Oregon L.O.W.F.I

Bears Close Down Central Oregon Campground
Obviously the bears themselves didn’t close down a campground, but because of unwanted bear activity, authorities decided to close down Lake Billy Chinook in Central Oregon. Garbage cans are being repaired, and fortified, camp is being generally cleaned up so campers can return and the bears will, presumably, go somewhere else for fun. I can’t help but notice the irony of going camping out in nature yet not being able to because of the very nature one is out to enjoy. Something like that. Maybe it’s the name that the bears find attrative; they do love their salmon.

More bear news: 61 year old Karen Noyes,who lives (or did) in the beautiful coastal town of Yachats (a favorite place of mine on the Oregon coast) was sentenced recently for feeding bears on her property. Neighbors complained to authorities; seems there was a massive bear problem, as there is in many places throughout the United States in human habitated areas. Eventually Noyes was arrested, and she was found guiltly of “chasing and harassing wildlife.”

Her sentence: she cannot live in her home for three years, and must stay away from the road where she lived within a 7 mile stretch. Noyes seemed to really piss off the judge, for he spoke for “thirty minutes” during the sentencing, “calling her behavior stunning and offensive.”

I agree it was not at all bright in any way, but exiling a 61 year old woman from her home, and for three years???!! I wonder at the constitutionality of the sentence. However, this state, no doubt like many others, is very pro-human/anti animal. Hunters have rights, you betcha. You better not even think of messing around with hunters when they’re out trying to bag themselves a critter, as the next item reveals.

Lori Lynn Slate, of Talent, Oregon, was cited for “obstructing the taking of wildlife” a class A misdemeanor apparently. Would be turkey hunter Darin Welburn, who was with his daughter, teaching her all about turkey hunting, complained, insisting Slate intentionally messed with his ability to shoot turkeys. Slate insisted she didn’t. It went down like this:

Welburn says Slate demonstratively waved the bag as she walked in front of the blind, declaring that no turkeys would be shot while she was there.

“She clearly was waving it in her arms and — how did my daughter put it? — with a grin on her face,” says Welburn, a firefighter. “My daughter asked if she could do that. I said, no, she can’t.

“I just want (Slate) educated about what the rules are,” he says.

Slate, a 53-year-old office manager for a local veterinarian, says she is a former hunter and insists she is not against hunting, and that she was flustered and frighted after stumbling upon Welburn.

Slate says she flapped her bag only slightly, but she insists she did not intentionally ruin the Welburns’ hunt.

“As I was walking away I was bag-flapping,” Slate says. “Bad bag-flapping. Just the conversation we had would have scared any turkeys away. There weren’t any turkeys to scare in the first place.

“Can I say he ruined my asparagus-picking and that I want him arrested?” she said.

After interviewing Slate and Welburn, OSP Senior Trooper Jeff Thompson on Saturday cited Slate to appear June 2 in Jackson County Circuit Court.

Thompson no doubt is a hunter himself, for he cited Slate, obviously to make a point:

People don’t realize there’s a law prohibiting someone from screwing up your hunt,” Thompson says. “I think we’d get a lot more (cases) if people were aware there’s a law against that.”

Slate says she’ll fight the citation, and that it was dangerous to be hunting so close to her home.