scout master didn't know what was wrong. And he went outside and as 

 soon as he got out of the tent the dog fell over and died. The scout 

 master still didn't know what was wrong and he couldn't prove what 

 happend to the dog. It was a two-year-old, healthy german shepherd. 

 The next day the scout master and these three boys went rabbit 

 hunting and about a quarter-mile from camp two boys were walking 

 together in a wash and one boy said, "What's that?" And he saw this 

 thing sticking out of the ground and you know what I'm going to say. 

 He bent over to pick it up and the other boy whose uncle had been a 

 government trapper said "Don't touch that thing!" and they called the 

 scout master and he came over to the launch stick and he dug it out 

 and it was a M38 getter, fully loaded, ready to do whatever it had to 

 do to anyone. 



God forbid if that kid had touched that thing and it went off in 

 his face. Now I'm not saying that anyone is responsible but these 

 things are still being used and it is being condoned by some sheep 

 men. That scout master was furious. He went to the BLM office in 

 Vernal and he wanted to know what jurisdiction the BLM had over the 

 getters and poison on the federal land. They didn't know, they really 

 didn't. So they called their state office and they didn't know. They 

 called the Fish and Wildlife Service and they didn't know. The state 

 game department didn't know. So finally they found out that the EPA 

 has jurisdiction over toxins on federal lands. Well, they called the EPA 

 in Denver and three weeks later some guy from Grand Junction came 

 up. He was a field investigator. It took him three weeks to come to 

 Vernal. And he said that the EPA has no jurisdiction over the old 

 getters because they had been canceled with President Nixon's ban. 

 Now here is a bureaucrat who is supposed to be protecting lives and 

 the EPA is saying they didn't know who is responsible and God knows 

 how many are out on public land right now. Well I found out about 

 this when I was researching this story and I called nine people in 

 Washington, D.C. Half of them didn't know what a coyote was and I 

 never got to anybody anyway who could tell me about the EPA's 

 jurisdiction so I finally called the Denver office and after six calls in 

 Denver I did talk to someone in EPA who gave me some information. He 

 says, "That guy was wrong." We have jurisdiction over coyote getters. 

 It was very interesting to me to know that the EPA, which is supposed 

 to be out there protecting our public land and protecting us, doesn't 

 know one end from the other about what's going on. I just thought I'd 

 point that out to you. It's kind of a sad commentary in our times when 

 we can't use the public lands without fear of poisoning our wives, our 

 kids, our dogs, whatever. Because my wife and my kids don't know 

 what a getter looks like, my wife was shocked. And that happened 

 right where we go get firewood, that incident with the scout master and 

 we do take our dogs when we go, and our kids and I am furious about 

 it personally. 



Marv said something about credibility and I would like to expound 

 a little bit about that. I'd like to bring up one example that was told 

 to me by Don Smith, who is the former director of the Utah Fish and 

 Game Division of Fish and Wildlife Resources. He now lives in Vernal 

 and he is a regional supervisor. Don says, "One time we were hunting 



