N. Minn. hunting guide hit with mountain of charges involving bear, deer kills

A north­ern Min­ne­so­ta bear hunt­ing guide has been charged with using vari­ous il­legal tac­tics in­volv­ing the kill­ing of bear and deer, ac­cord­ing to auth­ori­ties.

Keith R. Slick, 32, of Baudette, was charged Fri­day in Lake of the Woods District Court with a long list of offenses, a­mong them: two counts of pos­sess­ing an over lim­it of bear, three counts of un­law­ful pos­ses­sion of deer, two charges of un­law­ful­ly trans­port­ing a bear, fail­ure to reg­is­ter a se­cond bear, fail­ure to tag a se­cond bear, il­legal pos­ses­sion of a car-killed deer, untagged big game ani­mal (bear), no bear out­fit­ter/guides li­cense, un­law­ful trans­fer/lend or bor­row of li­cense, fail­ure to reg­is­ter bear bait sta­tions, hunt­ing with­in 100 yards of an un­regis­tered bear bait sta­tion, and plac­ing bait for bear with­out a li­cense.

There were oth­er vio­la­tions, ac­cord­ing to the state Department of Nat­u­ral Resources (DNR), but the stat­ute of limi­ta­tions had ex­pired on them.

Slick was not im­medi­ate­ly avail­able to re­spond to the charges.

Ac­cord­ing to the DNR:

Dur­ing the fall bear hunt­ing sea­son, state con­ser­va­tion of­fi­cer Robert Gorecki lo­cat­ed an ac­tive bear bait sta­tion be­long­ing to Slick. A search of his home un­cov­ered nu­mer­ous bear capes and skulls, as well as sets of deer ant­lers.

"There were no pos­ses­sion or reg­is­tra­tion tags found with any of the bears," Gorecki said in a state­ment re­leased by the DNR. "The bears did not have any cuts in their ears that would in­di­cate that a site tag was at­tached at any time in the past," Gorecki said.

A cellphone seized in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­tained pic­tures of Slick with a dead bear. Nu­mer­ous text mes­sages were also found with Slick tell­ing peo­ple a­bout the bear he had shot. Oth­er text mes­sages from Slick stat­ed that he had shot seven bears in his life.

Only two of the six ant­ler sets re­cov­ered had site tags on them, but from in­di­vidu­als oth­er than Slick.

"Mr. Slick had multi­ple un­ex­plain­able deer racks," Gorecki add­ed. "A third set of ant­lers were from an un­regis­tered road-killed deer, and he was un­sure where the re­main­ing sets of ant­lers came from."

Slick faces near­ly $4,500 in fines and res­ti­tu­tion. A fire­arm and bow were also seized dur­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. If con­victed, his hunt­ing privi­leges could be re­voked for three years.

Paul Walsh • 612-673-4482