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Friday, May 30, 2025 – 1:18 PM MDT

Interactive course provides hands-on training from experienced instructors

Idaho Fish and Game will host a trapper education course in Salmon on Saturday, June 21.  The course will be held from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Fish and Game’s regional office at 99 Highway 93 North.

Advanced registration is required, and the class size will be limited.  To register, go online to Fish and Game’s website or visit the Fish and Game office in Salmon.  The cost is $9.75 when registering online or $8.00 in person. Participants must be at least 9 years of age. 

The interactive course provides students with hands-on training from experienced trapping instructors. Basic trapping techniques with safety, ethical trapper behavior, and avoiding non-target catches are emphasized throughout. Other topics covered include trapping regulations, equipment selection and maintenance. 

Idaho trappers who purchased their first trapping license after June 30, 2011, are required to attend a mandatory trapper education course before they can purchase a trapping license. Anyone intending to trap wolves must attend a wolf trapper education course prior to purchasing wolf trapping tags. Those who intend to trap wolves that did not possess an Idaho trapping license prior to 2011 are required to take both trapper and wolf-trapper education courses. 

For more information, contact the Fish and Game office in Salmon at 208-756-2271.

Private property permission, posted signage, and due diligence essential for legal hunting

Lexi Freehill
a day ago

• https://www.townandcountrytoday.com/athabasca-news/alberta-judge-shares-words-of-warning-for-new-hunters-10726792

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00:03:07

ATHABASCA —  An Alberta justice shared words of warning for new hunters after an Edmonton man found himself hit with a fine and night in jail rather than his harvest.

Abdulmohaime Al-Muslimawi appeared in front of Justice Joanne Heudes May 26 in Athabasca Court of Justice to resolve what she described as a string of unfortunate events put in motion by common beginner mistakes.

“It is a series of errors that have all accumulated on you, and made this a horrible experience,” said Heudes.

Al-Muslimawi’s legal counsel Anthony Oliver entered two guilty pleas on behalf of his client, one for petty trespassing and another for unauthorized possession of a deer. The Edmonton-based hunter was charged in March 2025 for an offence committed 101 days earlier.

On Nov. 24, 2024, the newly-licensed Al-Muslimawi was out looking for game in the Athabasca area. While he held a valid provincial license and tag for a whitetail deer, the green hunter mistook unfenced private property for crown land, where he illegally shot a whitetail deer.

“You’re not the first person I’ve talked to that’s mistaken Crown land,” said Heudes. “There’s county maps you can buy up at the county, I recommend one. It will help you see very clearly where you are.”

Nearby individuals who witnessed the event and contacted the landowner stopped Al-Muslimawi as he loaded the deer into his truck, informing him he had harvested the deer from private land with no hunting permitted.

“He stopped right there, he complied with them, and in fact he turned over the deer on site to the civilians,” said Oliver. “They pointed out signage, he observed that, and he accepted responsibility.”

Prior to surrendering his kill, Al-Muslimawi failed to place his tag on the deer, leading to the charge of unauthorized possession of wildlife.

“The deer needs to be tagged right there at the scene. He was going to tag the deer in the truck when he got back to the road, but these guys stopped him immediately. He had the valid tag,” said Oliver.

“Obviously, lessons learned.”

Another mistake more than four months after the hunting errors made Al-Muslimawi’s experience even more eventful. A mix-up in communication around his court date in March led to the issue of a warrant for his arrest.

“He wound up spending a full night in cells, it was a very traumatic experience for him, he has no criminal record,” said Oliver.

Heudes handed the hunter a reduced total of $550 in fines for the offences, noting his stay in jail was beyond the typical consequences for his charges.

“This is his first offence, and I know this is something he certainly didn’t intend, he took every step along the way to try and correct the (wrong) steps; he had a valid tag, he thought it was Crown land. I doubt he’s going to do this again.

“Happy hunting in the future.”

Kate Ryan | kryan@wtop.com

May 31, 2025, 9:18 AM

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• https://wtop.com/virginia/2025/05/virginia-man-sentenced-for-killing-birds-of-prey/

An Accomack County man pleaded guilty in federal court to killing a bald eagle on his property on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.

William Custis Smith of Hallwood was sentenced to a day in jail, 50 hours of community service and nearly $10,000 in fines after entering a guilty plea in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia in March.

According to court documents, Smith admitted to using a trap and a banned neurotoxin to poison fish in order to sicken raptors on his property. On its website, the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources reported that Smith admitted to killing upward of 20 raptors.

The DWR statement said Smith had built a waterfowl impoundment on his property as a way to attract wild ducks. According to Bratton, Smith was an avid duck hunter and was trapping the raptors because they were killing ducks on his property.

Federal court records state that in January 2023, the DWR contacted federal officials at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with information from an anonymous source that a pole trap was spotted near a waterfowl impoundment on property in Hallwood. A pole trap is a post or platform that’s outfitted with a leg-hold trap used to capture birds of prey like hawks, owls or eagles.

In February 2023, investigators from DWR and USFWS visited the property and found the carcass of a juvenile bald eagle.

The investigators seized the bird and set up a camera at the site of the trap.

Necropsy results from the juvenile bald eagle showed that it had been poisoned with the neurotoxin carbofuran — an insecticide that has been banned in the United States since 2008.

In March, a review of the camera footage showed that on Feb. 19, 2023, at 8:47 a.m., a red-tailed hawk landed on the platform and the jaws of the pole trap captured the bird.

Hours later, at 3:13 p.m., court documents state that Smith was recorded bludgeoning the hawk with a pole he had retrieved from the back of his truck. He then removed the carcass from the trap, leaving it on the ground nearby.

Under the plea agreement, Smith admitted to poisoning the bald eagle. Court records explain that “This statement of facts … does not include each and every fact known to Smith or to the United States and it is not intended to be a full enumeration of all of the facts surrounding Smith’s case.”

William Bowerman, a professor of wildlife ecology and toxicology at the University of Maryland, told WTOP that while bald eagles and other raptors are federally protected, it’s not terribly unusual to see cases where people kill them, either by poisoning or shooting them.

He said in many cases, people who keep poultry or livestock will kill raptors out of a desire “to protect what we value from predators.”

There are several federal laws designed to protect wild birds, including the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act of 1940 and the Migratory Bird Treaty Protection Act of 1918.

A first violation of the BGEP Act can carry a fine of $100,000, a year or prison, or both. Penalties increase for additional offenses.

But regarding the potential for substantial jail time in cases where birds are poisoned or killed, Bowerman said, “We’ve not really seen that in our courts.”

USFWS Special Agent Ken Dulik told WTOP that he has witnessed many carbofuran poisonings in his 30-plus years.

“When they go into convulsions, their tail and wings spread out and their head arches over the neck backward,” he said. “It’s a fast and brutal death. Once you’ve seen it, you know what it is.”