Fawn of the Dead

I believe that the day Jackson County, Colorado, started its long slide down the path to citification was July 16, 2019, when the State of Colorado appointed an actual attorney to be county judge.

For the previous thirty-five years or so, the county had gotten by with lay judges primarily because there were few if any lawyers living in the county. Even now, the only practicing attorney living in the county is the current judge.

So few people live here – 1,350 – that the Census Bureau classifies our 1,600 square miles as frontier because it has fewer than two people per square mile.

We once had a kind of frontier justice. Our sheriffs could take convicted miscreants to the county line, drop them off, and order them never to return. We can’t do that anymore.

Which brings us to the Fawn of the Dead case of Western Colorado in which certainly one, and maybe two fawns died violently down by the Walden Reservoir. Chief suspect: my dog, so who better than I to tell the tale.

Former Municipal Judge John Rich once found a dog guilty of violating the Walden’s animal control law, a law with which he didn’t fully agree. He fined the guilty party $1, and then pulled a dollar bill out of his pocket and paid the fine himself. Rich also brought an actual suspect pooch into the actual courtroom to prove he wasn’t vicious. We like our dogs.

Walden Reservoir and the area around it is owned and managed by the BLM. That does not mean Black Lives Matter. It means Bureau of Land Management, one of the largest bureaucracies in America. Jackson County covers one million acres, and BLM owns 188,000 acres of that land. Which is mostly okay. I can go two miles outside of town and legally let my dog run wild and free. You have never seen such a happy dog as Beebee running at full speed across the prairie.

Beebee’s a rescue dog.  She’s smart. I don’t mean smart like some people talk about their dogs, as if with a little more work, they could qualify for acceptance to many junior colleges. She’s a dog. But I, who have had numerous dogs in my life, can measure a dog’s intelligence by the dog’s concept of MOD, or maximum obedience distance. That is the distance beyond which the dog knows you cannot catch her if she does not obey. Initially, Beebee’s MOD was about five feet. I went through two shock collars trying to train her to come when I whistled. I was only MODerately successful even then.

She’s a little wild; I’ll admit that. So there we were on June 12, 2021, walking down by the Walden Reservoir, a very popular place for Waldenites to let their dogs run. She’s running all over the place, and I’m deep in thought.

Later, there’s a message on my phone from a Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) officer essentially saying my dog is a suspect in the murder of an antelope fawn.

CPW is the state agency in Colorado born out of the union of state parks and Division of Wildlife, which quite a few residents of Jackson County used to refer to as the Evil Empire.  Jackson County is hugely popular as a hunting and fishing destination, so CPW is part of life up here. Every local has a CPW story.

Anyway, I figured out from the conversation that Officer Kyle Bond suspected my dog of having killed an antelope fawn, but he couldn’t find the body. “If I find a carcass, we’re going to have to have a conversation,” he said.

I wasn’t particularly worried. I don’t usually have an eye on Beebee all the time when she’s running around, but I think I would have noticed if she’d had blood and gore on here cute little face when she returned to the truck.

What had happened was a tourist from the Front Range had come up to Walden to find and hopefully photograph some sort of grebe, which is a bird. Birdwatchers flock to Jackson County because we have at least 168 species of birds either living here or camping here during the summer.

On June 12, the Birdwatcher was looking for his grebe when he noticed my dog running around, off leash and not under vocal control. That’s according to Bond’s 19-page report of the incident. Okay, I know you’re saying, isn’t this a misdemeanor? A minor crime? Does it really require a 19-page investigation report? Actually, it required much more than that. The judge in the case, Chelsea W. Rengel (the lawyer), felt it necessary to write a six-page opinion explaining her verdict. CPW and the prosecuting attorney’s office interviewed the Birdwatcher on three different occasions and produced two more investigation reports. I think evidence in the case – a fawn carcass – still lies frozen in the local CPW evidence locker.

Apparently, the Birdwatcher believed there was something wrong about letting a dog loose to run happily around under a bright, June sun. He apparently did not know that was perfectly legal on BLM land, so he continued watch the dog through a pair of expensive Canon 10X42 Image Stabilizing binoculars with which, he later testified in court, he could see the color of the underside of Beebee’s collar. True story.

Back to the case: my original intention was not to cause all this furor, but the fine for my dog “harassing” wildlife (murder being the ultimate form of harassment) plus fees was $317. In Colorado, you can be fined more for killing the wrong game animal than you’d be fined if you drove drunk into the side of the courthouse.

So let’s digress for a moment and talk about the noble antelope. First, they are not actually the antelope that is found in Africa and called, for some reason, elands. Here in America, we call them antelopes, or pronghorns. Now, if you’ve passed from this mortal coil and have entered the Hall of Reincarnation, don’t choose to be an antelope fawn in your next life. If you do that, chances are good that you will return rather quickly to the Hall. Studies show that in the wild, an antelope fawn has a 40 to 80 percent chance of being killed before it is even weaned.

But here’s another fun fact. Antelope moms almost always have twins. One expert estimated that happens 95 percent of the time. It’s a survival thing. An antelope mom can carry up to seven fetuses, and even before birth, the kids are struggling to be the ones born, and not the ones reabsorbed into mom’s body. The ones that are born are totally helpless for days, and mom can’t help much.

Instead of enrolling the kids into early Pre-K education as our government would encourage them to do, the antelope moms push the little ones into cover – usually sage brush – and leave them alone until they can walk, five or six days after birth. The No. 1 cause of death among those crouching in the sage brush is predators, and the No. 1 predator is the coyote. And yes, coyotes hang out around the Walden Reservoir. Ask any rancher in the area.

And another problem with a lot of city dwellers – not all of them but many of them – is that they grew up watching the Disneyesque depictions of wild animals. Disney films and shorts show Bambi and his ilk gamboling through the pristine woods, rubbing noses, basking in the summer sun, and when they die, they lie down and go peacefully to sleep. Mother Nature doesn’t work that way. Mother Nature’s a bitch. Most ungulates will die violently and painfully from predation, cold weather, starvation, accident, even stress. An elk in protected captivity can live longer than twenty years, but only half that time in the wild.

I don’t know the thoughts of the Birdwatcher on this matter, but he testified in court that he was deeply disturbed and shocked to see my dog apparently kill an antelope fawn. Except he also testified in court under my cross-examination that he actually never saw my dog kill anything, not even while viewing the whole incident through the Canon 10X42 Image Stabilizing binoculars.

I kind of thought the trial would end right there. Suddenly, there was no proof my dog killed a fawn. It was an antelopen and shut case. But what do I know? I was defending myself because who in their right mind would spend $200 per hour on a lawyer to beat a $317 fine?

Problem was, I thought, that a fawn carcass was found, but not near where my dog allegedly killed another fawn. Let’s go back to this twin thing. There very well could have been two fawns born from the same mother on that fateful day. So the prosecution was trying to make the case that Fawn A (Beebee’s fawn) was picked up, mauled by a dog, carried down to the lake, and then somehow came back to life, crawled 175 yards up a two-track to die beside the county road.

And that spot was right next to the road. Other evidence strongly suggested that fawn carcass wasn’t there in the morning of the Fawn of the Dead incident. The Birdwatcher and his wife would have driven right by it without noticing it lying there in plain sight, and officer Bond would have parked almost right on top of it the first time he went out there to search for a carcass.

But as it turns out, the fawn (or fawns) didn’t matter. All that mattered was that the Birdwatcher testified that a nearby doe looked nervous and upset (I guess you can see that with a really good pair of binoculars). I’ll give you the judge’s conclusion verbatim:

“The Court is not required to determine whether or not the wildlife was ‘actually injured’ nor is it required to find whether the antelope carcass found was the one that ‘Beebee’ tossed around. However, those lack of findings do not negate the State’s proof in this matter. (The Birdwatcher) clearly observed the dog contact a very small antelope fawn whom was being watched over by a doe. The fawn was tossed around and carried a distance by the dog. That conduct clearly harassed both the fawn and doe. It occurred negligently as Mr. Dustin lost sight of his dog, ignoring and grossly deviating from the reasonable care an owner should demonstrate in a wildlife area during calving season particularly with a dog that has had negative interactions with wildlife previously. That conduct alone is sufficient to demonstrate the harassment of wildlife which is prohibited by the statute here. Mr. Dustin negligently allowed his own dog to harass wildlife.”

This is an astonishing conclusion because if Officer Bond had not been presented with a fawn carcass, I wouldn’t have been charged with anything at all. Not having found a carcass where the Birdwatchers said one should be, Officer Bond was on his way home to Steamboat Springs after having told the Birdwatcher, “CWO (Bond) drove out to the location and searched the area where the RP (the Birdwatcher) had last seen the dog with the fawn… CWO informed the RP that he was unable to find the carcass and that he really couldn’t do much more at this time.”

So I assume Officer Boyd was exercising the discretion we wish all law enforcement officers would utilize. But the court went the other way.

Apparently, all the Birdwatcher had to do is see my dog running around loose in the vicinity of a nervous antelope. The whole rest of the trial and discovery and interviews and photos and measurements and studies were all completely unnecessary because this is the law in Colorado:

“It is unlawful for any person to knowingly or negligently allow or direct a dog which he owns or which is under his control to harass wildlife, whether or not the wildlife is actually injured by such dog.”

Besides the use of a split infinitive, that is a pretty loosely-written statute. One could, I suppose, be convicted if his dog (off leash) stepped on a turtle (wildlife) and the turtle was observed to withdraw his head and feet into his shell thereby indicating he was scared, and all this was observed by a concerned turtle watcher.

And although the Birdwatcher might have been able to see everything going on that day with his expensive binoculars, he didn’t have an expensive earnocular. He was 340 yards away from the scene of the crime (by my measurement, over 200 yards by his measurement) and could not have heard any voice commands I might or might not have given to the dog. Nevertheless, I was, in the words of the judge, “grossly deviating from responsible care.”

But to the larger point, is this going to be the standard of jurisimprudence in Jackson County? In rural Colorado? Can we get a ticket now if our dog is running loose on BLM land and we happen to look away for a while? According to the judge, I was in a “wildlife area during calving season.” How would I know that? Antelope don’t have a calving area like sage grouse have mating areas. The whole floor of the North Park valley could be considered calving area.

Judge Rengel’s verdict is more applicable to the Front Range suburbs. There, a dog running around loose can cause some real problems, which is why most towns and cities have leash laws, or those pathetic dog parks where my dog wouldn’t have enough room to get up to full speed.

And on top of all that, if we think my 60-pound lab made a momma antelope nervous, how’s that new mom going to feel when the state of Colorado dumps packs of 140-pound gray wolves all over the Western Slope? Can we defend our dogs from a wolf attack? One rancher told me, “From a financial standpoint, it would be cheaper to shoot your wife than to shoot a wolf.”

We in rural America are being constrained. A ranch widow up here died a few years back and left her ranch to Arapaho National Wildlife Refuge. Many preservationists welcomed the transfer of several thousand acres of beautiful highlands from private hands into the public domain. Except now, that new addition to the wildlife refuge is closed to the public. That’s not what I call “public land.” More accurately, it’s “government land.”

The BLM and the National Forests are closing access roads onto their lands, which has the net effect of closing off those lands to the poor, the aged, and the handicapped. We can’t all afford to own a horse. The BLM in their management plans introduced the concept of a “scenic easement,” another rather subjective regulatory tool. In Colorado, you can’t set foot on state land leases without having a license or a special pass.

These laws and regulations don’t come from the areas most affected by these laws and regulations. In Colorado, they come from the Front Range, an example of extreme citification stretching from Fort Collins to Pueblo. The Front Rangers control 83 percent of the vote in the state. Consequently, it was the heavily populated areas of the state east of the Continental Divide that passed a referendum to dump wolves on the parts of the state west of the Continental Divide, but not along the Front Range, certainly one of the oddest propositions in U.S. history

I’m going to keep letting my dog run out on the prairie. It’s too much fun in the morning to see her eyes light up and her body quiver in so much anticipation that she hops up and down when I say, “Wanna go for a run?” She was born to run, a sleek and speedy lab racing across the prairie under the summer sun or in the winter snow.

I’m old enough that I won’t see the total citification of Jackson County.

Thankfully.

The Persecution of Donald Trump

No American citizen should ever have to go through what Donald J. Trump is experiencing right now, or has experienced during his tenure as President of the United States. No American citizen whether he be a past President or Joe Schmoe from Kokomo, should be subjected to repeated and endless, government-sponsored, blatantly-political attacks.

The latest in this series of outrages came with the raid on his Mar-a-Lago property, Trump’s home. The U.S. Justice Department instigated this home invasion by armed FBI agents and others to recover some documents? This is like your local police force assembling the SWAT team to recover an overdue library book.

Concurrently, a House Select Committee is trying desperately to prove President Trump incited the Jan. 6, 2021, riot in Washington, D.C., in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election results. Trump was the one man who warned both the Washington mayor and the Capitol Police that there could be a riot at the Jan. 6 rally. Both agencies declined to deploy 20,000 National Guard troops he offered to make available on that day. That little detail hasn’t come up before the committee. (Note to you non-historians. The President can’t deploy troops on American soil. The local agency has to request those troops. They declined.)

Concurrently, Letitia James, attorney general of the State of New York, has opened an investigation to determine if Trump’s businesses may have fraudulently inflated the value of his assets to obtain favorable loans. Trump has done business in New York state for decades, and this question never came up before?

Concurrently, Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, has opened an investigation into the same issue Letitia James is investigating, and again, after decades of rehabilitating and restoring commercial properties in the New York City, did no one ever suspect Trump’s operations were illicit before they all realized Donald Trump might run for President again?

Concurrently, Fani T. Willis, the Atlanta, Georgia, district attorney, has been leading an investigation into the alleged efforts of Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.

These five investigations have two things in common: They are being led by Democrats, and you are paying for them. I probably should say you are paying through the nose for them. These are public funds being used for the sole purpose of preventing Donald Trump from running for President again.

And also, these are not the first investigations aimed at cutting legs out from under Donald Trump. The first one was the idiotic Mueller probe into the alleged “collusion” between the Trump campaign in 2016 and Russia. That one cost you, the taxpayer, $40 million. What’d they come up with? Nothing. No charges. Sorry we wasted your time.

That whole fiasco requires a footnote. It was prompted by a bogus document authored by a James Bond wannabe and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign. In the midst of it, FBI agents had to lie to a FISA court to get the authority to spy on Trump’s associates. That’s our FBI using illicit means to spy on American citizens on American soil to assist a floundering political campaign.

And then we had not one, but two impeachment actions, Nos. 3 and 4 in American history, with No. 4 being brought after Donald Trump had lost the election and was leaving the Office of President anyway.

And again: impeachments and Mueller investigation initiated and approved by Democrats, and paid for by you.

We’ve had 2 million migrants coming over the southern border in this fiscal year alone, unvaccinated, untested, some carrying dangerous drugs, some on wanted terrorist lists, some members of violent gangs, some unaccompanied children, and the news of the day is who the Jan. 6 Committee will interview tomorrow.

We’ve already faced high gasoline prices, and we are about to face soaring natural gas prices, and the news of the day is which grand jury might indict Donald Trump. Didn’t know your home heating bill is going to skyrocket? Well, the main stream news organizations are way more interested in the possibility Liz Cheney might run for President in 2024.

But back to the point…

It seems like the Democrat elite in this country is immune from prosecution for just about anything. Hunter Biden can commit perjury on his application to buy a firearm – no problem. Hillary Clinton can take a hammer to her laptop to eliminate evidence under subpoena – no problem. FBI director James Comey can leak propriety information to reporters – no problem. FBI officials can lie to a FISA court and only get a reprimand.

Now if you think that these events are little squabbles among the rich and powerful, much like the power plays among nobles in medieval England, and that they won’t affect you, think again. Without a single Republican vote, the Democrats passed a bill that Joe Biden signed into law that, among other things, will enable the IRS to hire an additional 87,000 agents and auditors on top of the 66,000 it already has on staff. Keep in mind the IRS has extra-legal powers. It can seize your wages, freeze your bank accounts, take your property, all without due process. The U.S. government right now, by continuing its vendetta against Donald Trump, believes it can destroy anyone, no matter how wealthy and powerful that person might be.

Do you think you’re immune from such targeting? Besides persecuting Donald Trump, this administration has to find a way to pay for $3.6 trillion in new spending just approved in the last eighteen months. They’ve stated they need an additional $200 billion in tax collections. Those new agents won’t be going only after the rich and powerful. They will be coming for you.