Hunting

Teens are hitting the malls again, and not just to hang out and shop. Job-hunting season for the summer is underway as teens scramble for coveted positions at their favorite apparel retailers, frozen yogurt shops and department stores. The best jobs are often filled by spring break. This year, with the nation's unemployment rate at 9.7% in March, expect the job market to be especially crowded, analysts say. Not only do teens have to compete with college students and recent graduates, they'll also be up against a wave of out-of-work adults ready to snap up even temporary positions.

DALLAS -- Rarely do the Olympics, javelinas and chewing tobacco wind up in the same story. But then, rarely do the Olympics encounter someone like Brady Ellison. The young man tugs a faded cap down over curls of blond hair and explains that, if it weren't for a steady hand and a sharp eye, he might still be hunting hogs on the ranch. "I'm a country boy at heart," he says. For now, his singular talents have led him in a different direction: Ellison heads into summer as the world's top-ranked archer and a good bet to win gold at the 2012 London Olympics.

A proposed California Senate bill to outlaw the use of dogs to hunt bears and bobcats in the state gets a hearing Tuesday before the Natural Resources and Water Committee and the dozens of supporters and opponents expected to show. The hunting of bears and bobcats (not mountain lions) is legal but highly regulated in California. There are quotas, seasons and various limitations, such as a ban on killing cubs or mother bears with cubs in tow. The state does allow hunters to deploy dogs, often outfitted with radio telemetry devices on their collars, to track bears or bobcats.

The tale told by former Los Angeles Times reporters Terry McDermott and Josh Meyer in "The Hunt for KSM," the story of the pursuit, capture and interrogation of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, mastermind of9/11, at times so resembles something straight out of "24" or the Bourne movies that the authors have to keep reminding the reader that this is for real. On the one hand, "The Hunt for KSM" is a flat-out thriller. On the other, it lays out aspects of our factual contemporary world that are far more ambiguous, internecine and dangerous than anything Hollywood dare contemplate.

Until such time that deer, bears, ducks and geese are issued rifles so that they can fire back, let's call hunting for sport what it really is--murder of defenseless creatures. MURRAY LAMISHAW Laguna Hills

Prayerful angels carved from oak, grinning terra-cotta cherubs and gold pocket watches with time on their hands. All are stacked on the cobblestones of Arezzo's Piazza Grande. Through the shutters of my hotel window, I watch vendors unload a treasure trove of antiques: gleaming wood dining tables, paintings, pottery, jewelry, copper pots and Murano glass. As dusk throws shadows across the square, I go out to reconnoiter, excited by the thrill of the hunt. Tomorrow, when the fair opens, I will buy a memento of my Tuscan travels — something artful, affordable, Italian.

As outdoor activities in California go, bear hunting is not particularly popular. Officials estimate that, at most, 1% of the state's population hunts black bears. Many of the other 99% are appalled that anyone does. "I think most people think of it as an anachronism," said state Fish and Game Commissioner Michael Sutton, who speculates that the state's voters may soon ban the practice. Bear hunting has come a long way since the 1920s, when ranchers and farmers wiped out the grizzly, leaving its sole California presence on the state flag.

The scimitar-horned oryx was listed as endangered seven years ago, but a special exemption from the federal Endangered Species Act allowed breeders of the rare African antelope to nonetheless sell and hunt the animals -- at $5,500 a head. As a result, herds grew exponentially on exotic hunting ranches nationwide, especially in Texas. That exemption for the oryx and two other African antelopes popular with Texas hunters, the addax and the dama gazelle, could disappear Wednesday unless a federal judge approves a last-minute appeal by ranchers for an injunction.

I just read Mark Vanhoenacker's article “A Rest for Restless Spirits” [Jan. 8] about the Mojave National Preserve and must object to the characterization that allowing hunting is “inferior.” Hunting is not at all an inferior use of public land and has a long tradition in the U.S. and California. Long before MNP came into existence, hunters were, and still are, one of the larger user groups of the MNP. The L.A. Times has a long antihunting bias, somewhat surprising considering the history of its publishers.

The gray wolf, virtually exterminated in the West in the early 20th century, will be hunted once again in Idaho beginning today after a successful reintroduction program saw populations of the predator bloom across much of the northern Rocky Mountains. Though a federal judge has been asked to intervene, new state laws call for wolf hunts to begin today in two parts of Idaho, followed by hunts in much of the rest of the state and in Montana later this month. Protected under the federal Endangered Species Act since 1973, when they were nearly extinct in the continental United States, wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park and parts of Idaho in the 1990s and have since formed a large number of hunting and breeding packs that are beginning to range as far as Oregon.

The Hunt for KSM: Inside the Pursuit and Takedown of the Real 9/11 Mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed By Terry McDermott and Josh Meyer Little Brown: 368 pp., $27.99

Mark Walter lives in Chicago. Stan Kasten spent most of his adult life in Atlanta. Peter Guber is an L.A. guy. So, when Guber pitched a nostalgic idea on behalf of L.A. fans, his partners in the new Dodgers ownership group listened. "Curly Coo," Guber told Kasten. "There is nothing like a Curly Coo. " Google that, and you get a bar in Scotland. Kasten had no idea what the heck Guber was talking about. Millions of Dodgers fans could have explained, the ones who cheered on Garvey, Lopes, Russell and Cey, the ones who rooted for Valenzuela, Hershiser and Piazza, all with ice cream dripping down the sides of their faces.

A proposed California Senate bill to outlaw the use of dogs to hunt bears and bobcats in the state gets a hearing Tuesday before the Natural Resources and Water Committee and the dozens of supporters and opponents expected to show. The hunting of bears and bobcats (not mountain lions) is legal but highly regulated in California. There are quotas, seasons and various limitations, such as a ban on killing cubs or mother bears with cubs in tow. The state does allow hunters to deploy dogs, often outfitted with radio telemetry devices on their collars, to track bears or bobcats.

California's labor market continued its slow improvement in March as employers added jobs for the eighth straight month. Payrolls grew by 18,200 jobs last month, according to figures released Friday by the California Employment Development Department. That's on top of a revised gain of 38,600 jobs in February. The unemployment rate increased to 11% in March, up slightly from February's 10.9% rate. Improved employment prospects have encouraged more idled California workers to start job hunting again, driving the unemployment rate higher, said Dennis Meyers, principal economist for the state's Department of Finance.

SEATTLE -- Just when they thought Ted Nugent didn't have any more arrows to unleash, it turns out he did: specifically, an arrow aimed at a bear during a hunting trip in southeastern Alaska that has now landed the rocker-turned-outdoorsman in federal court. In a plea agreement filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, Nugent will plead guilty to one count of transporting an illegally hunted bear - an offense that could result in a $10,000 fine. Nugent, 63, was on Alaska's Sukkwan Island in May 2009 filming an episode of his Outdoor Channel television show, “Ted Nugent Spirit of the Wild,” which is described on his website as the “ultimate hands-on conservation lifestyle television show.” According to court documents, he was bow hunting near a bait station designed to attract black bears when he fired an arrow that wounded a bear, which then ran off. Nugent “failed to locate and harvest the wounded black bear,” the plea agreement said, and then four days later, he shot and killed another black bear at one of the registered bait sites and then transported it off the island.

When Yannick Villanueva of Woodland Hills El Camino Real was seen in a West Valley League baseball game last month, he had bleached his hair blond and there were strange-looking polka dots on the side. "I was going for the cheetah spots, and it didn't turn out as I had thought," he said. On Wednesday, with his hair back to normal, he came off the bench as a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the sixth inning in a one-run game against Chatsworth and delivered a two-run single that turned out to be a decisive blow in El Camino Real's 7-5 West Valley League victory.

The state Fish and Game Commission voted unanimously Wednesday not to expand bear hunting grounds in California or eliminate the cap on the number of bears that can be killed each season. The commission decided not to make changes to existing regulations after the Department of Fish and Game, which initially urged the changes, reversed its position Tuesday afternoon because it had been deluged with public comments. Officials said they had not had time to respond to them all. By law, all comments must be answered before changes are made.

Roger McCulloch skipped a grizzly bear hunt in Alaska to drive 18 hours to Florida with one mission: shoot an alligator with bow and arrow. "I love gator hunting," said McCulloch, who owns an Ohio construction business. "It's just the rush of it. I've hunted everything — caribou, bear, elk. Gators are tough critters. " Special rules govern the bagging of gators. Hunters are not allowed to use guns. Instead, they may use a pole, spear, bow and arrow, or rod and reel to catch the animal, then use a bang stick — a pole with an explosive charge on the end — to dispatch it point-blank before bringing it into a boat.

The mountain lion hunt that put California Fish and Game Commission President Daniel W. Richards in the center of a political firestorm has him in trouble again. The enforcement chief for the state's Fair Political Practices Commission informed Richards on Thursday that he had violated the gift limits of the Political Reform Act when he went on the Idaho hunt but failed to pay the fee that the Flying B Ranch usually imposes. Richards eventually reimbursed the ranch $6,800 on March 5, but he did it after the expiration of the 30-day time period that state officials are given to pay back the value of an illegal gift, and after a complaint had already been filed with the FPPC.

SACRAMENTO — The president of the California Fish and Game Commission violated state gift limits when he accepted a free guided cougar hunt in Idaho, ethics officials alleged Thursday. But Daniel W. Richards belatedly reimbursed the Flying B Ranch for the $6,800 hunt after media outlets reported the Idaho outing, so the enforcement chief of the Fair Political Practices Commission issued a warning letter rather than seek fines. State law bars officials from accepting gifts of more than $420 from certain sources.