon - the more inexperienced of the two guides - agreed that the men had “abandoned” the remaining meat because they figured it had been taken by a bear. This was a poor choice of words, the judge said when giving his decision, not an admission of guilt.

The conservation officers took one of the guides with them and headed out to the kill site. Once again, this time because of bad weather, they couldn’t get to the meat. They returned with a helicopter soon afterward and found what the guides suspected they would all along - a bear lying on his scavenged booty.

But the bear was no match for the hovering aircraft - he ran off, leaving his buried treasure behind.

The CO’s jumped from the helicopter and dug up the meat. They found it unspoiled and eventually salvaged 92 pounds of edible meat, although the neck and tenderloin were never found.

The guides were charged with wasting meat, both for the parts left in the field and the quarters hung at the airstrip. That meat was not properly covered, the officers said, and had effectively been left for the bears as well.

In their defence, the guides pointed out that Lone Wolf Outfitters had stored meat at the airstrip for 12 hunting seasons without incident.

They left the meat on the field with every intention of picking it up the next day. It was only the concern of personal safety that prevented them from picking it up.

As Cozens pointed out in his decision, the guides did not take any steps to guard the meat they left in the field.

They could have urinated around the area, hung clothes in the trees surrounding the kill site, or at the very least, pole staked the kill site so they would be able to tell if the remaining meat had been moved by a scavenger, he said.

Because these measures are just suggestions, not laws, Cozens said, he could not consider their absence in his final ruling.

“The difference between conviction and acquittal in this case is a very fine line,” Cozens said.

The case falls “between two extremes,” he said. At the one end, would be a guide who never bothered returning for the less valuable rib and neck meat.

At the other end would be a guide who saw a clear and present danger to his safety or the safety of his client.

He didn’t think Ackerman and Baillargeon were in the latter category because the issue of safety wasn’t raised until the matter came to court.

Had Ackerman told the conservation officers he was worried about confronting a bear, the case would have been clearer.

Instead, the judge said, the guides told the officers they simply figured the meat had been scavenged and was therefore unretreivable. This attitude was part of what prompted the charges.

But the evidence of the bear on the meat, coupled with the long history of keeping meat at the out-of-sight airstrip was too strong. Cozens acquitted the two men of the charges against them.

He did add to his decision two recommendations on how guides should act in the future. Meat that is taken on the field should be stored in view of the camp, he said.

Any meat left behind to be picked up later should be flagged (so that it is clear if an animal has moved it), and hunters should take the most basic steps to protect it from scavengers.

A new hunting regulation expected to come into play this year will make this second suggestion obsolete.

The Yukon government has accepted a proposed law that will require guides and hunters to remove all meat from the kill site before taking out their trophies, such as heads and antlers.

It’s expected conservation officers will take about three years to educate hunters and guides of the rule before they begin to enforce it.