The man said he thought he was shooting a wild boar, for which he was carrying a license.
By RICHARD RAEKE
Published February 14, 2004
NEW PORT RICHEY - Gary McQuiston told the court Friday that he cried then and he wanted to cry now when he thought of that October morning in 2002. McQuiston said he was traumatized after shooting an endangered black bear.
"It was a beautiful animal," McQuiston, a part-time taxidermist, said at his sentencing hearing. It was opening morning of the 2002 hog hunting season and he was jittery, he said.
McQuiston swore under oath that he mistook the 450-pound black bear for a really, really big wild boar when hunting before dawn on private property near State Road 52 and the Suncoast Parkway.
"All I could see was a silhouette. And I wanted that pig. It was the biggest of them all," he testified.
And it would have been, if it were a pig. But it was a 450-pound black bear, known as Nicholas by the biologists and researchers that had studied him for six years. He was the alpha male of a group of roughly 20 bears that live and roam near the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge.
In December, McQuiston pleaded guilty to killing an endangered species, unlawful possession of bear parts and criminal mischief for cutting off the bear's tracking collar.
Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Michael Andrews gave McQuiston the maximum sentence under his plea bargain. The judge sentenced McQuiston to 11 months and 29 days in the Pasco County Jail, four years of probation, and a $1,000 fine. McQuiston, 45, also had to forfeit his hunting licenses, his right to carry firearms during his probation and the muzzleloading rifle he used to shoot the bear.
McQuiston's hunting companion did not paint such a sorrowful picture of McQuiston soon after he took down the bear.
"Gary said, "Yeah. That son of a bitch. I killed him,"' James Humphrey said in his deposition.
Andrews read from the deposition Friday, saying "It seems to me a bit of bravado, that he had taken some pride in what he had done."
Nicholas was one of three bears that carried radio tracking collars. McQuiston cut off the collar and threw it into a pond. He then dragged Nicholas' body to a palmetto stand in the rear of the property out of fear that fish and wildlife officers would confiscate his guns, truck and all-terrain vehicle and those of his companions.
That's small "compared to what we have lost and what we may lose because of his actions," said Assistant State Attorney Scott Andringa. Two researchers spoke of Nicholas' significance to the survival of the black bears in Chassahowitzka. Nicholas sired cubs, and biologists used him to determine how black bears roam throughout Citrus, Hernando and Pasco counties.
Nicholas' remains were never found.
Sgt. Edward Prouty of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spent nine months tracking down McQuiston for the bear's death. McQuiston's two hunting partners ultimately turned him in.
McQuiston has been hunting since age 5, has shot a bear in Canada, runs a small taxidermy shop and had a scope mounted on his rifle. He is also a champion skeet shooter.
"This is a person that ought to know better," Andringa said.
McQuiston's attorney, Bob Attridge, argued that the shooting was an accident. The property is known for being hog habitat, and McQuiston was licensed for hog hunting.
"It was a fluke occurence that a black bear happened to be there," he said.
Andringa questioned McQuiston's remorse, saying that the bear might have ended up in McQuiston's refrigerator, if not for the tracking collar.
"A hunter cannot go out in the woods and shoot at shadows," he said, adding that McQuiston's willingness to do so showed not only poor hunting ethic but a reckless disregard for his hunting companions.
