Poaching data

[TSAMP]

As stated above poaching is pretty generalized.

I'd venture to guess more poachers get away each year than get caught. I'd suspect the odds are are 10:1 realistically.

For example. In Iowa, racoons just got opened to year round open season on private land, instead of only during fur harvester season. You wanna guess how many farmers were poaching racoon before this law changed?

 

[Afhunter1]

I was the one who reported these guys.

The “ringleader” pleaded to a loss of license for I think 44 years and 10k in fines. Got off cheap in my opinion.

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[lyingflatlander]

I thankfully don’t have much experience in finding poached animals. I think it mainly falls on private land owners in Northeast WI as the majority of the land is private. A few years ago my brother went Spring turkey hunting on a family friends private farm. On his walk out he found a headless deer on the property from the previous fall. It does happen.

 

[wind gypsy]

As stated above poaching is pretty generalized.

I'd venture to guess more poachers get away each year than get caught. I'd suspect the odds are are 10:1 realistically.

For example. In Iowa, racoons just got opened to year round open season on private land, instead of only during fur harvester season. You wanna guess how many farmers were poaching racoon before this law changed?

I suspect the odds are lower than 10:1.

 

[RS_Non-Res]

I had a local warden indicate that muley mortality was pretty evenly split (30% each) between

Road Kill
Poaching
Legal take.

None dying of old age.
I'm thinking that predation should be in there somewhere though.

 

[TSAMP]

I suspect the odds are lower than 10:1.

Really? There are 2 wardens in my area. I have probably spent 45 plus days in the field and have driven past one twice, and was stopped once at a campground.

I think defining poaching would be useful for this threads purpose. Poaching to me is taking of wildlife on land you don't have permission on, With an unauthorized method of take, an animal that you do not possess a license for, or of which an open season is not currently underway.

 

[Billy Goat]

I suspect the odds are lower than 10:1.

The odds of getting caught?


Just spot lighting at night from the road, I know of more than 10 deer shot around me with no body getting caught.

That's just the blatant, and them leaving a carcass behind.

Not including what gets shot during legal hours/season by trespass.


Sheriff's department has started to take on a lot of the night activities stuff, cause it's frequently involving drugs/alcohol.


Around here, it's probably in the hundreds before you get caught if you don't get caught the first time or two.

 

[ColeyG]

Hot off of the press.

Poachers killed sheep and moose in the Anchorage area. A wildlife photographer helped crack the case.

Two men have been charged and sentenced in the case and a third is wanted on a warrant.

www.adn.com

 

[wind gypsy]

The odds of getting caught?


Just spot lighting at night from the road, I know of more than 10 deer shot around me with no body getting caught.

That's just the blatant, and them leaving a carcass behind.

Not including what gets shot during legal hours/season by trespass.


Sheriff's department has started to take on a lot of the night activities stuff, cause it's frequently involving drugs/alcohol.


Around here, it's probably in the hundreds before you get caught if you don't get caught the first time or two.

Yes, odds of getting caught lower than 1 in 10, depending on the brazenness and stupidity of offender.

 

[IDVortex]

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.

Hey, don't be bringing me into a dumpster fire. I'm already married and get in enough trouble as is.

 

[gbflyer]

I was in the TX Hill Country a few years ago visiting wife’s family. The whitetail deer were everywhere at night, in suburbia and everywhere else, on private property, eating everything in sight and getting ran over causing damage to vehicles daily. On the other side of the coin people hand feeding them in the public parks. Out of control. I wonder if such scenarios lead people to poach because the managing agencies either won’t manage them or can’t because of some municipal BS. It would be difficult not to take matters into hands if the situation wasn’t appropriately managed by authorities.

 

[wind gypsy]

Really? There are 2 wardens in my area. I have probably spent 45 plus days in the field and have driven past one twice, and was stopped once at a campground.

Yes i mean 1 in 10 getting caught seems like much higher odds of getting caught than I'd guess, obviously depending on how blatant/dumb the crime.

I think defining poaching would be useful for this threads purpose. Poaching to me is taking of wildlife on land you don't have permission on, With an unauthorized method of take, an animal that you do not possess a license for, or of which an open season is not currently underway.

The ones for big game that I'd guess are pretty common and more than 90% go unenforced at least in the midwest:
- Baiting when it is illegal
- shooting a little before/after legal shooting hours
- putting someone else's tag on an animal they didn't shoot - in party hunting states this could just mean that person wasn't hunting "in the party" at the time of the kill (using buddies, wife, mom, kid, etc to get extra tags)
- didn't tag animal at all because it could be recovered, processed with minimal risk
- Shooting from roadway/ROW/vehicle
- Firearms in archery season
- Trespass
- Electronic communication

 

[RockAndSage]

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?

Back in the 1990s I briefly worked at one of the largest gun stores in California, in Sacramento, that a lot of law enforcement also frequented. This included officers from CA's Department of Fish & Game. One personally shared with me some poaching horror stories, but what clearly stood out to him was a pretty bad problem with the Hmong population at the time. Completely out-of-season hunts, shooting and bagging anything that moved, including fawns. Incredibly egregious things, that were not just one-offs with a couple of hunters. Not sure if it's still a problem for CA, but it was such a tremendous problem for him at the time that I thought worth mentioning.

 

[wind gypsy]

I was in the TX Hill Country a few years ago visiting wife’s family. The whitetail deer were everywhere at night, in suburbia and everywhere else, on private property, eating everything in sight and getting ran over causing damage to vehicles daily. On the other side of the coin people hand feeding them in the public parks. Out of control. I wonder if such scenarios lead people to poach because the managing agencies either won’t manage them or can’t because of some municipal BS. It would be difficult not to take matters into hands if the situation wasn’t appropriately managed by authorities.

Different world down there. Are tags issued to private landowners based upon existing pops?

I was down for business meetings at a ranch down there late this summer. Box blinds and deer feed/bait at all the county and grocery stores!

 

[wind gypsy]

Back in the 1990s I briefly worked at one of the largest gun stores in California, in Sacramento, that a lot of law enforcement also frequented. This included officers from CA's Department of Fish & Game. One personally shared with me some poaching horror stories, but what clearly stood out to him was a pretty bad problem with the Hmong population at the time. Completely out-of-season hunts, shooting and bagging anything that moved, including fawns. Incredibly egregious things, that were not just one-offs with a couple of hunters. Not sure if it's still a problem for CA, but it was such a tremendous problem for him at the time that I thought worth mentioning.

Ironic you mention that to a Minnesotan. The negative stereotypes have been around up here for decades as well. I have heard less about it lately.

 

[mxgsfmdpx]

In Alaska, near where I'm purchasing a chunk of land for a cabin, there is one of the most popular moose and caribou hunting spots in the state for residents. It's one of the few areas with decent off road vehicle access and potential for 12+ hours one way worth of off-roading distance in several directions. It's also only about a 2 hour drive from the main "parking area" where guys can unload off road vehicles, to Anchorage.

In Alaska the state troopers are who usually enforce the game laws, at least in what I've seen spending 4 weeks there in the last 2 years during hunting seasons. Near this "parking area" is a small diner and fuel station where the troopers frequent.

I was talking with 3 of them over lunch, about how opening weekend went, and how busy things were. They said that on that Sunday alone, from that one parking area, they confiscated 33 sub legal moose bulls, in a unit where spike/fork and 50" 4 brow tine are all legal bulls for residents.

I think we'll never truly know the scale on how bad poaching is, and I'm sure some areas are way worse than others.

 

[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

Someone asked if this picture was from one case—yes. We dubbed it Operation Rosebud (the county where most of the violations happened). It was close to a five year investigation and simultaneously we were working another big case (right side of the barn). Both involved shady outfitters (thankfully former shady outfitters) and numerous shady clients (and a couple of shady taxidermy shops to boot).

We never kidded ourselves that these were the only big cases happening and proved that with numerous large cases that followed.

Poaching is a problem if you're a hunter, it wouldn't be wise to think otherwise.

https://missoulian.com/wildlife-off...cle_12586058-4bb2-5d55-8ea7-4cfa9a771b72.html