A BATTLE IN THE WILD : Bighorn Hunting Is Still Gunpoint of Contention to Some

Hunter Larry Ott visited Bob Levett’s camp during last year’s bighorn sheep hunt, the first allowed in California in 114 years.

Later, writing in a guidebook for desert bighorn hunters, Levett described it as one of the highlights of the hunting experience:

“Larry had taken his ram on Sunday. He brought the heart and liver from his ram to share with us for breakfast. After a great meal and a lot of celebrating we headed out.”

Shocking? To Verena Gill and Todd Shulke, yes, but not to Dianne Seymour, who was among eight applicants who drew permits this year to hunt the desert bighorn, also known as Nelson bighorn, or Ovis canadensis nelsoni , the most numerous of three species in California .

Seymour, 33, is one-fourth Yurok Indian, a tribe with origins along the Klamath River in Northern California. According to tribal traditions, she said, women are not supposed to hunt, so when she got her first deer 2 months ago, she proved her worth by observing another tradition.

“I ate the heart,” she said. “It gives honor to a great animal’s spirit. A part of it is you.”

In a pouch, she carries tobacco to sprinkle around a downed animal, also a tribal ritual.

Gill and Shulke would not understand. They will be among more than 50 self-described “ecological and animal-rights activists” hoping to disrupt the second bighorn hunt that will start Saturday in the eastern Mojave Desert and run through Dec. 18. A few showed up and were arrested last year when, as hunters prepared to shoot, they blew horns and yelled to scare the sheep away.

One activist, Lee Desseaux of Santa Cruz, had his nose broken--how is still in dispute--and with three others was put under citizen’s arrest and locked in a stock trailer for several hours.

Gill hopes that won’t happen again. This time, she said, the protesters will be out in force and better organized, with a game plan.

“It will be a nonviolent action intervening between the hunter and the animal to stop ‘em from killing the sheep,” Gill said.

But with the clash of philosophies, it remains a highly charged, emotional issue.

The English-born Gill, who lives in Santa Cruz, described herself as a spokesperson for the loose-knit group, Hunt Saboteurs, which had its beginning in disrupting fox hunts in England. Other organizations--the Fund for Animals, Earth First! and Sea Shepherd--also are involved. They plan to bring legal observers and video cameras in case of confrontational incidents.

Nobody is really in charge, Gill said.

“We don’t believe in leaders, (but) there are a few people that are quite experienced in hunt sabotage in England and the United States,” she added. “They’ve given guidance. We can’t really reveal our tactics to a greater extent because the (Department of) Fish and Game are watching us.”

Jerry Upholt of the California Wildlife Society, which supports the hunt, said: “They’ll probably be revealing (their tactics) from a jail cell.”

Shulke, an Earth First! member from San Diego, said: “It’s really not that organized. Groups have just gravitated toward the issue. Nobody wants to spend any time in jail. Nobody wants to spend money on fines. Nobody wants to get shot--or beat up, like last year.”

DFG wardens, Bureau of Land Management rangers, Highway Patrol officers and San Bernardino County Sheriff’s deputies also will be out in some force but will try to avoid a high profile that in itself could disrupt the hunt.

The hunt is limited to two historic areas, where ancient Indian carvings of bighorns can be found on rocks here and there.

Five hunters--Seymour, Luis Barraza, Beverly Conner, Rene Estrella, and Kenneth Womack--have been assigned to the Old Dad Mountain-Kelso Peak area southeast of Baker.

The three others--Ursula Schalich, Jeffrie O’Neal and Scott Young--drew the Marble Mountains, farther south near Interstate 40, where the four rams that scored highest on the trophy scale for horn size and length were taken last year.

The DFG requested that the hunters’ hometowns not be published to avoid possible harassment. All drew their tags against odds of 423-1 for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

What sort of people are they?

Conner is a registered nurse, Womack a police detective sergeant in homicide, Estrella a garage owner. Young, who will hunt with a bow, has shot a variety of big game on two African safaris.

Jim Ryan, a coal mining company operator from Madison, W. Va., got a head start on the others with an auction bid of $59,000 for the privilege of hunting alone. He took an 11-year-old ram with a bow and arrow last week. That completed his “grand slam” of the four North American bighorn species: Nelson, dall, stone and Rocky Mountain.

Last year’s auction tag went for $70,000. The money, along with the $200 standard tags bought by each hunter, goes directly to bighorn game management, which was the point of experimental legislation passed by the state 2 years ago.

The estimated 500 bighorns inhabiting the two areas were designated as big-game animals for 5 years, under the authority of the DFG, with its manpower and financial resources.

That followed years of campaigning by the Society for the Conservation of Bighorn Sheep and other organizations.

“It allowed the DFG to manage the species,” said Loren Lutz, a retired Pasadena dentist who heads the society.

It also allows 15% of the mature rams in a given population to be “harvested,” in the lexicon of pro-hunting conservationists, although only rams that qualify by the curl length of their horns may be taken.

Pioneers of the bighorn sheep program include Lutz, Marvin Wood of Lemoore, who helped start the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep 11 years ago, and DFG wildlife biologists Dick Weaver and Vern Bleich, who have worked on sheep censuses and building “guzzler” watering holes since the early 1960s.

At that time, estimates were that only about 2,000 mountain sheep existed in California, compared to 4,700 today. By controlling disease, improving habitat and transplanting animals from the hunt sites and other overpopulated areas to rebuild sparse regions, the bighorn people hope to restore the population to 10,000 by the year 2000--hence, their slogan “10,000 by 2000.”

Upholt said: “They see this hunt as a way to fund a large part of the sheep research and reintroduction efforts, so when people mess up the hunt, they’re really hurting the sheep.”

Gill countered: “We respect what they’ve been doing for the sheep, but why do they have to kill them? If they do see a problem with overpopulation, which there isn’t, then I would suggest a re-introduction of certain predators which have been wiped from the area, which is the mountain lion.”

Seymour sees it another way: “We are their predators, too, (along with) coyotes and mountain lions, bears.

“I understand what (the hunt protesters) are meaning, (but) we’re not just looking at a kill. We’re looking at what God gave to everybody, including the creature. You have to look at the beauty, not the horror. (Also), if you have too many, they start starving, and if they start interbreeding, the offspring become weak and cannot survive.”

Lutz: “We’re shooting old rams because they’re useless.”

Gill: “They say (only) the sick and the weak and the useless rams (are killed), but what they’re aiming for is to kill the rams with the biggest curls. They’re going for the world record. Those are not the weak rams. They are the old, the strong, the wise, the leaders--the alpha males (that) teach the other sheep how to survive.”

Lutz’s son Kennis said: “There might be a little validation to what she says. But when an old ram goes off to die by himself, he’s not teaching anybody anything. It’s a lot more humane to kill an animal with a rifle than to just let him go out there and starve to death.”

Upholt also concedes: “The (hunters) are looking for a mature trophy ram, (but) by the time these animals are taken, their genes have already been distributed throughout the herd many times.”

Shulke: “That’s absolutely as far from the truth as you can get. If you take nine out of the overall number, that’s not a measurable impact, but when you take five or six of the prime animals out of a specific herd, you are talking about a significant biological impact.”

The arguments go on and on. Kennis Lutz said that last year “when we got back, we let ‘em out (of the trailer) and sat around the fire and tried to discuss it. We couldn’t agree on anything.”

Gill: “They feel we’re hunter haters and we’re really not. We don’t hate hunters. They’ve got their minds set. They’re not going to listen.”

Levett and the seven other hunters, plus auction hunter Bob Howard of Palm Springs, all got their rams last year. John Moore of Vista, hunting in twilight in rough country, fell and broke an ankle after shooting his ram.

Debi Jardstrom, the only woman who drew a permit last year, claims she fooled the activists by posing for pictures with a borrowed set of horns, leading them to assume they were hers and leaving her in peace.

“It sure got them off my back for 5 days,” she said.

Gill said: “Sure, the animals were killed, but we don’t see it as a failure because it raised public awareness and hopefully--it’s a 5-year program--we’ll be able to thwart it next year.”

But this year may be the activists’ last shot. Next year, another bill sponsored by the Wildlife Federation will, according to Upholt, “make it illegal to interfere with anyone engaged in lawful activity licensed under the Fish and Game code . . . and if they conspire to do it, it becomes a felony.”

Gill said: “Basically, it’s going to make it illegal to be a Hunt Saboteur. First offense, a misdemeanor. Second offense, a fine of $1,000 and up to a year in jail.

“In Connecticut their hunter harassment bill was recently overturned as unconstitutional. We hope with some legal backing by some bigger groups that have agreed to help us, we can turn this law over.”

DFG officials have studied the credentials of this year’s hunters and have taken steps to assure clean, humane kills.

Weaver said: “Last year, with 5,000 applicants, I thought we might get a lot of novices, but they were all dedicated sheep hunters.”

Weaver’s dedication is unquestioned. He walks with two canes since a desert helicopter crash 2 years ago that killed two others on a bighorn habitat expedition but remains active in the program.

Each hunter had to attend a 2-day orientation meeting near the hunt sites, where they were drilled on identifying legal sheep, treating the kill with dignity and, this time, cautioned not to confront the activists--not even to point their guns at them just to look through the scopes.

“Don’t give them the opportunity to be written up in the L.A. Times,” said Patrol Lt. Mike McBride of the DFG. “We take ‘em to jail, they win.”

Or, as DFG wildlife biologist Bob Vernoy said, “Don’t let ‘em get your goat.”

WHAT IS A LEGAL SHEEP?

A legal sheep is a mature ram. A mature ram is defined as a male Nelson bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis nelsoni) having at least one horn, the tip of which extends beyond a point in a straight line beginning at the front (anterior) edged of the horn base, and extending downward through the rear (posterior) edge of the visible portion of the eye and continuing downward through the horn.