Rancher shoots 39 marauding antelope

A northern New Mexico wheat farmer shot and killed at least 39 pronghorn antelope that wouldn't stay out of his fields, the state Game and Fish Department says. But Neal Trujillo and his son, Neal Trujillo Jr., won't be charged, according to the Albuquerque Journal, because of a state law passed in 1997 that allows such killings.

"It's a hard one to swallow," Lief Ahlm, the department's northeast-area office chief, told the Journal on Monday.

The law was written to protect homeowners, ranchers or anyone else from prosecution for killing wild animals that destroy their yards and crops. 

State Sen. Tim Jennings, the Roswell Democrat who sponsored the measure and who is now Senate president, said from his Roswell cattle ranch today that if the state's wildlife wander into someone's yard or ranch and pig out on the plant life -- from begonias to winter wheat -- the state ought to compensate the landowner for his or her loss. And
since the Game and Fish Department manages that wildlife, it's
responsible, Jennings said.

"The state refuses to solve the problem," he said, by either reducing wildlife herds or compensating owners.

Trujillo said he tried to fence out the antelope; Game and Fish said he didn't try hard enough.

Not surprisingly, wildlife advocates were outraged by the shootings -- the elder Trujillo said he used a shotgun rather than a rifle -- and want the Legislature to overturn the law. Jennings said he's open to revisiting the law, but wants the department to help find ways to settle the thorny issue.

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