In early April of 2018, Andrew Renner, 41, and his son Owen, 18, skiied onto Esther Island in Prince William Sound in the Gulf of Alaska. Once there they found a remote bear’s den, full of a sleeping momma black bear and her two cubs, and needlessly slaughtered them all.
The teenager shot and killed the mother bear in front of her two cubs and then his father turned the rifle on the crying newborns. Disgusting. Utterly disgusting. My heart sank when I first read the news reports.
However, although the pair thought no one would see them, the bears were part of a study by the US Forest Service and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Their entire, despicable act had been caught on a research camera.
The pair pleaded guilty to multiple misdemeanor counts including killing the bears, which is illegal; Andrew was sentenced to three months in jail and Owen was sentenced to 30 days of suspended time. (Owen belongs in jail, too.)
“Assistant attorney general Aaron Peterson said: ‘My office believes and argued for active jail time in this case because of the egregious nature of it, and the necessity of letting the public know Alaska will not tolerate poaching.’
Andrew was also ordered to pay a $9,000 fine, forfeit his pickup truck, boat, trailer, weapons, skis and cell phones and had his hunting license revoked for 10 years.
His son Owen had his hunting license suspended for two years and he was ordered to take a hunters’ safety course.”1
The research video below is very hard to watch. Be warned:
What is unseen in this clip is that the two noticed the mother bear was wearing a Fish and Game collar on her neck. So they dragged her carcass into the snow outside the den, removed her collar, and Owen can be heard saying, “They’ll never be able to link it to us”.
After that, they butchered the momma bear and placed the remains in game bags, skied away, and came back two days later to retrieve the collar, shell casings, and place the cubs’ bodies in a bag.
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