Foes Of Bear Baiting Find Home Ransacked

Proponents of the drive to end bear baiting in Idaho have returned home to Clayton to find their house ransacked.

Kathy Richmond said she and her husband, David, on Thursday returned from a Boise petition drive to find their electricity off, phone cut off and drawers left open.

She blamed it on local hunters who she said have dogged the couple since they first made news last year, prosecuting a hunter who killed a cougar on their property.

Idaho Citizens United for Bears is gathering voter signatures to put an initiative on the November ballot to end bear baiting, using hounds for bear, and the spring bear hunt.

Richmond said the two have gathered 21,000 signatures themselves. If someone was looking for signatures, they did not find them.

“They’re real valuable. We don’t let them out of our sight. That may sound stupid, but now you see why.”

Richmond said most drawers in the home were left open and their contents were spilled on the floor.

“If I had to make an educated guess, I’d say it’s probably related” to the Richmonds’ activism, Custer County Sheriff Al Finley said.

In the past he has tried to calm people who were angry at the two for gathering signatures in Challis.

“I pointed out to them that they had a right to stand out there and gather signatures as well as the Richmonds,” Finley said. “That’s the nice thing about this country: we can try to promote our opinions without coming under the gun.”

John Watts, a consultant for the pro-bear hunting group Sportsmens Heritage Defense Fund, said he does not condone the incident.

“We are not behind it,” Watts said.