The Dog Ate My Homework

Nothing compares to a Montana-made story.  They have a certain, shall we say, flavor.

On something near a yearly basis, one of our homegrown villains somewhere in the state beats a wife or girlfriend with an elk antler and lands his name in the news.  This kind of story always makes the news around here.  The weird part is, the news stories often mention how many points were on the antlers.  Sometimes, it seems the number of points on the antler becomes the bigger story.

Back about ten or so years ago, a man in near Bozeman broke into a woman’s house and pummeled her with a seven-point elk antler.

Many of my avid hunter buddies had a fit.

“Geez, why would you use a seven-point?  How could you?” Some asked.  “I hope he didn’t tear the antler off a mount,” someone else groused.

The woman recovered nicely, thank you.

Now Montana can boast to one-upping the old “dog-ate-my-homework” routine. 

According to an article in our local paper, a Kalispell man named Steven Boyd recently had his two-year suspended sentence revoked for parole violations.  That’s normal stuff.   But the reason Boyd gives for losing his job, moving from his registered residence, and failure to report entirely after August 2016 is unique.

Steven Boyd claims all of these failures resulted because he was incapacitated and recovering from a grizzly bear attack.  He says he never sought medical care.

This is a pretty unique claim.  Such a claim would could not possibly fly in, say, Iowa or Rhode Island.  Here in Montana, however, we actually have grizzly bears.  Several bear attacks were reported last year.

As mentioned earlier, the judge hearing Boyd’s case did not accept his story.

On to the next.

--Mitchell Hegman