ST. GEORGE, Utah (AP) — Authorities say a poacher killed a pregnant elk inside Zion National Park during the government shutdown.

The Spectrum reports that the National Park Service and Utah Division of Wildlife Resources are investigating the incident, which is estimated to have happened on or about Jan. 20.

An elk gut pile and partial hide were found in Lee Valley.

Authorities say they believe the poacher was taking advantage of park security being limited because of the shutdown.

National parks like Zion had been kept open despite park service staff being on furlough. The shutdown lasted three days before Congress passed a temporary stopgap measure on Monday.

Up to a $1,500 reward is being offered for information on the kill.

SEATTLE (AP) — Warren Miller, the legendary outdoor filmmaker who for decades made homages to downhill skiing that he narrated with his own humorous style, has died. He was 93.

His family said in a statement that Miller died of natural causes Wednesday evening at his home on Orcas Island in Washington state.

A World War II veteran, ski racer, surfer and sailor, Miller produced more than 500 action films about a variety of outdoor activities including surfing and sailing. But he was best known for his thrill-seeking films featuring daredevil skiers barreling down breathtakingly steep slopes.

His annual ski movies served as informal kickoffs to ski season and became a rite of passage for the legions of ski bums and snowboarders who flocked to see them at movie theaters and played them on video while relaxing with drinks after tough ski days.

“Warren’s legacy of adventure, freedom and humor carries on in the countless lives he touched,” his wife of 30 years, Laurie Miller, said in a statement Thursday. “Warren loved nothing more than sharing his life’s adventures and hearing literally every day from friends old and new about how his stories inspired others to enrich and enjoy their own lives.”

Miller was born in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles, California, in 1924. He grew up during the Depression and said his family struggled to put food on the table.

According to a biography on his website, Miller bought his first camera for 39 cents when he was 12 years old. He used earnings from his newspaper route to buy his first skis and bamboo ski poles when he was 15 and took his first run at Mount Waterman near Los Angeles with his Boy Scout troop.

“I really believe in my heart that that first turn you make on a pair of skis is your first taste of total freedom, the first time in your life that you could go anywhere that your adrenaline would let you go,” he told The Seattle Times in a 2010 interview.

Miller played varsity basketball at the University of Southern California and served in the Navy.

In 1946, he bought a camera for $77 and set off with his friend Ward Baker in a 1936 Buick Phaeton towing a teardrop trailer to ski destinations across the U.S., including Yosemite, Jackson Hole and Mammoth Mountain. They camped in parking lots of ski resorts, perfecting the ski bum life.

He once recalled loving the smell of rabbit frying in the silent evening while parked in Sun Valley’s parking lot.

Miller launched his film career in 1950 with his first skiing film, “Deep and Light.”

He headed Warren Miller Entertainment until the late 1980s when he sold it to his son, Kurt Miller. Time Inc. bought it in 2000 and later sold it. Warren Miller Entertainment is now owned by Active Interest Media.

Miller was inducted into the U.S. Ski Hall of Fame in 1978.

Aside from his wife, Miller is survived by sons Scott and Kurt, daughter Chris, a stepson, Colin Kaufmann, and five grandchildren.

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Montana wildlife officials say 70 bison have been shot by hunters so far this year.

The Billings Gazette reported Thursday that 59 of those bison were killed on the west side near West Yellowstone, while 11 were killed in the Gardiner area.

The Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes killed 39 bison, while 24 were killed by state hunters.

The Montana hunting season runs through Feb. 15. Five Native American tribes have treaty rights to hunt bison in Montana.

Aside from hunting, tribes also receive meat when Yellowstone National Park culls bison in the park. Last year, the park culled more than 1,200 bison.

The park’s total bison population is about 5,400.

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Information from: The Billings Gazette, http://www.billingsgazette.com

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A ski company that owns resorts from Quebec to Colorado says it will begin selling a pass next season that will give skiers and snowboarders access to 23 resorts in North America.

The pass from the newly named Alterra Mountain Company will rival Vail Resorts’ popular Epic Pass, which offers skiers access to 15 resorts in three countries.

The dueling multi-resort passes are the latest sign of an industry that is becoming consolidated.

Alterra said in a news release Thursday that the cost and other details of the Ikon Pass will be announced in the coming weeks.

Among the resorts included in the pass are Mammoth and Squaw Valley in California; Aspen Snowmass, Steamboat and Winter Park in Colorado; Deer Valley, Alta and Snowbird in Utah; Jackson Hole in Wyoming, and Mont Tremblant in Quebec.

PRESTON — Franklin County’s Search and Rescue had a busy weekend training and then putting that training to practice.

The unit had just finished a six-hour training session last Saturday when a call was received that a man had fallen and broken his leg while ice fishing at Treasureton Reservoir. His companions were not able to move him.

Because the stability of ice concerned the ambulance crew, Franklin County Search and Rescue assisted in the task.

Then on Sunday, the search and rescue unit was paged to bring out a 36-year-old snowmobiler who had sustained stroke-like symptoms. He was located in a remote area above Copenhagen Basin by the Paris Ice Caves.

The unit ended up preparing a site for a helicopter to land and carried the man to be life-flighted to Idaho Falls.

“Our guys were with him about 45 minutes,” said Sheriff Dave Fryar. “We’re pretty proud of the S&R. They are a good bunch of people.”

A couple of weeks ago, I had some seminars at the Dallas Safari Club Convention and Expo. While down there, Charles Allen, the owner of Diamond Blades and Knives of Alaska asked me to go duck hunting with him. He has a ranch in East Texas and has been inviting me for years. Finally I had a few free days, so we lined up a hunt. One of his guides, Jordan, was going to be hunting with us. I met him while fishing up in Alaska a year ago.

I arrived at his ranch on Monday afternoon. We jumped on 4-wheelers, and Charles took me out to look at his ranch. He has some flooded timber, which as you know is the perfect set-up for mallards. When we rode in, we jumped 300 mallards. We were pumped and couldn’t wait to hunt the next morning. We threw out our decoys, then he showed me how he’d built a dam with a let-out gate so he could control the water level.

On a side note, I don’t think that the antis have a clue how much the hunters do to enhance habitat for the game that we hunt. Because of superb management, we have more game now than when America was discovered. Think about that for a minute. Even with all of the cities, highways and concrete, the deer hunting is better now. That’s amazing. It’s because we manage our game, environment and habitat.

That night, we sat up a while shooting the bull and having a good time for a while. Charles has a lot of good stories all the way from bighorn hunts in Alaska to his African hunts. I could listen to his stories forever. But being older and wiser, I finally went to bed and left the storytelling to the young men. The next morning, we jumped up, slammed down some coffee and rolls and headed out.

We hid the 4-wheelers and waded across the flooded woods and hid in the edge. Charles told us that at first we could be out on the edge of the woods, but as soon as the sun peeked out, we’d have to get concealed better.

Charles and I set up about 75 yards down from the other young men. Brian let us know it was now legal shooting time and not 20 seconds later a group of mallards dropped down like manna from above. Charles and I lucked out and were in front of where the ducks were flying in from.

We were dropping ducks pretty regularly. I didn’t know how far our shots would be so I’d grabbed some Kent 4-shot. We were mostly shooting mallards but did pick up some wood ducks and gadwalls.

Two small flocks dropped in and did the perfect mallard cupping drop, but they dropped right between us and the other group of guys so I couldn’t shoot. Ugh, I could have dropped six easily. Finally, about mid-morning the ducks stopped flying so we headed back to the lodge to clean birds.

Wow, between all of us we had a pile of birds. We’d had a great morning. I had a weekly knife product review due for AmmoLand Shooting Sports News and wanted to test out the Diamond Blade Pinnacle II for that review, so we cleaned the ducks with it. It worked great.

I wanted to do some crow hunting after the duck hunt, but the electronic call I had just gotten didn’t have the remote control included so we took pictures and cleaned ducks and the day finally came to a close.

Charles has a walk-in cooler so I took some aged ducks and my brother made a French cassoulet dish out of them. If you need a new duck recipe, my brother Eddy publishes an outdoor cooking YouTube on RonSpomerOutdoors. You should be able to view this recipe soon. So as we close, go out and smoke a few ducks and test out Eddy’s recipe. It was good.

Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana. He also writes for various outdoors magazines and teaches outdoors seminars at stores like Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Bass Pro Shop.

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyoming (AP) — A snowmobile guide has been cited for directing clients to drive onto a boardwalk next to the Old Faithful geyser last weekend in Yellowstone National Park.

National Park Service officials cited the guide for operating without a valid driver’s license and not possessing proper credentials for guiding in Yellowstone. The Park Service did not identify the guide.

The incident occurred last Saturday during the partial federal government shutdown. A park dispatcher saw the transgression on a webcam and contacted a park ranger.

Yellowstone spokeswoman Vicki Regula says only the guide was cited.

She says there was no damage to the Old Faithful boardwalk.

Also last weekend, Regula says a group of private snowmobilers without permits were turned back by rangers after the group entered the east side of the park.

KETCHUM, Idaho (AP) — An airplane approaching a central Idaho airport had to abort its initial landing after a mountain lion was spotted on the runway.

Idaho Department of Fish and Game officials said a conservation officer later killed the mountain lion in order to keep the public safe.

The Delta flight from Salt Lake City to Friedman Memorial Airport in Hailey on Saturday night was delayed about 20 minutes because of the mountain lion, the Idaho Mountain Express reported.

“We were on an approach for landing and all of a sudden the pilot pulled up,” said Diane Cordes, a Hailey resident on the flight. “After a couple of minutes, he came on the loudspeaker and said the tower called and we had to pull up because there’s a cougar on the runway.”

After the mountain lion was spotted, airport manager Chris Pomeroy said workers attempted to corral the animal. The airport does have a plan in place for wildlife management, he noted.

“We thought we had it contained but it did spring loose and walk across the runway when the Delta flight was several miles out,” Pomeroy said.

Pomeroy used a car to chase the cougar into a fenced-off section surrounding the control tower, he said.

The conservation officer shot the lion as there was no way to safely trap it in a timely manner, said Kelton Hatch, a spokesman for the fish and game department. The mountain lion was less than a year old, he said.

The officer did not have access to a tranquilizer gun, and the department does not typically relocate large predators that have become accustomed to being near people, said Mike McDonald, the department’s regional wildlife manager.

After wandering around Illinois, Iowa, Missouri and Wisconsin for a couple years, I was ready to come home and continue college, hunting and skiing.

My younger brother had turned into a pretty good skier, so he usually went with me when I came home from school to ski Skyline (Pebble Creek) near Inkom.

I would usually come home Friday night, and we would go skiing Saturday.

My brother usually skied with a group of friends. My skiing friends had mostly left the area, so my brother’s friends often skied with us. I really didn’t mind, most of them were pretty good skiers and kept up, while a couple had more courage than sense or skill and were fun to watch wipe out and roll down the hill.

During one trip, we took the trail over to the Sun Bowl early in the morning and found an untracked run. We had a lot of fun skiing in powder that was up to my knees. Those 11- and 12-year-olds cut through the powder like they were born to ski.

About half-way down, we stopped and saw a young skier’s dream — a natural jump that curved up slightly just above a steep downgrade for the landing. They all took off, trying to be the first to go off the jump. As the first boy hit the base of the jump, he didn’t rise up but disappeared into a snow bank, and then we heard a loud crack. It wasn’t a jump, it was a big rock that had been completely covered by the last snowstorm.

We pulled him out of the hole he had made in the snowbank and found he had broken one ski and hit his face on the rock. I wiped the blood off of his face and found no serious cuts. His nose was not broken, but it was bleeding. Once we got the bleeding to stop, he said he was OK and skied down to the lodge on one ski. Tough kid.

On another occasion while skiing with my brother, he saw a tree with a split trunk. The trunk had split right and left about a foot above the snow. My brother decided to do a scissors jump with one leg straight forward and one leg straight back, sort of like doing the splits while flying through the crotch of the tree.

I didn’t think he could clear it with his skis on, but he was confident that he could and headed for the tree. As he approached, he jumped up and extended his left leg and ski straight forward and his right leg and ski straight behind him as he passed through the crotch of the tree.

He got the left leg and ski through but caught his right ski between the split trunks. He came right out of his boot, and the boot and the ski stayed lodged against the tree trunks while he skied a little ways on one ski and fell over.

Our family has always enjoyed skiing at Grand Targhee, which is only accessible from the Idaho side through Driggs. One weekend my sister and her husband accompanied my brother and me. We ended up looking down a hill of untracked powder from the night before.

My brother and I knew that at the bottom of the hill there was a creek and a bridge that allowed skiers to cross over and ski down to the lift, which would take us back up the hill. Before we could explain to my sister and her husband that there was a creek and where the bridge was, my brother-in-law yelled, “I’m first” and pushed off.

We watched him go straight down the hill with a snow cloud completely obliterating any view of him moving down the hill. After abut a minute, the snow cloud dissipated, but there was no sign of my brother-in-law. The three of us who were left pushed off and followed his tracks down the hill.

Once at the bottom, we found his tracks had continued right over the bank of the creek, where he had crossed the creek in the air and dropped about 3 feet. The tips of his skis were embedded in the snow on the opposite bank.

The snow cloud had obscured his vision, and he sailed right over the creek bank without seeing it. At least he got across the creek. We skied over to the bridge after laughing for a couple of minutes, crossed over and helped him up and over, after which we skied on down to the lift.

By the early 1970s, I was in graduate school and skiing in Park City and Alta instead of returning home to ski on the weekends. My brother now had a driver’s license and would occasionally drive down to Provo, Utah, on Friday evening and ski with me on Saturday.

During one of those trips, he brought a friend with him to ski with us. A new area called Park City West had just opened and we decided to try it out. We drove up Provo Canyon to Heber and then over past Park City to Park City West.

We arrived early and we were some of the first skiers to take the lift to the top of the mountain. We skied along a ridge until we found a hill with untracked powder and decided to ski there. We pushed off and were really enjoying the snow that was about as high as our knees as we carved S-shaped tracks down the mountain.

When we were about half-way down, we stopped for a second to clear snow off our goggles and heard shouting from the top of the hill. Three ski patrolmen were yelling at us that we weren’t supposed to be skiing that hill and to wait for them to get down to us.

I figured that they were just trying to save the untracked powder for themselves and hadn’t thought anyone else would be there that early. I also was of the opinion that they were overhead for the resort and we were profit, so I said “to heck with waiting for them,” and I took off again. My brother agreed and took off with me. His friend didn’t know what to do, so he followed us.

What I didn’t know was that my brother’s friend hadn’t been skiing very long and was scared out of his wits at the speed we were now going. We came off the hill of powder onto a main run that was groomed and really started to increase speed.

My brother assumed the position of a downhill tuck, and I figured I was going fast enough and didn’t need to tuck to outrun the guys behind us, and my brother’s friend now had eyes as big as golf balls and a look of terror on his face, but he tried to stay with us.

As we steadily increased speed, my brother in his downhill tuck hit a washboard patch of the run, and skis started coming up and and hitting him in the mouth, but he didn’t fall or rise a little higher to stop getting hit. He just stayed in the tuck and kept going. As we came around a corner, we were able to ski into the back of a short line waiting for the lift to take us back up top.

I started thinking that the ski patrolmen would simply come around the corner and figure that the guys in the back of the line were the ones they were following when about 10 people skied into line in back of us.

My brother wiped the blood from the pummeling he took on the washboard off his face and we got his friend’s eyes back down to normal size, and waited.

The ski patrol came around the corner about 30 seconds later, looked at the people in the back of the line and decided we had skied on past the lift, so they continued on down the hill.

All in all, it was a great day of skiing and the three of us still laugh and kid each other about running from the ski patrol.

Smokey Merkley was raised in Idaho and has been hunting since he was 10 years old. He was a member of the faculty of Texas A&M University for 25 years. There he taught orienteering, marksmanship, self-defense, fencing, scuba diving and boxing. He was among the first DPS-certified Texas Concealed Handgun Instructors. He can be contacted at mokeydo41245@hotmail.com.

JARBIDGE, Nevada (AP) — The reward has grown to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of a suspect of suspects in the illegal killing of a moose near the Nevada-Idaho line.

Nevada game wardens announced earlier this month that Operation Game Thief was offering a $1,000 reward after a citizen discovered the beheaded moose carcass Dec. 25 about 20 miles southeast of Jarbidge.

Jelindo Tiberti, an avid Nevada sportsman and longtime member of the Fraternity of the Desert Bighorn, and his wife, Sandee, upped the ante with a $2,500 donation.

State wildlife officials said Tuesday Nevada Bighorns United have contributed an additional $4,000 and the fraternity kicked in another $2,500.

Game warden Fred Esparza says it’s the third moose-poaching case in Nevada in the last three years. Wildlife biologists estimate there’s between 25 and 40 moose now living in Nevada.