Sheep shenanigans

There are no laws against cruelty to wild animals, at least not in Wyoming, USA where they are legally hunted and trapped. That’s how one local guy got away with intentionally hitting a wolf with a snowmobile last year.

The guy also taped the injured wolf’s mouth and brought it to a bar in Sublette County to show off before killing it. Authorities only fined him $250 for illegal possession of wildlife, but he did not face tougher charges, Yahoo News reports.

In response to the incident, state legislators drafted a law which, ironically, allows locals to intentionally run over wolves, but only if they use “all reasonable efforts” to kill it, either on impact or shortly afterwards, according to Yahoo News.

Also, the bill doesn’t seem to apply to the wolf killer mentioned earlier as it doesn’t specify how a surviving wolf is to be killed after it is intentionally struck.

Meanwhile, a Montana rancher didn’t get away with exploiting wild sheep.

Arthur “Jack” Schubarth, 81, was sentenced to six months in federal prison, fined $20,000 and ordered to pay $4,000 in community service for trafficking in illegal wildlife from 2013 to 2021, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) recently announced.

Schubarth and five accomplices clandestinely created hybrid sheep, including one strain he called Montana Mountain King (MMK) and sold their massive offspring to hunting preserves where customers paid to shoot the animals at $350 each.

The DoJ said MMK was a clone of the so-called Marco Polo sheep from Kyrgyzstan. These sheep from the Pamir region of Central Asia are one of the largest of its kind in the world, each weighing 300 pounds or more.

Court records showed Schubarth had genetic material from the Marco Polo sheep sent to a third party laboratory to generate 165 cloned embryos, which were then implanted in female sheep on Schubarth’s sprawling ranch in Vaughn. One produced the MMK which he used to breed with local commercial sheep. He also sold MMK’s semen directly to breeders in other US states, according to DoJ documents.

Further, Schubarth sold mountain sheep, mountain goats and various other hoofed animals primarily to captive hunting facilities, the court documents said.