Perhaps you were wondering what happened to this guy who was seen taunting a bison in Yellowstone park.
His name is Raymond Reinke. He has a peculiar notion about how to enjoy a vacation in a national park. He’d been making a grand tour of some of the more spectacular sites in the Rockies, making a public nuisance of himself.
Reinke had been traveling to multiple national parks over the last week. On July 28, he was first arrested by law enforcement rangers at Grand Teton National Park for a drunk and disorderly conduct incident. He spent the night in the Teton County Jail, and was then released on bond.
Following his release, he traveled to Yellowstone National Park. Rangers at Yellowstone stopped his vehicle for a traffic violation on July 31. Reinke appeared to be intoxicated and argumentative. He was cited as a passenger for failure to wear a seat belt. It is believed that after that traffic stop, Reinke encountered the bison.
Yellowstone rangers received several wildlife harassment reports from concerned visitors and found Reinke later that evening, issuing a citation requiring a court appearance. The video of the event surfaced after that citation had been issued.
On Thursday, August 2, Yellowstone rangers connected Reinke’s extensive history, and seeing the egregious nature of the wildlife violation, the Assistant U.S. Attorney requested his bond be revoked. The request was granted and on the night of August 2, a warrant was issued for Reinke’s arrest.
Reinke had told rangers that his plans were to travel to Glacier National Park. Last night, August 2, Glacier National Park rangers began looking for his vehicle. Simultaneous with that search, rangers responded to the Many Glacier Hotel because two guests were arguing and creating a disturbance in the hotel dining room. Rangers identified one of the individuals involved as Reinke.
He’s in jail now. Maybe next year he can just stay at home and get drunk.
There’s all the proof that God doesn’t exist that anybody should need. The bison didn’t catch him.
I suspect that he’ll have a home he’ll be forced to stay in for next year. With nice iron bars as decorations.
Trump supporter?
That bison showed remarkable restraint.
I gues he did not watch the instructional and warning videos that are projected all over Yellowstone warning people not to do exactly what he did.He is lucky the bison did not gore him to death. What he did was reckles and dangerous.
I was in Yellowstone National Park, I saw these beasts up close. They are not to be trifled with.
One evening at the parking lot a man stopped his car in front of the main facility, went up to one of the park rangers and has shown towards a huge dent in his car door that a bison has made. The ranger has asked him how it happened to which the man replied “It was walking along the road so I was driving around it, slowly. When I was passing it, it just sort of shook its head towards my car.” The ranger shrugged “Yeah, they do that. Talk it up with your insurance company.”(not exact quotes, it was long ago)
So just a casual flick of the head ahd an SUV door was bent out of shape. Imagine what that can do with a human being. Imagine what that can do to a feckles dimwit like this one.
Why? This was in trumplandia. Perhaps far more likely, he’ll be issued with a “Congressional Gold Medal” or “Presidential Medal of Freedom”, plus a howitzer and shells, and expected to massacre anyone (human or not) which impedes teh so-called 1%.
And consider had he been perceived as non-white: Dead.
With the responsible
policegoons acting .Feckineejut.
Biking through Elk Island Park many years ago, I came across one of these beasts lying in the road. Looking back, I felt much like the characters in a certain scene from Sailing to Sarantium must have. Awe and fear. My companion, who had more guts than me, rode slowly past it cooing “Nice bossy”. I just waited for a car to come by, and rode on the far side of it.
I am chuckling at the comments made by the wildlife biologist in the news cast. To paraphase: People think that because it’s not a bear or wolf with sharp teeth, that it can’t hurt you. However, large ruminants like elk and bison are actually excellent at hurting people.
If they manage to get a horn under you, they will proceed to toss your puny few hundred pound self through the air at least one time until you are no longer a threat. They might also hoof stomp you just for good measure once you are flat on the ground.
He certainly shows the signs, doesn’t he?
1) everthing is about him
2) zero concern for others
3) grade AAA asshole-ishness
Heh, at the Happy Isles Art and Nature Center in Yosemite there is (or was when we were there) an exhibit that should be called, “Seriously you dumbfucks!…leave…the…wildlife…alone already!”; they have a section on making your cars NOT be convenient snack packages for the bears. (shorter: don’t leave food, or other things that smell good, like suntan lotion! in the car. Use the many, MANY provided bear boxes for such storage)
A car door with the window frame just casually bent away from the car at 90° , accompanied by some brief footage of just how casually a bear did that damage. It may even be the one from this picture: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_B7D5FIgshzI/TBZbaQAKrgI/AAAAAAAAASI/_emVujkCUjI/s1600/downsized_0602000910a.jpg
Part of me wishes that he’d gotten stomped by the bison, except, of course then they’d have been forced to kill it.
If you ever need to explain “toxic masculinity” to somebody, show them that video.
Sounds like he at least has the excuse of having a drinking problem. Compare this to sober people who do things like put toddlers on moose so they can take a cute picture.
I grew up around large herbivores, cattle and horses. Even the domesticated ones can be dangerous. Playing matador to a bison is madness.
Honourable mention in the Darwin Awards?
More proof that humans need breeding licenses.
brucej @10:
I’m not sure they’d have necessarily had to kill the bison if it had actually gored the idiot. The guy was clearly provoking it, and bison, as obligate herbivores, have zero chance of becoming habituated to eating people.
I live in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and have visited Yellowstone many times. I also live a few miles from the Terry Bison Ranch. I see bison quite often. I’ve hiked along trails and been afraid to pass them if they happen to be hanging out there. The only reason I can think of for someone to do that is sheer stupidity. (And yes, it is Trump country. That’s why I come to this blog and read the comments.)
there are reasons they were never domesticated, dude just found out one of them.
uncle frogy
I figure one of the things they could probably use at Yellowstone is a set of nice big signs (in a variety of languages) at all the entrance points, explaining the animals here are not cute and fluffy and nice; nature is red in tooth and claw; the geology here is not nice either, and this is an area of active evolutionary pressures on all the biological inhabitants. This includes humans: use the brain your ancestors fought so hard for, and you’ll probably survive. Don’t, and the rangers get something to include on their wall of “we chlorinate the gene pool regularly”. Alternatively, close the park to human visitors for one day per daft incident like this over a rolling five year period (ie: sum up daft incidents caused by people apparently leaving their brain in their suitcase at the hotel over the last five years, and close the park for the anniversary date of each incident for five years. Name the idjits who are responsible, so people know who to blame for it.
“Yeah, we wanted to see Yellowstone while we were in the US, but unfortunately we arrived on Raymond Reike day, which meant the park was closed.”
But seriously, US Americans, you’ll never get anything in order as long as you’re cheering on locking people up for shit like that. What’s the use of that? What do you think will be the result of locking him up for a year? A better person?
How about community service instead? 500 hours animal related work.
re Giliell @19:
Clearly, that is the rationalization. That a year in captivity will give him time to fully contemplate the action that got him deprived of freedom, motivating change in his attitudes.
I know it never works, individually, without therapeutic retraining, which “we” [exclusive to myself] believe would be too expensive to spend on mere criminals.
sigh
this is a case where brainwashing could be used in its literal sense. Wash out the detritus that pollutes his brain making him an animal abuser. Clean, version of wash, not to a tabla rasa, remove all the dirt polluting it.
thank you for letting me run off the rails
Giliell @19:
Animal related as in shoveling bison shit? That would be appropriate, and it might leave more of an impression on him than a year in jail.
I don’t have much to add regarding the wanton idiocy and recklessness of that guy, but I will say that the vid really brought home the size of these critters. I vaguely understood that they were big, but I didn’t fully comprehend that they were BIG. That bull is an absolutely massive creature. I’d drop a “Remind me not to take a Smart car to Yellowstone” joke here, but I think this video would jump out of my memory banks to ring alarm bells if I ever considered it.
From what I recall, Yellowstone does or did have lots of signs explaining Why Not To Taunt the Bison, with explanations. They also have signs telling you not to walk off-trail near the thermal features (ghastly death if you break through). We camped one night just outside of Yellowstone. The campground office has a list of what has been confiscated that day for breaking the don’t-attract-the-bears regulations, from small items like food to large items like coolers and grills.
On our way out of the park we saw someone approaching an elk quite closely on the lawn of park headquarters. As we drove away the rangers converged from all directions.
Re: Gilell @ #19…
A year in jail will be a year without alcohol. It might dry him out enough to help. (And note that he was arrested for three different incidents in three different parks before the rangers just decided to keep him until a judge can decide how to proceed.)
@whheydt #24:
Prison wine is a thing. I don’t know if it’s prevalent in prisons where they hand out single year sentences, but desperate people do desperate things.
I don’t know about bison, but even sheep can be intimidating.
This:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2035406375544&set=pb.1555740462.-2207520000.1533553093.&type=3&theater
was the point at which we abandoned going up Ben Nevis, and decided the pub was a better source of entertainment.
He’s lucky the bison didn’t trample and gore him to death. They are very dangerous animals and kill more visitors to Yellowstone than any other animal.