Category Archives: Poaching

Hunters in trouble: Ten ways Minn. hunters run afoul of the law

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  • Article by:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      DOUG SMITH                    , Star Tribune
  • Updated: October 30, 2013 – 8:12 AM

 http://www.startribune.com/sports/outdoors/229794201.html?page=all&prepage=1&c=y#continue

It’s a Top 10 list that’s not funny.

In fact, the 10 most frequent Minnesota hunting violations produce frustration among law enforcement officials and law-abiding hunters because, despite hunter education, fines and even loss of hunting privileges or hunting gear, the violations continue.

“Most people support and comply with the laws,’’ said Ken Soring, Department of Natural Resources enforcement chief. “You can have some of the best days of your life out hunting and fishing with friends and family.

“We ask people to do it right. Those who choose not to, we’re there to hold them accountable.’’

The penalties range from $50 to $300, plus court costs, for misdemeanors, and up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $3,000 for gross misdemeanors.

Here’s the list, and the number of citations or warnings issued in 2012:

No. 1: Trespass » 337 violations

An archery hunter near St. Cloud who recently trespassed on posted private property to recover a  buck he wounded now faces possible gross misdemeanor charges, which could lead to a fine and revocation of his hunting privileges for three years in Minnesota and 37 other states.

“The hunter had been told to stay off the property in the past and admitted to seeing the No Trespassing signs as well,’’ conservation officer Mike Martin said. Because the hunter transported the illegally taken big game, he could have had his vehicle and bow seized, Martin said.

Trespassing  is a frequent complaint for most conservation officers. But the 337 violations tallied last year are the tip of the iceberg.

“Those are just the citations and warnings,’’ Soring said. Officers get lots of phone calls from people asking how to keep trespassers off their land, and from hunters asking how to get access to private land.

These days, with remote trail cameras, cellphones and more people in the woods, it’s riskier than ever to trespass, Soring said. The DNR has used trail camera photos to prosecute trespassers.

No. 2: License, registration or permits not in possession » 245

“When you’re in the field hunting, you need to carry your license with you,’’ Soring said. Conservation officers might give you a break if you left it in your nearby vehicle. “We write a lot of warnings,’’ Soring said.

No. 3: No valid license, registration or permit » 239

In these cases, hunters usually haven’t even bought a license or permit, a flagrant violation resulting in a citation and fine. With licenses now available online and even by phone, conservation officers rarely have sympathy for a hunter without a valid license.

No. 4: Hunting over bait » 225

Despite a law requiring Minnesota hunters convicted of baiting deer to lose their hunting privileges for a year, and possibly their gun or archery equipment, too, baiting violations continue. Last year, officers issued about 166 violations and seized 135 firearms or bows. “I don’t understand how you would relax and enjoy the hunt,” Soring said, knowing you’re hunting over bait and might get caught.

No. 5: Transporting loaded or uncased firearms in a motor vehicle » 222

Because the Legislature greatly relaxed restrictions on transporting uncased firearms, most of these violations are for carrying loaded guns in a vehicle. “The majority of time it’s people trying to cut corners,’’ Soring said. “Some are honest mistakes that could become deadly mistakes.’’ Some violators are poachers.

No. 6: Unplugged shotgun »161

Waterfowl hunters’ shotguns must have plugs in the magazine so their guns hold no more than three shells. The law has been around forever, yet every year many hunters are cited. An easy solution: Put your plug in and leave it in, even when hunting ruffed grouse or pheasants. It’s rare that you’ll ever need more than three shots anyway, Soring said.

No. 7: No blaze orange » 139

The blaze orange requirements for small and big game hunters also has been around for years, too, yet 139 violations were issued last year. “Wearing blaze orange has been shown to greatly increase safety,’’ Soring said.

No. 8: Taking game in a closed season » 126

Taking big game out of season is a gross misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail and $3,000 fine. Hunting small game out of season is a misdemeanor. Some cited last year were waterfowl hunters who didn’t realize shooting ended at 4 p.m. at the beginning of the season. And split waterfowl seasons, which began in 2011, have ensnared some hunters. Another reason to study that DNR regulation book.

No. 9: Untagged deer, fur, traps or nets » 124

Some of these are flagrant violations, people filling deer tags for party members not even in the field, Soring said.

No. 10: No federal waterfowl stamps » 122

A federal “duck stamp’’ has been needed to hunt waterfowl since 1934, yet each fall hunters are cited for not having one. Maybe they’re trying to save the stamp’s $15 cost, but a citation is far more expensive. Federal officials have made buying them easier: Hunters can get them at any post office or sporting goods stores or online.

DEAD MOOSE DISCOVERED, CPW ASKS THE PUBLIC FOR HELP

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DILLON, Colo. – Colorado Parks and Wildlife is seeking information about
the death of a bull moose found Wednesday, near Frey Gulch Road on
Tenderfoot Mountain, east of the shooting range. According to wildlife
officials, the moose died from a gunshot wound and was not field
dressed, leaving the meat to waste.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife urges the public to provide any additional
information that may lead to the person or persons responsible,
including personal photos of any live bull moose seen in the area since
early October.

The animal was discovered during Colorado’s 2nd Rifle hunting season,
however officials believe it was killed in early October, possibly
during the 1st Rifle season, Oct. 12 through 16. Although the
circumstances are currently unknown, officials are investigating the
incident as a possible mistaken or careless kill by an elk hunter.

“We understand that mistaken kills can happen while hunting, but we ask
hunters to let us know right away,” said District Wildlife Manager
Elissa Knox, of Summit County. “Killing an animal without a license,
abandoning and wasting the meat and evading authorities can potentially
lead to felony charges, substantial fines, prison time and a lifetime
suspension of hunting privileges in Colorado as well as 38 other
states.”

Knox adds that if officers have to track down individuals in cases like
this, they will likely face the maximum penalties. She says that
officers will take prompt self-reporting into consideration and
encourages the person responsible in this incident to contact wildlife
officials as soon as possible.

In recent years, Colorado wildlife officers have investigated a number
of incidents involving the misidentification of moose for an elk.
Hunters are reminded to always be 100 percent sure of their target
before they shoot and notify officials immediately if they have killed
the wrong species.

Anyone with information that can help in this investigation can contact
Operation Game Thief, a wildlife tips hotline at 877-265-6648 . Callers
will remain anonymous and cash rewards may be given if the information
leads to a conviction.

For more information about Operation Game Thief, go to
http://www.wildlife.state.co.us/RulesRegs/LawEnforcement/OperationGameThief/Pag
es/OGT.aspx
<http://www.wildlife.state.co.us/RulesRegs/LawEnforcement/OperationGameT hief/Pages/OGT.aspx>

Colorado Parks and Wildlife manages 42 state parks, all of Colorado’s
wildlife, more than 300 state wildlife areas and a host of recreational
programs. To learn more, please visit cpw.state.co.us
<http://cpw.state.co.us/&gt; .

Moose Photo Copyright Jim Robertson

Moose Photo Copyright Jim Robertson

Poachers Try To Hack Data From Rare Tiger’s GPS Collar

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How often do you supposed this happen with collared wolves?

http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/poachers-try-hack-data-rare-tigers-gps-collar

The endangered tiger has been moved to a new reserve.

By Kelsey D. Atherton 10.18.2013

          Tiger hunter with dead tiger
    A Tiger Hunter And His Prize
    Taken generations ago, before tiger hunting was banned.
    Raikut, via Wikimedia Commons

There are fewer than 2,500 Bengal tigers left in the wild. To keep an eye on this endangered species, conservationists at the 210-square-mile Panna Tiger Reserve in India attached a GPS tracking collar to one of the park’s tigers this past February. Only three people have legal access to the location data for the tagged tiger. That data is emailed to the three people in charge of watching the tiger, and in July, poachers attempted to break into that email and find the tiger.

Dead tigers fetch a high price on the black market, with individual parts going for up to $2,000 and whole tigers priced at $50,000. Tracking the tiger is useful, but if the poachers can access the location information, it suddenly becomes a massive liability. Fortunately, in this case encryption and email security kept the poachers out, but that doesn’t mean more talented poachers couldn’t break through in the future.

In the meantime, the tiger was transferred to a new reserve for protection. There, it is followed by a team of wildlife officials, whose presence should be enough to deter poachers—a physical solution to a cyber problem.

Reports of bullet-riddled raptors increase as bird season opens

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One had bullet holes through its wing feathers, narrowly missing the humerus bone. Another had a body peppered with lead shot. They were the lucky ones.

Red-tailed hawks and other raptors fall as unintended or illegal targets each October as upland game bird season resumes in Montana. Those that survive the blast occasionally wind up in the care of raptor rehabilitators like Rob Domenech of Wild Skies Raptor Center.

“Most of it goes untold because the birds just drop and that’s it – end of story,” Domenech said. “But last week, I got a call from the manager at the Missoula landfill who had a raptor there. He found it right near the scale house. We think it was shot in that area, because it couldn’t have gone too far with those pellets all over its body. It was lead shot, probably for upland game birds.”

The hawk is slowly recovering at a clinic on Missoula’s south side under the care of Brooke Tanner, a licensed raptor rehabilitator.

“This one was the worst I’ve seen in all my years doing rehab,” Tanner said. “Usually it’s one piece of metal. This bird had nine. It must have been far enough away because the injuries were superficial. But the bird had been on the ground several days, and the wounds smelled pretty bad. We’ll let the bones heal and treat for infection before we try to dig out the pellets.”

Tanner has also treated owls, crows and numerous other non-game birds for firearms injuries. The red-tailed hawk with the blasted wing feathers was still able to fly, so she left it in the wild.

Federal law and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act prohibit the killing of migratory raptors such as red-tailed and rough-legged hawks, and all owls. Crows don’t have that kind of protection, but most of the corvids Tanner’s seen were shot inside Missoula’s city limits, where discharging firearms is illegal.

“I get several crows every year when the babies are fledging and they’re pretty vocal,” Tanner said. “People don’t like the noise.”

With raptors, the problem may be a mistaken assumption that the birds of prey compete with two-legged hunters for pheasants and other game birds.

“Rough-legged hawks are not predators of upland birds,” said Ben Deeble, president of the Big Sky Upland Bird Association. “They have a real small foot, and eat nothing but smaller rodents. Red-tailed hawks are more generalist, and they catch the occasional upland bird. But we don’t consider hawks to be a predation problem where there’s good habitat.”

Most hawks seek mice and voles that compete with pheasants for forage in fields and meadows. Golden eagles will kill game birds, but there aren’t many of them in the Missoula or Mission valleys where bird hunters are active.

Pheasant season started Oct. 12, while other upland game birds like grouse and partridge have been legal since Sept. 1.

“Among some, there’s sentiment raptors are big birds that kill things and don’t have much other purpose,” Domenech said. “There’s some anti-predator sentiment out there. It’s disheartening someone would kill these birds. This (birdshot hawk) is a young bird, and they have 60 (percent) or 70 percent mortality in their first year of life anyway. It’s tough out there if you’re a raptor. All it takes is one bad person with a shotgun and they take out a lot of hawks.”

Austrian hunter’s obsession turns to murder

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skulls

[My neighbor has a skull like this hanging in his barn. Those pictured here were poached by the Austrian hunter featured below.]

http://www.sfgate.com/news/science/article/Austrian-hunter-s-obsession-turns-to-murder-4826751.php#photo-5206406

By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press

Thursday, September 19, 2013

GROSSPRIEL, Austria (AP) — In Austria, hunting deer and wild boar is a hallowed way of life [way of death, more like, but anyway], one that follows age-old codes of honor [ahem, honor among killers?] and requires a license bestowed only after passing rigorous exams. In that exalted world, Alois Huber was a brazen outlaw even before he went on a murderous rampage that left four people dead.

Not only did he poach game illegally in the middle of the night, he violated one of hunting’s most sacred rules: Kill for meat, not just the trophy of the wild animal’s head. [“Sacred”? There’s nothing sacred about killing.]

Huber shot countless deer in the forests outside Vienna, sawed off their antlered heads to mount at home — and left their decapitated bodies to rot in the underbrush.

Until this week.

Police had gotten wind of Huber’s nocturnal poaching and went to confront him in the early hours of Tuesday. Enraged, Huber’s illegal hunting turned to murder: He embarked on a shooting rampage that left three officers and a paramedic dead. Then he set his farmhouse bunker full of trophies on fire, and killed himself with a gunshot to the head. It was one of the worst multiple slayings in Austria’s postwar history.

Villagers are baffled by the shocking violence — and say Huber led a double life. They describe the trucker as an upstanding neighbor, a welcome guest at birthday parties who gladly helped out when asked for a favor.

“He was a quiet, pleasant person who never did anyone any harm,” said Adelheid Wieder, just hours after Huber’s charred body was found. “Nobody imagined that he could be so without scruples and so aggressive.”

But Huber had good reason to keep his passion a secret: Poaching is severely punished in this tightly regulated country where it can draw up to three years in prison.

Hunters are licensed only after passing exams that test their knowledge of weapons, ballistics, hunting traditions, different kinds of game and their diseases — and a host of other disciplines. Police followed up on more than 300 reported hunting violations last year.

Among licensed hunters, rogues are held in the highest contempt.

Interior Ministry spokesman Karl-Heinz Grundboeck says that police moved in on Huber after monitoring phone calls in which he acknowledged being the illegal trophy hunter being sought in the vicinity of Annaberg, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of Vienna. Additionally, said Grundboeck, a search of his farm on the outskirts of the village of Grosspriel turned up hundreds of deer antlers and other game trophies — and about 100 guns, “many taken from other hunters’ huts.”

“We have no doubt that we found our man,” he told The Associated Press.

State Prosecutor Michaela Schnell says Huber is suspected in the illegal killing of numerous stags since 2005 and is also thought to have been the masked man who attacked a hunter with a knife two years ago, in what investigators now consider attempted murder.

In past centuries, poachers in Austria were often seen as cunning Robin Hood-like figures outwitting the noble owners of lands that they illegally hunted on for food.  Now, says expert Roland Girtler, some “drive in the night with SUVs in the forest, blind the game so that it stands still and then shoot. That is pathetic.”

No one in Grosspriel or the cluster of surrounding hamlets about 70 kilometers (40 miles) west of Vienna suggests that Huber used such methods.

They describe the 55-year-old as an expert who hunted legally and whose hobby turned into an obsession after his wife died about 15 years ago, leaving the childless widower with no close family. Those willing to talk about him after the trauma left by his rampage still don’t believe that he was the man leaving the headless carcasses of deer in his wake.

“We often went hunting for rabbits and pheasant,” says innkeeper Martin Jaeger between bites of schnitzel and gulps of cloudy wheat beer. “There was never any talk of poaching.”

For experts, analyzing Huber’s motives without knowing him is difficult. Speculation runs freely. But psychiatrist Reinhard Haller says his rampage could have been linked in part to a romantic view of himself as a poacher of old on the run from repressive authorities.

From the start of his illicit hunts to his standoff with police, it was a “struggle to see who is better,” he told the Austria Press Agency, describing Huber’s suicide as “an expression of his determination not to accept defeat.”

Some of Huber’s last words as police closed in support that image of a defiant outlaw proud of his illegal shoots.

“I am the poacher of Annaberg,” he told his friend, Herbert Huthansl, by cellphone, in comments cited by the daily Kronen Zeitung.

“They’re not going to get me.”

Two Rangers Killed by Tiger Poachers-Thailand

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90823_Pred_ATACS

Sep 13 (23 hours ago)

JANJIRA PONGRAI
THE NATION September 14, 2013 1:00 am

TWO FOREST rangers were killed and two others seriously injured in the
latest fierce gun battle in Tak with a group of tiger hunters.

The latest loss has raised the number of casualties among men hired to
protect against wildlife poaching and tree cutting. Since 2009, 42 forest
rangers have been killed on duty and 48 others injured, 22 of them
seriously, according to statistics from the National Park, Wildlife and
Plant Conservation Department.

The hunters were believed to be members of a Hmong hilltribe gang active in
the Thungyai Naresuan and Huai Kha Khaeng wildlife sanctuaries in Tak’s
Umphang district.

The fatal armed clash took place on Thursday night in the eastern section of
Thungyai Naresuan. The forest rangers, assisted by soldiers and local
administrative officials, had followed the hunters since Monday after the
carcass of a boar was found in the forest, according to the department’s
deputy director-general, Theerapat Prayurasiddhi. He said the carcass of the
boar, killed by poisoning, was believed to be used as bait by the tiger
hunters.

Theerapat said the hunters opened fire first and a gunfight ensued. Four
forest rangers were seriously injured in the clash and were sent to Tak’s
Mae Sot Hospital. Two of them were pronounced dead – Boonsri Inthapanya, 51,
and Anthong Ngamying, 22. The injured rangers were identified as Piriya
Khaoluang, 35, and Sanan Ongkarn, 54.

One hunter was shot dead during the gunfight. His identity remained unknown.

The hunters, believed to number five, were heavily |armed with AK-47 assault
|rifles and carbine automatic rifles. Four other hunters managed to flee the
scene, and some of them were believed to have suffered injuries, according
to Theerapat. He expressed his condolences to family members of the slain
rangers, adding that they would get “full assistance” from the department.

The senior official also said the department had begun implementing a policy
of buying life-insurance policies for its forest rangers, as part of
increased employment benefits.

The department has about 20,000 forest rangers.

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Two-forest-rangers-killed-in-gun-ba
ttle-with-tiger-30214823.html