News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Sykes Mitchell of Sisters was fined $4,200 last week in Saskatchewan, Canada, after a court found that he had failed to properly supervise a crew of teenaged boys who left more than 100 geese in a farmer's field instead of cleaning and processing them.
Mitchell told The Nugget that he accepts responsibility for the failure of his employees to properly handle the game birds, and emphasized that he does not condone any wastage of game.
The affair dates back to May 2009, when Mitchell, who operates Living Sky Outfitters in Saskatchewan, led hunting expeditions where hunters shot more than 300 snow geese and Ross' geese.
According to court documents as reported by CBC News in Canada, it was a cold night when Mitchell assigned high school students to "clean the birds and pack goose breasts into freezer bags. The birds that had been destroyed by shotgun pellets or were otherwise too damaged to be cleaned were supposed to be dumped in a farmer's field 20 kilometers northeast of Wadena."
CBC News reported that, "acting on a tip, conservation officers found that many edible birds had been dumped into the field - 135 out of 312 birds that were piled up were deemed 'perfectly good, whole wasted geese.'"
The incident garnered substantial media coverage in Canada, where American outfitters and hunters tend to be held under tight scrutiny. Mitchell told The Nugget that some media coverage has left out key facts, especially that Mitchell himself did nothing overt in the incident.
"The basis of the conviction was a failure to supervise staff," Mitchell said. "Those staff members were charged with, and pled guilty to, charges. Those employees stole, not only from me but also from the people of Saskatchewan. They committed acts that I despise and would never condone. Judge (James) Plemel found as a fact that I took no overt actions nor did I do anything wrong. Rather, he found that I should have more closely supervised my workers."
One of the teens was fined for the incident.
The crew was experienced and Mitchell had believed them to be reliable.
"My employees were over the age of 16 and had been trained and performed this job many times before this incident," he said. "They were old enough to know right from wrong but chose to take the easy way out of a job they were getting paid to do. I can only hope that this was a youthful indiscretion that won't ever be repeated again during their working lives.
"As much as I deplore what my employees did, I did hire them so therefore must take responsibility for their actions," Mitchell said. "I want to assure the people of Saskatchewan that I will ensure that this never happens again."
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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