Theresa Vail might not be a name you recall, but back in 2013 she was making news for becoming the first Miss America contestant to openly show her tattoos.
Now the former Miss Kansas is making news for a whole different reason: illegally shooting and killing an Alaskan grizzly bear.
Vail, the star of Limitless with Theresa Vail on The Outdoor Channel, has been charged with killing the bear back in May without a state bear tag for the animal while shooting her TV show. She reportedly did have one tag to kill a bear, but after hitting one bear with a shot, she fired another to attempt to kill it and ended up knocking off a second bear as well. Whoops!
Reports US News…
Vail also is charged with unsworn falsification, another misdemeanor. Prosecutor Aaron Peterson in a criminal complaint said Vail signed and backdated a big game tag record to make it appear she had purchased the tag before shooting the bear.
Also charged in the case are master guide Michael Wade Renfro, 46, and assistant guide Joseph Andrew Miller, 45. They conspired to cover up Vail’s violation by obtaining the second bear tag after the bears died and submitted wrong information to game authorities, charging documents say.
Renfro’s attorney, Myron Angstman, had this to say about the charges, “It’s an unfortunate event. It was an accidental shooting of a second bear while a person was lawfully engaged in shooting a first bear. Those kinds of things happen once in a great while.”
According to a description of the show on its Web site, Vail, a member of the Army National Guard and an ambassador for Bass Pro Shops, Franchi Shotguns, and the National Rifle Association, “will be in circumstances where she is constantly pushing the limits and testing boundaries.”
Perhaps on this trip she shouldn’t have pushed quite so hard.