Wildlife Official Admits to Illegal Kill

Sure seems like I'm picking on wildlife officials these days, but it's just the luck of the draw right now.

A wildlife official in Alaska illegally killed a cow moose according to an article in the Alaska Daily News. Michael Fleagle, 48, who had served 10 years on the Alaska Board of Game, turned himself in and pleaded no contest to hunting a moose out of season and was fined $500.

But there's more to this story and Fleagle is a guy who deserves a break.

Fleagle was completely legal except for one thing. The zone where Fleagle was hunting was closed under an emergency order after officials expected the harvest to be met early.

The season was to have started Aug. 25 and run through Feb. 28. Fleagle went hunting Jan. 5. The emergency closure order came Dec. 14 and Fleagle failed to check before hunting.

He killed a moose, returned home and logged on to the Internet to register kill and that's when he saw the zone had been close. He turned himself in to Alaska troopers the next morning.

"It sounds like a legitimate mistake." Trooper Spokesman Tim DeSpain told the Daily News.

Mistake or not, wildlife regulations require hunters to know the rules. If a rule is violated, ignorance is no defense.

Fleagle did the right thing in the way it was handled.

"It was my obligation to check, and I was relying on information that was outdated," Fleagle said in the Daily News article. "There's no defense for that; it was an honest mistake."