Wild’s Clayton Stoner offends B.C. group for hunting, beheading beloved grizzly

Up until recently, Clayton Stoner's worst offence to British Columbians was playing for the Minnesota Wild. He's a native of Port McNeill; and what proud B.C. citizen is going to find fault with a hockey-playing Stoner?

But that was before he killed Cheeky.

The Minnesota Wild defenceman has become embroiled in controversy after a trophy successful hunting expedition in which he killed an adult male grizzly in B.C.'s Kwatna River estuary between Bella Coola and Bella Bella.

The locals were horrified on two counts. For one thing, back in September of 2012, they declared a “ban on the trophy bear hunt” declaring that they would “protect bears from cruel and unsustainable trophy hunts by any and all means." Unfortunately, the B.C. government didn't recognize their ban, and continued to grant licenses in opposition to it.

Stoner defended his right to hunt the grizzly, having been granted one such license through a limited-entry lottery system.

From the Vancouver Sun:

According to Robert Johnson, who works with a first nations coastal guardian watchmen program, he actually spoke to Stoner and his group and explained the unofficial ban, but "Stoner respectfully said he still had the legal right to hunt there" Johnson told the paper.

To add insult to injury, the bear they shot was one of the local favourites, a five-year-old grizzly that had come to be known as Cheeky because of his tendency to pop his head up in the local camps and stick out his tongue. That's all well and good when everybody's friendly to you, of course, but in a hostile environment, popping your head up and sticking out your tongue is a bad way to go.

And so Cheeky's head now belongs to Stoner. As for the rest of Cheeky's body, Coastal First Nations said in a release that it was "skinned and left to rot in a field."