2 hunters to serve time for killing young grizzly

POCATELLO – Two Idaho men were sentenced to prison and fines Wednesday in the 2002 killing of a yearling grizzly bear in eastern Idaho and destroying a radio tracking collar attached to the cub’s mother.

In January, Tim Brown, of Island Park, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for shooting the young bear, and Brad Hoopes, of St. Anthony, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for destroying the radio collar.

The collar was removed from the yearling’s mother, which had been killed the previous day by Dan Walters, of Kentucky, who pleaded guilty last year and was ordered to pay $15,000 restitution.

On Wednesday, Brown was sentenced to three months in prison for killing the cub, fined $1,000 and ordered to pay restitution of $19,300. Hoopes was sentenced to two months in prison, fined $500 and ordered to pay $500 restitution. Both men also lost their hunting privileges for two years.

U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill found that the yearling grizzly was not shot in self-defense as the two men had claimed.

Officials said the cub’s mother was the only radio-tagged grizzly living in Idaho and one of only a few resident female grizzlies in the state.

Conservationists had hoped that her cub would extend the species’ range westward.