I would have shot the Bison...

[Jake]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/09/12/bison....g.ap/index.html

Summary: Mr. Downare's bison repeatedly entered Mr. Hawn's land and damaged his property. Mr. Hawn sued Mr. Downare, then Mr. Hawn invited hunters to kill the bison on his land. The local goernment is siding with Mr. Downare, since they've spent time/money to investigate and prosecute a criminal case against Mr. Hawn.

Can anyone from Colorado say if this case is being motivated more by poorly-conceived laws or small town politics?

highlights (lowlights) from the CNN article:

It's hard to find anyone sympathetic to Hawn in South Park. Downare's family is well-established, and people in Fairplay, the county seat, and tiny Hartsel, the closest town to his ranch, are quick to defend him. They bemoan the waste of so much bison meat and talk about one of the feud's central issues -- fences.

...

Downare, in a victim impact statement, said Hawn's invitation to the hunters was crazy. When asked on the form if he would like any special conditions imposed on Hawn, besides paying for the lost bison, valued at $77,000, Downare wrote: "I would like him to fence his property good and leave my livestock alone."

...

[Cindi] Raymer [area resident] had a simple answer about whether the area can keep its open range designation, given its influx of retirees and second-home owners.

"Just fence the people out," she said with a laugh.

My apologies if this is in the wrong forum...

[Shinokamen]

Thank you for bringing this up. I had heard about this in passing, but I did not know that it was in Colorado.

In my experience (living in a farming/ranching community) the law is that you have to put up fences to keep animals off of your property. Legacy of open range, I guess. Cities have their own laws, but I think this happened outside of a city.

Check out this article on open range & fencing.

"Any person maintaining in good repair a lawful fence may recover damages for trespass from the owner of any livestock that break through such fence."

And according to this article, he did have a "lawful fence."

I don't know whether his won his first case or not, but I think he should have. If he did not wait for it to go through, he should have. Ignorance of a law is not an excuse not to follow it.

Edited September 13, 2008 by Shinokamen

[Steve D'Ippolito]

Owning a small ranch in Colorado, I can attest that you need to fence animals *out*. According to the article, Colorado specifies a fence type that should be sufficient but clearly it is not so for bison. So should "open range" apply only to animals that can be kept out with the standard fence--all others must be fenced IN? This is what is at issue here. An argument could be made that this is a gray area in the law. That is only reinforced by the fact that bison owners although not obligated to under the letter of the law have customarily fenced their bison in, as if recognizing that the law written under the assumption people would be running cattle makes little sense in the context of the occasional bison herder.

If I buy an elephant, do all my neighbors have to build gigantic fences or should *I* have to do it?

That having been said, I still tend to side with the owner of the bison.

Or I suppose we could tell everyone they are entitled to do what they want on their own property and that means you can shoot anything that wanders onto it, even if it's somone else's property. (I understand it is legal to shoot your neighbor's dog if it is harassing your livestock, fence or no fence, and dogs can typically go right through a cattle fence--they are small enough to fit between the barbed wires.)

These are the sorts of issues that you really do need a custom of some sort to resolve, hence, a government.

[Scott_Connery]

I find it hard to fault Mr. Fawn. The bison had repeatedly damged his property. The Bison owner knew about the damage, and chose not to correct the situation anyway. By doing so, he forced Mr. Fawn to put an end to the problem himself.