New York Hunters Bag A Hereford Apiece Cows Were Fair Game After Fleeing Canadian Customs In August

A pack of wily cows - escapees from a Canadian cattle truck - have Boundary County hunters envisioning freezers full of free beef.

A dozen cows lumbered away from a Canadian customs checkpoint in mid-August. A few were herded back, but seven of the bovines made a break for the Idaho mountains.

The Alberta cattle owner made futile attempts to round up the rogue cows, but gave up last month.

Worried the cows might meander onto a road and cause an accident, the owner declared open season on the wandering herd of hamburger.

Since then, salivating hunters have been gunning for the slow-moving beasts.

The North Idaho contingent has come up empty, while - horrors! - two New Yorkers bagged a cow apiece.

“I thought the locals were joking when they said we might run into some cows and we could shoot them,” said Greg Niewieroski of Watertown, N.Y.

He and a friend flew to Boundary County several weeks ago to hunt deer. Instead, they stumbled onto six renegade Herefords on Harvey Mountain, about 35 miles north of Bonners Ferry.

“I couldn’t believe what we were seeing,” Niewieroski said. “We looked at each other and said, ‘Holy cow!’ Really. They were huge.”

With shots to the head, the Easterners each dropped a 1,500-pound cow and butchered them with 3-inch jackknives.

“When we were done the knives were so dull you couldn’t cut peanut butter with them,” Niewieroski said from his New York home. “I don’t think we will match that trip.”

Niewieroski, now known as the “Great White Cow Hunter,” is still getting razzed about his adventure.

“Our friends wanted to know if we were going to mount the cow heads on our wall. They thought we walked up to a farmer’s field and banged a cow in the head,” he said.

The only mementos Niewieroski and hunting partner Ed Beikirch brought back to New York were the cows’ ear tags, three rolls of photos and a video showing off their catch of rump roasts and flank steaks.

They donated nearly all of the bounty, which took them 12 hours to pack out, to First Baptist Church in Bonners Ferry, where Niewieroski’s brother is a member. The church, in turn, delivered the meat to needy families.

Twenty miles to the north, word of the cow hunt spread like wildfire in Good Grief, Idaho, which consists of little more than a tavern.

“The next day everybody was up on the hill,” Niewieroski said. “There were trucks parked all over the place. One guy was a little angry. He had been hunting them for two months and here we show up and just walk into them.”

Richard Racey, who helps run Good Grief Tavern, said 20 hunters poured in to ask where to find the cows.

“It’s not every day someone tells you you can have a 1,000-pound cow if you go up and get it,” Racey said.

“Everybody’s laughing about it. But if the cows are up there for free, you may as well get one. I doubt they are going to survive the winter anyway.”

Eastport, Idaho, resident Larry Baze got Hereford fever two weeks ago. He and a friend headed up Harvey Mountain. They stumbled on three cows standing in the road.

“It was tempting, but we didn’t want to shoot them then,” Baze said.

“It was getting dark, snowing like hell and we didn’t have time to pack out the ton of meat that would have been lying on the ground.”

The next day Baze and a seven-man hunting party went back on snowmobiles and in four-wheel drives. But the cows were gone. Their tracks led to lower ground and back across the Canadian border.

“We have friends on both sides of the border keeping an eye out for them,” Baze said. “If they cross back over it will be a fatal mistake.”

Hunters still show up at the tavern asking for directions.

“We know where they are, but we lie like hell,” Baze said.

, DataTimes