Wyoming rules the world

The ListeningTube presents Not the Headlines Extra. Every year on the first day of May, hundreds of people head to Jackson, Wyoming in the United States to participate in a special kind of hunt that involves large animals, but no guns or arrows. It's a scavenger hunt for the antlers shed by elk in the National Elk Refuge. Prior to the May 1st hunt, gathering of the antlers is strictly prohibited, nor is anyone allowed to camp overnight in the refuge. Much care is taken to help the elk live as normally as possible throughout the winter when elk are most stressed. The annual hunt wasn't always this regulated, but a few years ago it started getting out of hand, according to a quote from a project leader in a story about it in Field and Stream. These discarded antlers can command up to $18 a pound and can be used for a variety of purposes. People turn them into dog toys, buttons, pipes, and knife handles, among other things. That's why when a routine check of the grounds discovered a 1,000-pound pile of antlers a little over a year ago, they launched an investigation. What the investigation revealed was that an Idaho man had been illegally camping on the reserve land and collecting the antlers. It took a year, but last month the man was sentenced for his transgression. His 10-day camping trip will cost him $6,000 and a three-year ban from Wyoming public lands and from hunting anywhere in the world. And he's not the only guy who Wyoming has punished worldwide. A man from Bozeman, Montana received a five-year ban last May. I can't find any law that gives Wyoming the authority to take away somebody's hunting privileges outside of Wyoming, let alone on the entire planet. Plus, it's not like this guy was using a gun to kill live animals. I'm not defending his actions, but hunting for discarded elk antlers is a lot different than hunting live animals. Is he also banned from hunting mushrooms? Is he also banned from participating in a suburban scavenger hunt where the bounty might be a photograph of a rat eating a piece of pizza? Clearly, if the state of Wyoming is able to implement a worldwide ban on hunting for someone who breaks a law in Wyoming, there has to be some type of federal cooperation. It probably has to do with the ability to get a hunting license, which doesn't stop poachers anyway. But certainly the ability of a state government to be able to prohibit a specific behavior anywhere in the world as a form of punishment seems like overreach to me. It's the same as Wyoming telling Kenya that they're not allowed to let this man hunt there. Kenya no longer has the right to decide for itself if they want this man to be allowed to hunt there. Because some entity in the United States won't allow it. Who enforces such a ban? If Wyoming can dictate to the rest of the world who's allowed to hunt, where does it end? When does the sovereignty of nations have priority? If you're an international arms dealer or some other illegal international enterprise, I can see where international cooperation is the best solution to put a stop to it. But for a guy who only broke the law in Wyoming to be subjected to a worldwide enforceable punishment doesn't bode well for individual rights or the right of sovereign nations to make their own laws. Let's say a man in India was found guilty of cheating the customers at his butcher shop, where all they sold was chicken. Does his home province have the authority to prevent him from moving to the United States and opening up a KFC franchise? Probably not. And that's the way it should be. India doesn't tell the United States how to enforce its laws, and no level of a government in the United States should be able to mandate our laws be enforced elsewhere.