County officials shoot wrong bird, pay fine .........................

October 30, 2006

BY ABDON M. PALLASCH Staff Reporter

The superintendent of Cook County's Forest Preserve and an aide had to appear in court in Antioch earlier this month after they were caught shooting the wrong duck.

Supt. Steve Bylina and his staff are responsible for stewarding the county's largest tracts of wildlife-filled, undeveloped land.

On Sept. 9, the opening day of teal duck-hunting season, Bylina and Maintenance Supt. Richard Bono were on a pond near the Wisconsin border when a formation of ducks appeared overhead. Teal, like geese, fly south for the winter early.

Bono assumed they were teal ducks and shot one, said Cook County Forest Preserve District spokesman Steve Mayberry.

$150 fines

An officer of the Illinois Conservation Police retrieved the duck and showed them it was actually a wood duck, which was not yet legal to hunt. He issued tickets to both men.

Bylina is an avid hunter and knows the rules pretty well, Mayberry said after speaking to Bylina at his downstate hunting lodge last week.

Bylina and Bono appeared in court Oct. 10 and each agreed to pay $150 fines, Mayberry said.

Bylina served as the City of Chicago's forestry chief before taking over the $143,000-a-year forest preserve superintendent's spot. Bono, active in Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan's 13th Ward Democratic Organization, joined the county in 1997 and is an $80,000-a-year maintenance supervisor.