Poaching data

[MNGrouser]

Someone on another thread posted a question for @mtwarden and it was suggested THIS thread be started. I'm curious too. Does anyone (our favorite retired Conservation Officer or others) have actual data on what is poached?

I've stumbled upon a couple poached headless bucks when WI had an early antlerless season. Nothing about those bodies suggested trophy white-tail status but, who knows?

I also know, in my time as a prosecutor, most of the poached deer cases were not trophies. More little bucks and does that people wanted the backstraps out of. One high volume prosecution where some young kids wanted to see how many deer they could kill. indifferent to sex of deer or quality of the rack. Drunk, dumb, kids.

Do others have experience or insight?

 

[lyingflatlander]

Is this a deposition thread?

 

[HuntHarder]

Nice try fish cop.

 

[The Harbor Master]

How do you do, fellow hunters?

 

[lyingflatlander]

Conservation has an ethos where poaching of any kind is heavily frowned upon. If you are looking for us to offer a lighter sentence because your client didn’t shoot trophies, please find another forum please.

 

[bozeman]

From a ‘friend’-
2022- 4 elk, 3 mule deer, 6 whitetails, 3 squirrels, 1 coon

2023- 2 elk, 1 cross eyed dog, 2 mule deer, 4 whitetails, 4 coons

Individual Data like this?

 

[Caseknife]

Don't think you will ever get true poaching data. Only get data of caught poachers, the rest is just a guess, maybe educated, maybe not.

 

[BLJ]

From a ‘friend’-
2022- 4 elk, 3 mule deer, 6 whitetails, 3 squirrels, 1 coon

2023- 2 elk, 1 cross eyed dog, 2 mule deer, 4 whitetails, 4 coons

Individual Data like this?

Do coons and cross eyed dogs count as poaching?

 

[wind gypsy]

Drunk, dumb, kids.

Do others have experience or insight?

Yes, a lot of this but plenty of types and reasons:
-Lots of just ignorant hicks who get kicks out of killing for fun.
-Lots of people who aren't avid hunters and look at game laws like speed limits.
-The bowmars, erik van woerkoms, chris bracket types who kill for content and ego fulfillment and the many losers who want to be like them.

 

[amassi]

Lots of bears get poached in California for their galbladdder and other organs that are sold in markets to be used in “eastern medicine”


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[Burnsie]

I poached an egg in 2024

 

[TaperPin]

Humans are greedy - most poaching I’ve known about are people taking what they aren’t supposed to have - species, area, season, size.

What gets me are the record books could care less about what gets listed. There is an active trade in unlisted trophies, originally poached or not. Learning that felt like the trama finding out the Easter bunny, Santa, and the tooth fairy aren’t real.

 

[MNGrouser]

Conservation has an ethos where poaching of any kind is heavily frowned upon. If you are looking for us to offer a lighter sentence because your client didn’t shoot trophies, please find another forum please.

Did you miss the part where I am a prosecutor? I'm on the other side of the table trying to get tougher sentences on cases where defense attorney's, jurors and often judges are the one's not taking fish and game laws seriously.

Holy shit did I step in it with this one!! For the record, @IDVortex was the one who initially suggested it would be interesting to hear @mtwarden 's perspective. That was over on the Outfitters Pay Cash for Pins thread at post #55. Not that I'm trying to blame him or drag him into this fire. I thought it was an interesting question and was genuinely curious of the responses. I didn't expect confessions but I also didn't expect the backlash.

I do agree with @Caseknife that we won't ever really know. My initial post contained my anecdotal evidence from Wisconsin on some headless bucks I discovered while trapping during the DNR's failed initial response to CWD there.

You boys sure do know how to make a guy feel welcomed!

 

[The Harbor Master]

-Lots of people who aren't avid hunters and look at game laws like speed limits.

That's a great way to put it. I've seen that a lot.

 

[Jimmy]

I've never seen poaching, but I've seen some real prospects.

One guy looking at me at 90 yards through his rifle scope when I had an orange hat on in the middle of a clearing. I ducked behind a boulder and waited for him to put his gun down. Took a while. I bet he would poach if he saw something. Beady eyes close together, general appearance of indifference. Likely a prolific litterer. Poor aura. When I waved him up to come talk, he turned and shuffled away. Sounded asthmatic. Lucky I didn't get shot for MY gallbladder.

 

[Billy Goat]

What are we referring to poaching as?


Any game law broken while taking an animal?

Is retrieving an animal shot legally but without permission from a landowner after it crossed a boundary?

Corner crossing?

 

[lyingflatlander]

I was able to get you to state your case prosecutor and I don’t even practice law. Forgive me, as you definitely are one of the good guys. Next time try to elaborate in the preamble. Besides, I only need 18 more messages to lose this lil-rokslider status before they up the tally again.

 

[mtwarden]

In Region Seven (SE MT), where I started and retired, we had the luxury of not having to deal with a lot urban wildlife calls, people causing trouble at one of our parks, etc. This allowed us to focus the vast majority of our case work on more serious violations—multi-defendant, multi-year and multi critter cases.

We certainly wouldn't ignore more minor violations when we ran into them in the field or if called out on one, but our priority was catching the really "bad" guys.

How much poaching is going on? Lots; more than folks would guess I think. We tried very hard to get our cases as much publicity as possible to highlight the extent of the poaching. We used whatever media was available, wardens would setup little booths at their fairs with poached heads and stories attached and we had a "wall of shame" with heads from our bigger, more egregious cases on display at our headquarters.

No one could with any accuracy say exactly how much poaching goes, but I can vouch that it's more than most people think

 

[Bubblehide]

From my experience at one trailhead where I park, deer are poached or attempts to poach (some are really bad shots) happen every year, usually more than once. The vast majority in that spot are very young bucks, that are not yet legal. This spot has lots of the big cats and bears, so the poaching is not helping the herd population nor buck recruitment. I hunted a different spot thus past season and after a few days of humping my butt off (so to speak) I pulled in to this first spot I mentioned for an easy evening hunt. I spotted one spike buck bedded about 100 yards infront of me, and another just like him to my left. It was about 2:00np.m., so I was just sitting in my truck, waiting for evening to close in. One truck passes by me and continues up the canyon. Another slowly creeps by, stops about 50 yards past me as the one spike get up and crosses the meadow. The other spike sees him and joins him, they go up a hill a little and then swing around. Boooom! From the 2 guys barely out of their truck, I yell, they are not legal bucks, barely getting that out and booooom!. It was literally a Donald Trump shot (130) yards for them) and both shots somehow missed both bucks.

I normally backpack in from that spot, so I typically miss the majority of poaching and poaching attempts that occure there, but unfortunately, it is a yearly occurrence. And, yes, I have the Wardens number, and we're on a first name basis.

 

[Hectocotylus]

In Region Seven (SE MT), where I started and retired, we had the luxury of not having to deal with a lot urban wildlife calls, people causing trouble at one of our parks, etc. This allowed us to focus the vast majority of our case work on more serious violations—multi-defendant, multi-year and multi critter cases.

We certainly wouldn't ignore more minor violations when we ran into them in the field or if called out on one, but our priority was catching the really "bad" guys.

How much poaching is going on? Lots; more than folks would guess I think. We tried very hard to get our cases as much publicity as possible to highlight the extent of the poaching. We used whatever media was available, wardens would setup little booths at their fairs with poached heads and stories attached and we had a "wall of shame" with heads from our bigger, more egregious cases on display at our headquarters.

No one could with any accuracy say exactly how much poaching goes, but I can vouch that it's more than most people think

I read a study with collar data on elk and some huge percentages of the animals were poached during the study. Much more than had predators kill them. Maybe we should focus our ire on the poachers rather than complain about predators as much as they might be a factor also.


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