According to Mr. Sholly's testimony, they started shooting the burros in April of 2007 until they were ordered to stop on October 23rd, 2007 (although he did admit that a final burro was shot on Oct. 26th, three days after the stop-kill order was issued). According to Sholly, they "kept a running total in our mind, and initially in our reports, the number we had shot was 71 burros." He also said he had shot burros on five or six trips into the park, but not every time he went there, mainly because he didn't see them every time he went into the park.

In his testimony, Mike Hill said that July of 2007 was the last record he has of burros being shot, and that Dan told him to keep killing burros and not to write anything down about it after that time. He said Dan had told him something had been said in Austin (State government offices for Texas are located in the city of Austin) about the burros being killed. It's interesting to note that, in his testimony, Dan Sholly claims he never told any park employee to stop recording the number of burros being shot.

It's also interesting to note that in his initial interview with the investigating officer, the dates Mike Hill said the shootings took place contradicted those given by Mr. Sholly, but two days later he claims to have reviewed "contemporaneous notes" to refresh his memory and changed the dates to coincide and agree with those offered by Mr. Sholly. He had said in his first interview that the killing of burros had started in April of 2006, a full year earlier than the date he came back with of April 2007. He might have simply confused the dates, but then again, since Sholly denied telling him to stop recording his kills, I have to wonder.

Both Mr. Sholly and Mr. Hill testified that the killing was necessitated because they wanted to reintroduce Big Horn Sheep to the park and that they had been told that wouldn't be possible with the burros in place. Mr. Sholly also claims they never went into the park to deliberately hunt for burros, but they were trying to impact on the population by taking targets of opportunity.

The most damming piece of testimony came from State Park Director, Walter D. Dabney. After relaying that he told Mr. Hill and Mr. Sholly they should kill any and all burros on site, he mentions that no other efforts have been made to control the populations in the park since he started. In other words, they haven't attempted to capture or relocate the herd by any of the means normally followed with protected animals.

I'm not really sure how always carrying a gun and shooting any burro you see on site differs from hunting burros. I'm not a Director of State Parks in Texas, so I wouldn't know about such distinctions. All I know is that the burro is a protected animal in the wild and is not to be killed or have its habitat displaced by any other animal. Yet in Texas, the people who are running the parks system are guilty of both crimes.