A8
Region
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, November 15, 2017
‘I screamed, pulled my rifl e up and I shot’
By Eric Mortenson
EO Media Group
The Oregon elk hunter who
shot a protected gray wolf be-
lieves he would have been
mauled or killed if he hadn’t
fi red when it ran at him.
Brian Scott is being
roasted on social media and
criticized by biologists and
activists who question his
story.
An alliance of 18 conser-
vation groups sent a letter to
Gov. Kate Brown requesting
that Oregon State Police re-
open the case, with indepen-
dent oversight from the Offi ce
of the Attorney General and
full cooperation from the Or-
egon Department of Fish &
Wildlife.
They’ve keyed in on the
bullet’s trajectory, which
passed through the wolf’s
shoulders, perhaps indicating
it was standing broadside to
Scott instead of running di-
rectly at him.
Scott said he can’t explain
it and doesn’t know if the wolf
perhaps veered sideways as
he fi red. Scott said he has re-
played the moment in his mind
countless times and always
concludes he did what he had
to do.
“I’ve got to live with what
I did for the rest of my life,”
Scott said in an hour-long
phone interview with the Cap-
ital Press. “I killed a wolf. It
makes me almost nauseous to
think about that moment.
“I take no pride in this at
all,” he said. “The only thing
I’m happy about is I made it
Known wolf activity, OR30
395
UMATILLA
NATIONAL
FOREST
84
Pilot Rock
74
Area in
detail
204
ORE. Elgin
82
UMATILLA
Female wolf
shot within
this area
Ukiah
Gr
ande
Ro
244
UMATILLA
NATIONAL
FOREST
n de
La Grande
r
Riv e
Cove
203
UNION
Union
WALLOWA
ALLOWA
A
WHITMAN
NATIONAL
TIONAL
FOREST
237
North
Powder
N. Fk. Jo h n D ay R i ve
r
395
GRANT
NORTH FORK
JOHN DAY
WILDERNESS
Source: Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife
home to my wife and children.”
Scott, 38, lives in Clack-
amas, a suburb of Portland.
He and his wife have two el-
ementary school-age children,
and he owns a small business.
He said he has hunted since
he was a boy in Texas and
described himself as a “meat
hunter,” someone who eats
what they kill. On Oct. 27 he
was on his third day of hunting
elk in ODFW’s Starkey Wild-
life Management Unit west of
La Grande, in Northeast Ore-
gon.
Scott said he was in
fog-shrouded timber and inter-
mittently saw animals moving
around him, but wasn’t sure if
he was seeing a cougar, coyotes
or something else. He made his
way out of the fog to a ridge
top and sat for perhaps 25 min-
utes, then walked out into a
meadow. Two wolves emerged
from the fog to his left, looked
84
10 miles
30
Alan Kenaga/Capital Press
at him, then headed in what he
described as a fl anking move
behind him. A third wolf came
running directly at him.
“I screamed, got it in my
(scope) crosshairs, saw fur and
pulled the trigger,” Scott said.
He said he whirled around,
fearing the other two would
attack, but saw them running
away. He heard a fourth wolf
howl nearby, and believes a
pack was around him. ODFW
has not offi cially designated a
pack in that area; instead refer-
ring to it as territory of a col-
lared wolf known as OR-30 and
his mate. The wolf Scott shot,
an 83-pound female, might be
their offspring.
Badly shaken, Scott returned
to his hunting camp about a
mile away and told companions
what had happened. They went
to the site, confi rmed it was a
wolf and Scott called OSP and
ODFW.
A casing from Scott’s 30.06
rifl e was found 27 yards from
the carcass. The Union County
district attorney’s offi ce in La
Grande reviewed the case and
decided not to press charges.
An OSP spokesman said ev-
idence at the scene backed
Scott’s story and said the fact
that he self-reported killing the
wolf was “compelling.”
Scott, who was hunting
alone at the time, said he could
have hidden the wolf’s carcass
and told his companions back
at camp that the gunshot they
heard was him fi ring at an elk
and missing.
“I feel like I did the right
thing,” he said. “I reported it
immediately and was ready to
face public scrutiny.”
That has surely been the
case. On social media and in
comments to online news arti-
cles, posters have called Scott a
liar, coward and an irresponsible
hunter.
Carter Niemeyer, a retired
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
biologist who is considered one
of the nation’s top wolf experts,
said he didn’t believe Scott’s
story because of the bullet’s
path. “That’s a broadside shot,”
he told the Capital Press.
He and others said wolves
are afraid of humans. People
in such situations should make
their presence known, shout,
throw things or, if armed, fi re a
shot into the ground. Niemeyer
said people venturing into the
forest should carry bear repel-
lent spray, which would work
on wolves, cougars or coyotes.
Activists point out that
wolves have not harmed anyone
since they re-entered Oregon and
the state established a manage-
ment plan. At the end of 2016,
ODFW confi rmed 112 wolves
in Oregon; the actual number is
presumed to be higher.
Rob Klavins, Northeast Ore-
gon representative for the conser-
vation group Oregon Wild, said
he’s encountered wolves several
times in Wallowa County with-
out harm to his hiking party or his
dogs, which he keeps on leash in
wolf territory.
“This person may have felt
fear, but since wolves returned
to Oregon no one has so much as
been licked by a wolf, and that’s
still true today,” he said.
Derek Broman, an ODFW
carnivore biologist, said wolves
often travel in pairs or packs, and
seeing several together does not
necessarily mean they were in a
hunting formation.
He said wolves are “cours-
ing” hunters, meaning they take
down prey by chasing, repeated-
ly biting and wearing down elk,
deer or cattle. They will approach
stealthily and charge, seeking to
attack in habitat that allows them
to move easily, Broman said.
Broman said animals in the
wild usually avoid people, and
wolf attacks on humans are ex-
tremely rare. People faced with
a wolf should not run, he said,
because that would trigger an
innate, evolutionary chase re-
sponse.
Animals have evolved to rec-
ognize certain prey, and humans
are “something completely dif-
ferent” to predators, he said.
“On a minute-by-minute
basis, wildlife is trying to sur-
vive,” Broman said. “If they
don’t have a 90 percent chance
of success, they’re not going
to give it a go. Cougars are so
powerful they could do any-
thing, but they don’t.
“For a wolf to come near is
not totally unheard of, and it’s
not necessarily concerning,” he
said. “We don’t know what the
animal was keying in on, or if
it was keying in on anything at
all.”
Scott said critics should put
themselves in his shoes.
“I felt I had run out of time,”
he said. “I’m a dog owner, I
grew up on a ranch, I know how
fast dogs are. Twenty-seven
yards gave me seconds to react.”
Scott said he doesn’t de-
monize wolves; he considers
them majestic animals. He said
hunters and others going into
the wild should be aware they
are more likely now to encoun-
ter wolves. He thinks ODFW
should do more to educate the
public, an effort that could in-
clude posting warning signs at
the approaches to known pack
territory.
In the meantime, he’s endur-
ing ridicule and doubt about his
account.
“This isn’t me sitting there
watching a wolf, taking a pot
shot, then panicking, calling
up Oregon State Police and
making up an absurd story,”
he said.
“I was being charged by a
wolf,” he said. “The wolf is
now dead, and I got to come
home. Whether people want to
buy that or not, I don’t care.”
EO Media Group reporter
George Plaven contributed to
this report.
Tiny Burnt River School shines
at national FFA convention
By Aliya Hall
EO Media Group
Shelby Swindlehurst was
one of the fi rst to join Burnt
River School’s FFA chapter
when she was a sophomore at
the high school. Now a soph-
omore at Eastern Oregon Uni-
versity studying agricultural
sciences, she was awarded
one of the organization’s top
honors, the American Degree,
at this year’s FFA national
convention.
The degree is awarded
to FFA members who have
“demonstrated the highest
level of commitment to FFA
and made signifi cant accom-
plishments in their supervised
agricultural experiences,” ac-
cording to the FFA website.
Less than 1 percent of
members are
awarded the
degree each
year.
“At fi rst
I didn’t real-
ize how big
it really was
Shelby
Swindlehurst because I’ve
never
been
around anyone who had it,”
she said. “Same with my ad-
visor, but she knew it was a
big deal. This year when I
went to nationals, it was an
eye-opener about how big an
accomplishment it was.”
Swindlehurst is the fi rst in
the Burnt River School Dis-
trict in Unity to receive this
award.
Among the requirements
for the American Degree are:
receiving the State FFA De-
gree, being an active member
for the past three years, hav-
ing completed three years of
systematic secondary school
instruction in an agricultural
education program, having
graduated from high school,
maintaining records to sub-
stantiate an outstanding su-
pervised agricultural experi-
ence, earning at least $10,000
and productively investing
$7,500 and having participat-
ed in at least 50 hours of com-
munity service.
Along with Swindlehurst,
seven other students from
Burnt River participated at the
convention. Shayla Winton,
Noah Ray, Stran Siddoway,
Shea Swindlehurst and Tyler
Belveal went for the experi-
ence, and Gustavo Ferrareto
and Tim Barabas competed.
EO Media Group file photo
U.S. Rep. Greg Walden talks about the work he has done in Congress at a town hall
meeting earlier this year in Boardman.
Bills take different tacks
to covering wildfi re costs
Lawmakers
resolve to end
‘fire borrowing’
By George Plaven
EO Media Group
If there is one thing Oregon
Rep. Greg Walden and Sen.
Ron Wyden can agree on, it
is changing how the U.S. pays
for battling increasingly large
and expensive wildfi res burn-
ing vast swaths of the Ameri-
can West.
The current practice,
known as “fi re borrowing,”
essentially forces the federal
government to shift money
away from fi re prevention
programs to foot the bill for
fi refi ghting, which topped a
record $2.5 billion in 2017.
Walden, Oregon’s lone
Republican congressman in
Washington, D.C., has called
fi re borrowing an “endless
cycle,” while Wyden, a Dem-
ocrat, recently described it as
a “broken system.” Both men
are calling for a permanent fi x
to the problem, albeit through
clashing proposals, where the
similarities end.
Wyden, along with fellow
Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley,
have joined a bipartisan group
of senators pushing for the
Wildfi re Disaster Funding Act
of 2017, which would make
federal disaster funding avail-
able when fi refi ghting costs ex-
ceed the 10-year average.
In a letter sent Tuesday to
White House budget director
Mick Mulvaney, the senators
urged passing the bill as part
of a comprehensive disaster aid
package. The Trump adminis-
tration has committed to releas-
ing that package sometime in
the coming weeks.
“Year after year, the bro-
ken wildfi re budgeting sys-
tem shortchanges prevention
funding, literally adding fuel
to fi res,” Wyden said in a state-
ment. “Putting an end to fi re
borrowing would at long last
allow America to get ahead of
the West’s natural disasters —
wildfi res.”
In October, the Senate did
pass a $36.5 billion emergen-
cy supplemental that included
$576.5 million to fi ght wild-
fi res, in addition to $18.7 bil-
lion for the Federal Emergency
Management Agency Disaster
Relief Fund, $16 billion for Na-
tional Flood Insurance Program
debt forgiveness and $1.27 bil-
lion for nutrition assistance for
Puerto Rico.
That package, however, did
not include a long-term fi x for
fi re borrowing.
Walden, on the other hand,
has publicly supported the Re-
silient Federal Forests Act of
2017, which recently passed
the House. Dubbed the Wester-
man Bill for its chief sponsor,
Republican Rep. Bruce Wes-
terman of Arkansas, the contro-
versial bill also includes a pro-
vision for ending fi re borrowing
with FEMA dollars, but it goes
on to address forest manage-
ment by expediting certain log-
ging projects and fast-tracking
environmental review.
Speaking to reporters last
week, Walden said the bill — a
version of which has passed the
House for fi ve straight years —
will likely require some com-
promise in the Senate, though
it has a good opportunity of
reaching the President’s desk
under a more receptive admin-
istration.
Wyden, however, remains
opposed to the bill which he
said is “freighted with anti-en-
vironmental riders that create
more problems than they solve,
and that would likely harm for-
est health.” He said the Wildfi re
Disaster Funding Act is the best
way to fi x fi re borrowing and
secure dependable funding for
future restoration.
The Westerman Bill at-
tempts to accelerate the pace
and scale of that work by pro-
viding categorical exclusions
for tree thinning projects up to
10,000 acres in size, or 30,000
acres if they are developed by a
collaborative group. A categori-
cal exclusion would help speed
up environmental review under
the National Environmental
Policy Act.
The bill also directs the Sec-
retary of Agriculture to create
a pilot program for resolving
lawsuits fi led against forest
management projects in arbi-
tration, as opposed to going
to court, and limits plaintiffs’
ability to recover their attorney
fees under the Equal Access to
Justice Act.
Opponents argue the bill
caters to logging interests at
the expense of forests, gutting
both NEPA and the Endangered
Species Act. The bill did pass
the House in a bipartisan 232-
188 vote, and has since been re-
ferred to the Senate Committee
on Agriculture, Nutrition, and
Forestry.