An Idaho bear hunter believed he had killed a black bear when it was actually a protected grizzly bear, but it was not the hunter’s fault, but the Idaho Office of Fish and Game.
The unidentified hunter sent Fish and Game recorded videos of the bear at the legal baiting location two days before the shooting. Because he was hunting in an area where grizzly bears were not known to be present, the hunter was concerned that the bear was a grizzly and not a black bear.
“Unfortunately, Fish and Game personnel misidentified the young bear as a black bear because it lacked some common characteristics of a grizzly bear and shared that misidentification with the hunter,” Idaho Fish and Game said in a news release.
“After shooting the bear and later identifying it at the scene as a grizzly bear, the hunter immediately contacted Fish and Game and fully cooperated with the investigation.
“Fish and Game regrets the error made by its staff, the undue stress the situation caused the hunter, and the loss of the grizzly bear. Fish and Game is reviewing its staff’s involvement in the incident as a personnel matter.”
The incident occurred in Unit 6 of the Idaho Panhandle, an area not commonly used by grizzly bears.
On June 14, Fish and Game officials sent out a press release about the June 10 killing, stating that “grizzly bears are protected under state and federal law, and bear hunters are responsible for proper identification of their target.”
In this case, the hunter did the right thing by attempting to correctly identify the bear. Unfortunately, it was the Department of Fish and Game that got it wrong, apparently identifying the two sub-adult males seen in the hunter’s videos as black bears. The videos were released in the latest press release.
As expected, no citation was issued to the hunter.
Generic photograph of a grizzly bear courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
The story originally appeared on For The Win
