Interesting, I've been hunting just a little bit longer than you. My first deer season was 1964. Anyway, since then everytime I ever heard the term poacher it was the Robin Hood story or generally associated with people sneaking onto a preseve in Africa or some foreign place to kill some highly valued animal either for a trophy or e.g. a rhino horn or for elephant ivory. It always envolved somebody killing in an area they were'nt supposed to be and always a pretty serious thing. Nothing to do with some trivial game violation. Locally it was somebody hunting on posted property.

Now with regard to what to call somebody who kills a deer out of season or takes more than their limit. Well regardless of where they do it I call them jerks. If they do it on their own property I wouldn't call them a poacher though but certainly guilty of game violations and should be prosecuted. I don't know that thereare specific names for every crime. Just curious, what do you call somebody who purposely drives through stop signs? You certainly wouldn't call them a "speeder" would you? To me poaching is a specific violation not a general one. It means hunting where you are not legally supposed to be hunting. If you're doing that, whether you kill anything or not, I would call you a poacher. If that's not the offense than imo you're not poaching anymore than the guy that went through the stop sign is a speeder.

Anyway, I don't use the term poacher either but it has kind of suprised me for a while now since I've been reading posts here that many use it in a way that has seemed pretty strange to me.It seems to just mean the same thing asgame law violator. I've always thought of it as something more specific and something more severe than, again some trivial violation. That's one of the reasons I brought it up. Oh well, to each his own but when/if you read my posts and you see the term poacher, I will mean the 1st useage of the definition in the dictionary and tresspassing is implied.