So-called sportsmen
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:
Hunting writer and safety
instructor Roger Vanderlogt, 43, of
Manitowoc, Wisconsin, drew 15 years in
prison on December 9 plus 15 years on probation,
for producing sexually explicit photographs
and videos of very young girls.
William Douglas Hinson, 71, of
Myrtle, Mississippi, pleaded guilty on
November 28 to conspiring with his granddaughter,
Teresa Jean Hutcheson, 30, to
murder her husband Jimmy Dean Hutcheson
for life insurance proceeds in a staged “hunting
accidenct.” Each drew five years in
prison. Hinson has two great-grandchildren
by his granddaughter, with whom court officials
said he has had sex since she was 11.
National Rifle Association president
Thomas Washington, 58, d i e d
December 5 of a heart attack suffered while
deer hunting on November 16. He was succeeded
in office by Florida lobbyist Marion
Hammer, 56.
Taxidermist Frank Entsminger,
52, of Tok, Alaska, was indicted
December 6 by a federal grand jury o n
one felony and three misdemeanor counts of
illegally possessing or trading migratory
birds. Entsminger was the 10th guide or
taxidermist indicted since August 1995 as
result of an ongoing U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service sting; five already pleaded guilty to
misdemeanors. Entsminger is husband of
Alaska Board of Game member Sue
Entsminger, famous for posters depicting
her in a fur bikini, who was appointed by
former governor Walter Hickel in January
1993 at the height of controversy over his
plan to kill wolves in order to make more
moose and caribou available to trophy
hunters. Her term expires this January.
Convicted cockatoo smuggler
William Wegner has been sentenced to five
years in prison, three years of supervised
release, and a fine of $10,000; convicted of
related offenses, Brian Bradley drew 41
months in jail plus three years of supervised
release. In all, 15 members of their ring
were convicted. An even bigger bird-smuggling
case is ahead: Tony Silva, who posed
as an outspoken foe of the wild-caught bird
trade but according to federal prosecutors
headed a smuggling ring, is scheduled for a
mid-January trial in Chicago.
China on December 31
a n n o u n c e d that a policeman, a retired
solider, a government official, and a restauranteur,
all from Yunnan Province, will be
executed for leading a gang that poached 21
Asian elephants––10% of the Chinese
herd––in just six months during 1993-1994.
New Mexico Game & Fish plans
to hold the first bison hunts in the state
since 1884 at Fort Wingate, on the second,
third, and fourth weekends of January. The
hunts are being promoted as a cull, with a
killing quota of three a day, but NMGF
admits the 11,000-acre property could support
75 bison; only 60 live there now.
Since the bison have never been hunted,
shooting them will take about the same skill
as shooting cows.
The Lend-A-Hand Society, producing
and distributing pro-animal radio
spots since 1992, recently issued a 30-
minute anti-hunting radio drama, and offers
it to “any radio station that wishes to audition
the narrative drama..” For details, call
Lend-A-Hand director Gary Gabriel, 914-
353-1639.
Mark Spengler, an inmate of
the Oakhill Correctional Institution near
Madison, Wisconsin, alleged in midDecember
that he and other members of two
prison work crews were sent out to cut firewood
on November 24, and were then compelled
to drive deer toward a hunting party
they found waiting on adjacent land.
The federal budget crisis reportedly
kept 42,000 hunters out of the 275
National Wildlife Refuges, among 506
total, which normally permit hunting.
The Yukon Territorial Government
continues to target wolves in the
Aishihik region, to make more moose and
caribou available to human hunters. The
current round of Yukon wolf-killing began
at about the same time as former Alaska
governor Walter Hickel proposed to kill
wolves so as to increase trophy-hunting
opportunities in the region south of
Fairbanks––but international protest stopped
the Alaska wolf massacres just over a year
ago, after wolf expert Gordon Haber,
working for Friends of Animals, obtained
dramatic video of the suffering of wolves in
neck-snares as a state trapper tried clumsily
to dispatch them with a gun. Despite the
ongoing efforts of Friends of the Wolf, the
Yukon killing tends to go on with scarcely
any public notice.
Trap ban makes ballot
Needing 65,000 validated signatures to
qualify for this year’s ballot, a
Massachusetts initiative to restore the
state ban on leghold trapping, extend it to
cover padded leghold traps and snares as
well, ban hunting bears and bobcats with
dogs, ban bear hunting with bait, and
reform the state Fisheries and Wildlife
Board actually drew 131,164––and still
had 117,049 signatures after disqualifications.
The initiative if approved by voters
will overturn a 1975 state law requiring
that four of the seven members of the
Fisheries and Wildlife Board must represent
hunters, trappers, and fishers.
