Hunting laws need to apply to all, even troopers

• That the hunting laws that apply to the rest of us apparently don't apply to state troopers.

• That among all the long-time hunters in the Palin-Wooten-Heath clan no one seems to have had any concern about hunting ethics -- let alone the law -- until Wooten and his wife, the governor's sister, decided to get divorced.

Granted, the hunting-permit abuse in which Wooten engaged has been going on for a long time in this state. Pa puts in for drawing permits for himself, ma, the kids, grandpa, grandma, uncle Jack, the neighbors and who knows who else to maximize his odds.

Then, if any of the gang are lucky enough to win, well, Dad takes them hunting.

Sort of.

Many times these "hunts'' go down in ways similar to those involved in the ill-fated hunt on which Wooten took now ex-wife Molly Heath McCann:

"Look, honey. There's the moose. Shoot the moose.

"Oh, gee. I don't know. It looks like such a cute moose. I'm having second thoughts. I don't think I want to shoot the moose.''

Kabooooooooooooooom!

"I think it looks better as moose meat, don't you?"

Apparently Wooten thought his shooting a moose on his wife's permit was just fine, or at least that's what he argued for a time.

"During the investigation, you maintained these actions were not inappropriate, and that you didn't consider these actions a violation of the law,'' noted former Trooper Col. Julia Grimes in her 2006 letter of reprimand to Wooten. "During your conference on 2-9-06, you finally did admit that the conduct was illegal."

That's something just about every Alaska hunter knows.

That a non-hunter might be clueless is understandable. Most non-hunters have no idea how rare and valued hunt permits are in Alaska.

Some people seek them for years without success. Some people go so far as to track who gets them and fret over whether the computerized system that draws permits is rigged.

There is no evidence the permit drawings are rigged, but as the Wooten case illustrates, some permit applicants do cheat. Both Alaska Department of Fish and Game personnel and troopers are well aware of this.

Had troopers caught anyone but Wooten cheating, they might well have publicly embarrassed him as a bit of a reminder to others that they should follow the law.

They certainly didn't have any qualms about doing that to me a couple years ago when I caught a limit of red salmon on the Russian River, somehow lost one, and then caught another so I could take home the three-fish limit.

That is against the law. The bag limit is the first three fish you kill.

I deserved to be cited, in part to punish me for ignorance of the law as written. The troopers also put out a press release saying I'd be charged with catching an over-limit of salmon. I wrote that off to the agency making a statement that no one is above the law.

That's arguably a good thing.

So where was the press release when Wooten finally got busted? Where, for that matter, was the press release announcing that he'd been transferred from the Wildlife Investigations Unit to regular trooper duty because he'd been involved in some illegal hunting?

Yeah, that's right. Wooten wasn't just a trooper when the illegal moose hunt took place. He was a wildlife trooper, an Alaska game warden.

At least Grimes had the sense to transfer Wooten out of the division.

"On its own," she noted, "your conduct in this matter warrants corrective action... You will be reassigned from the Wildlife Investigations Unit."

Well, duh.

Which brings this all back to that pre-divorce Palin-Wooten-Heath clan. Gov. Sarah Palin likes to make much of the fact she has been a hunter since childhood. Her parents, Sally and Chuck Heath are long time hunters. So is the governor's husband, Todd. And, of course, Wooten was a game warden.

And yet no one in this group said a thing about Mike Wooten illegally shooting a moose on his wife's permit until two years after the fact?

Obviously illegal moose meat tastes just as good as legal moose meat until there is a divorce in the family.

Then things get ugly.

And they don't get much uglier than this.

Gov. Palin is, of course, now accused of trying to get Mike Wooten fired from the troopers and of dismissing Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan for failing to make that happen. Mike Wooten's file sort of makes one wonder if he shouldn't have been fired back in 2006 when Grimes, then director of the troopers, simply slapped his fingers.

By now Wooten's illegal hunting and other questionable behavior is, as they say, water under the bridge. And it's not really fair to fire people for past bad behavior for which they've already been punished.

For all any of us know, Mike Wooten has been an exemplary trooper since he got that March 1, 2006 letter of reprimand. I, for one, certainly hope so.

It would be the one good thing to come out of all of this, because the rest of it stinks more than rotting road kill. Personally I'm still waiting for the governor to say she wishes someone in the family would have reported the illegal moose shooting immediately, as they should have done.

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Outdoors editor Craig Medred is an opinion columnist. Find him online at adn.com/contact/cmedred or call 257-4588.