Hunting

SEATTLE -- For years, the federal agencies that helped the U.S. wolf population recover under the Endangered Species Act have also quietly killed hundreds of wolves that threaten livestock or prized game.

They've even taken to the skies -- and are considering doing so again.

Officials in Idaho said Wednesday they would consider deploying federal sharpshooters in helicopters across north-central Idaho in the coming weeks to kill up to 75 wolves threatening elk near the Montana border.

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- New Jersey has agreed to permit more bear-hunt opponents at one of its key check-in sites for a planned protest Saturday and allow a member of the group to photograph a carcass as it's weighed.

The settlement came as the parties appeared Thursday before a state Supreme Court justice as part of an appeal by the Animal Protection League of New Jersey. Judge Barry Albin encouraged the two sides to hash out a deal instead of moving forward with the process, an attorney for the animal rights group said.

BRIGHAM CITY -- A Brigham City duck hunter was shot in the buttocks after his dog stepped on a shotgun laid across the bow of a boat.

JACKSON, Miss. -- When he first saw the antlers, taxidermist Ellis Soloman called it "a pineapple rack."

And Mark Clay says trying to measure the buck his son Will Clay, 14, killed on the opening morning of the youth gun season Nov. 5 "is like trying to score a briar thicket."

The 15-point fits all those descriptions, and more. It has antlers sprouting in seemingly every direction.

Its left main beam, where most of the atypical growth is located, is difficult to discern.

It has not been scored, but, nonetheless, it is a trophy, and a story worth sharing.

Using hay bales for a make-shift blind in the middle of a five-acre pasture on family land in Madison County, father and son were hoping to see the big buck Mark Clay had spotted during scouting.

RUSSELL COUNTY, Kan. -- For years, the field of native grass was waist-high and full of pheasants.

One Saturday, it was ankle-high and Chris Kaufman and friends saw just one rooster pheasant . . . and didn't get it.

"Tradition is still a tradition," said Kaufman, of Winfield, Kan. "The first field of the season is always the same first field of the season."

Kaufman's host, Rod Meier, blamed a severe August hail storm for the flattened field and its few birds.

TWIN FALLS, Idaho -- Jordan Beard stood in his game room -- detached from the rest of his Twin Falls home -- talking about how he bagged the animals mounted on the walls and shelves.

A stately caribou from Alaska, a mountain lion from Utah, a couple of mule deer from Idaho. He took one of the deer heads off the wall, a four-point buck he harvested last year in the South Hills. He recently got back the finished mount from Intermountain Taxidermy and Worldwide Adventures in Twin Falls.

This is a man crazy about hunting. But he didn't go at all this year.

Sure, Beard was busy. But the late start to 2011's fall weather was a discouragement -- and not just for Beard.

Deer seasons were off to a slow start this year, according to Idaho Department of Fish and Game and area hunters. And weather was a big factor.