A Wisconsin man has been hit with a stiff penalty after illegally killing a cow moose while on a northern Ontario hunt back in the fall of 2023. According to reports and a recent court bulletin, Larry Szura, of New Auburn, Wisconsin, shot the animal from a public roadway and then attempted to cover it up by convincing his hunting partner to falsify a tag.
For his actions, Szura was found guilty in the Ontario Court of Justice in mid-December of three offenses which included discharging a firearm down the travelled portion of a roadway, hunting moose without a license, and possessing illegally killed wildlife.
According to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, the incident took place on September 29, 2023, near Pickle Lake. Officers stated that Szura shot the cow moose with a high-powered rifle while the animal was standing in the middle of a travelled portion of Nort Road, a clear violation of safety rules prohibiting the discharge of firearms toward or along public roads. In addition to letting the illegal shot go from a roadway, he was also without any form of a valid tag or the proper license for that class of animal.
In what was his best attempt at quick thinking, Szura reportedly drove more than 13 kilometres (8 miles) to rendezvous with his hunting partner (who had no idea that Szura was out hunting at all, let alone illegally) and somehow talked him into putting his cow tag on the dead animal. After securing the tag to the animal’s ear, Szura then abandoned the carcass on the roadside and jumped the border back to the United States the next morning. It wasn’t until five days later that Conservation officers located the abandoned moose and launched a subsequent investigation that would later trace the kill back to Szura.
Two years later, that investigation finally culminated in court where Justice of the Peace Pat Clysdale-Cornell imposed a fine of $28,750 along with a 10-year suspension of Szura’s Ontario hunting licence, effectively banning him from hunting anywhere in the province for a decade.
This case is the latest in a series of high-profile enforcement actions targeting American hunters in the region. In January of this year, three other men from Wisconsin were collectively fined nearly $28,000 and each received Ontario hunting bans ranging from five to 10 years after they were convicted of shooting moose from a motorboat and hunting swimming moose in the very same region during the fall of 2023.
