scooter
05-20-2008, 09:51 AM
PUBLICATION: National Post
DATE: 2008.05.17
EDITION: National
SECTION: News
PAGE: A1
COLUMN: Kevin Libin
ILLUSTRATION: Black & White Photo: Todd Korol For National Post / Joe Lucas, a former rodeo champion and shop owner who shot a grizzly bear dead last fall when it charged his son, says anyone in his situation would do the same thing: "You've got the option of a loaded gun or a dead kid." Lucas faces $500,000 in fines for "unlawfully destroying a bear." ;
DATELINE: CARSTAIRS, Alta.
BYLINE: Kevin Libin
SOURCE: National Post
WORD COUNT: 1086
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Smokin' Joe's grizzly story; 'Badass' bear had to be shot, Albertan says
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CARSTAIRS, Alta. -You have to drive Highway 2 for a good half-hour north of the city nowadays before you're anywhere resembling the cattle country that was for generations Calgary's immediate neighbour. Ranching towns perched on the city's edge have transformed to populous bedroom communities. The urban sprawl doesn't drop to the rear-view till you're almost at Carstairs, where roadside shops switch from selling pizzas to bull semen.
Not far from the Bighorn Bowhunters and Archers Club is Joe Lucas' store, Westworld, where walls are adorned with the stuffed heads of rams, white-tailed deer and black bears; the cash counter is draped with animal pelts; and there are saddles, cowboy hats and purses made of cowhide. Here, you can buy Mr. Lucas' own brand of rodeo rope, designed by the four-time tie-down roping, three-time high-point national champ -- known as "Smokin' Joe" on the circuit before he retired.
It wasn't far from here that Mr. Lucas learned to ride and ranch and hunt, with such common-sense lessons as don't surprise a horse from behind, or, when in grizzly country, bring a gun. "My dad taught me, 35 years ago: You have a gun and a flashlight in your tent at night. Not because he'd ever been attacked by a bear. But because that's what you do when you're in the mountains. You don't want to become the victim," Mr. Lucas says.
Such wisdom is no longer as common. Last week, Mr. Lucas was charged for shooting a grizzly bear he says was acting aggressively and charging his campsite.
A double-lung shot at 16 yards, as the bear ran toward his 13-year-old son, according to Mr. Lucas. On June 5, he'll plead not guilty. "I read the charges. I can't understand how you could plead guilty to any of them," he says. "How could I even live with myself if I didn't kill that bear and he killed my son? Or anybody? If there was an animal-rights activist standing there, I'd have had to shoot the bear to save him." He faces $500,000 in fines.
There were three people with Mr. Lucas that day last October, including his boy, Kyle. They all corroborate his version of events: It was a few days into a trip to Elbow-Sheep Wildland Provincial Park, a popular Kananaskis hunting area, scouting bighorn they knew they'd probably never find. There is no hunting on Sunday, so the group was taking it easy after breakfast. A few horses and a mule, put out to graze in a clearing, found themselves being harassed by a grizzly.
The mule stood the bear off. The men "put the run" on it, Mr. Lucas recalls, hollering and waving their arms. It headed off, about 300 yards from camp, but reappeared just a few dozen yards away, running for Kyle. "The bear had had several chances to be good," Mr. Lucas says. "If he was a good bear, he wouldn't have come back. He wasn't. He was a badass." Mr. Lucas fired. The wounded bear -- actually a female-- took off. Mr. Lucas got on his horse and rode three hours back to his truck to report it to the parks department.
Rangers showed up the following afternoon and interviewed Mr. Lucas. That was the last he heard from them. After a necropsy and lab tests and seven months of analysis, provincial officials won't disclose why they've now charged Mr. Lucas with crimes related to "unlawfully destroying a bear" and failing to ensure his firearm was "unloaded and fully encased."
There has been a moratorium on grizzly hunts for years, since conservation groups persuaded the sustainable development ministry their numbers are lower than thought.
Dave Hanna, a conservation officer with Alberta's parks department, says he cannot comment on the case while it's before the courts. "No one is going to take action against you for protecting your kids," he says, speaking hypothetically. But in some cases, "maybe that person had a higher standard of knowledge ... did you have an alternative that could have gotten you out of this to start off with," he says. "I can't say there's a line on the ground that says you have to do 'this' at 'this' point in time, because these are extremely dynamic and variable situations."
Jim ****ot, executive director of Defenders of Wildlife Canada, in Canmore, is glad the province is pursuing the case. There are indications, he thinks, that Mr. Lucas's group didn't take sufficient precautions to ensure a bear didn't show up in the first place. Once it did, he suggests, Mr. Lucas might have "acted hastily," failing to take measures to avoid shooting, such as bear spray.
"A person with a gun feels he has the world by the tail," Mr. ****ot says. "We are certainly aware of hundreds of hikers in the back country in K-country and elsewhere here in the Rockies, in grizzly areas, where bears are present and bears are not shot."
There are, of course, also cases in which hikers, hunters or bikers end up mauled or dead. There have been at least a half-dozen such attacks, two fatal (for the humans --in which case officials then hunt down the bear and kill it, too), in the past 24 months in Alberta.
Contemplating a range of alternatives is easy when you're not out in the bush, facing a charging 400-pound grizzly, Mr. Lucas responds. Most anyone in his situation, he believes, would have reached for a loaded firearm, if they had one. "You've got the option of a loaded gun or a dead kid," he says.
Four weeks after his own encounter, a hunter was found mauled to death not far from where Mr. Lucas grew up. The man, Don Peters, had a gun. An investigation found the hunter fired, but missed. "I'm not going to stand by and let somebody get mauled or killed with a gun in my hand. It's just not going to happen," Mr. Lucas insists.
Conservation groups have been pushing Alberta's government to declare grizzlies a threatened species. With supposedly just a few hundred, every life, Mr. ****ot says, is "critical." The public, adds Mr. Hanna, "is very concerned about the status of grizzly bears in the province."
Joe Lucas sees it differently. Even today, faced with a belligerent grizzly, he says, he'd worry first about minimizing the possibility of people dying. It may be, he admits, becoming an endangered view.
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DATE: 2008.05.17
EDITION: National
SECTION: News
PAGE: A1
COLUMN: Kevin Libin
ILLUSTRATION: Black & White Photo: Todd Korol For National Post / Joe Lucas, a former rodeo champion and shop owner who shot a grizzly bear dead last fall when it charged his son, says anyone in his situation would do the same thing: "You've got the option of a loaded gun or a dead kid." Lucas faces $500,000 in fines for "unlawfully destroying a bear." ;
DATELINE: CARSTAIRS, Alta.
BYLINE: Kevin Libin
SOURCE: National Post
WORD COUNT: 1086
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Smokin' Joe's grizzly story; 'Badass' bear had to be shot, Albertan says
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CARSTAIRS, Alta. -You have to drive Highway 2 for a good half-hour north of the city nowadays before you're anywhere resembling the cattle country that was for generations Calgary's immediate neighbour. Ranching towns perched on the city's edge have transformed to populous bedroom communities. The urban sprawl doesn't drop to the rear-view till you're almost at Carstairs, where roadside shops switch from selling pizzas to bull semen.
Not far from the Bighorn Bowhunters and Archers Club is Joe Lucas' store, Westworld, where walls are adorned with the stuffed heads of rams, white-tailed deer and black bears; the cash counter is draped with animal pelts; and there are saddles, cowboy hats and purses made of cowhide. Here, you can buy Mr. Lucas' own brand of rodeo rope, designed by the four-time tie-down roping, three-time high-point national champ -- known as "Smokin' Joe" on the circuit before he retired.
It wasn't far from here that Mr. Lucas learned to ride and ranch and hunt, with such common-sense lessons as don't surprise a horse from behind, or, when in grizzly country, bring a gun. "My dad taught me, 35 years ago: You have a gun and a flashlight in your tent at night. Not because he'd ever been attacked by a bear. But because that's what you do when you're in the mountains. You don't want to become the victim," Mr. Lucas says.
Such wisdom is no longer as common. Last week, Mr. Lucas was charged for shooting a grizzly bear he says was acting aggressively and charging his campsite.
A double-lung shot at 16 yards, as the bear ran toward his 13-year-old son, according to Mr. Lucas. On June 5, he'll plead not guilty. "I read the charges. I can't understand how you could plead guilty to any of them," he says. "How could I even live with myself if I didn't kill that bear and he killed my son? Or anybody? If there was an animal-rights activist standing there, I'd have had to shoot the bear to save him." He faces $500,000 in fines.
There were three people with Mr. Lucas that day last October, including his boy, Kyle. They all corroborate his version of events: It was a few days into a trip to Elbow-Sheep Wildland Provincial Park, a popular Kananaskis hunting area, scouting bighorn they knew they'd probably never find. There is no hunting on Sunday, so the group was taking it easy after breakfast. A few horses and a mule, put out to graze in a clearing, found themselves being harassed by a grizzly.
The mule stood the bear off. The men "put the run" on it, Mr. Lucas recalls, hollering and waving their arms. It headed off, about 300 yards from camp, but reappeared just a few dozen yards away, running for Kyle. "The bear had had several chances to be good," Mr. Lucas says. "If he was a good bear, he wouldn't have come back. He wasn't. He was a badass." Mr. Lucas fired. The wounded bear -- actually a female-- took off. Mr. Lucas got on his horse and rode three hours back to his truck to report it to the parks department.
Rangers showed up the following afternoon and interviewed Mr. Lucas. That was the last he heard from them. After a necropsy and lab tests and seven months of analysis, provincial officials won't disclose why they've now charged Mr. Lucas with crimes related to "unlawfully destroying a bear" and failing to ensure his firearm was "unloaded and fully encased."
There has been a moratorium on grizzly hunts for years, since conservation groups persuaded the sustainable development ministry their numbers are lower than thought.
Dave Hanna, a conservation officer with Alberta's parks department, says he cannot comment on the case while it's before the courts. "No one is going to take action against you for protecting your kids," he says, speaking hypothetically. But in some cases, "maybe that person had a higher standard of knowledge ... did you have an alternative that could have gotten you out of this to start off with," he says. "I can't say there's a line on the ground that says you have to do 'this' at 'this' point in time, because these are extremely dynamic and variable situations."
Jim ****ot, executive director of Defenders of Wildlife Canada, in Canmore, is glad the province is pursuing the case. There are indications, he thinks, that Mr. Lucas's group didn't take sufficient precautions to ensure a bear didn't show up in the first place. Once it did, he suggests, Mr. Lucas might have "acted hastily," failing to take measures to avoid shooting, such as bear spray.
"A person with a gun feels he has the world by the tail," Mr. ****ot says. "We are certainly aware of hundreds of hikers in the back country in K-country and elsewhere here in the Rockies, in grizzly areas, where bears are present and bears are not shot."
There are, of course, also cases in which hikers, hunters or bikers end up mauled or dead. There have been at least a half-dozen such attacks, two fatal (for the humans --in which case officials then hunt down the bear and kill it, too), in the past 24 months in Alberta.
Contemplating a range of alternatives is easy when you're not out in the bush, facing a charging 400-pound grizzly, Mr. Lucas responds. Most anyone in his situation, he believes, would have reached for a loaded firearm, if they had one. "You've got the option of a loaded gun or a dead kid," he says.
Four weeks after his own encounter, a hunter was found mauled to death not far from where Mr. Lucas grew up. The man, Don Peters, had a gun. An investigation found the hunter fired, but missed. "I'm not going to stand by and let somebody get mauled or killed with a gun in my hand. It's just not going to happen," Mr. Lucas insists.
Conservation groups have been pushing Alberta's government to declare grizzlies a threatened species. With supposedly just a few hundred, every life, Mr. ****ot says, is "critical." The public, adds Mr. Hanna, "is very concerned about the status of grizzly bears in the province."
Joe Lucas sees it differently. Even today, faced with a belligerent grizzly, he says, he'd worry first about minimizing the possibility of people dying. It may be, he admits, becoming an endangered view.
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