According to the game rules, yes, poaching is a crime, but around here I am starting to think that just don't seem too true. A few years ago my sister and her boyfriend were comming home from a friends house. As they were driving they noticed a guy skinning a large 10 point. He had it hanging off his childrens swingset right in front of his trailor (yea, real winner). This was roughly a month before archery season opened. My sisters boyfriend stopped, got out of his truck and walked up to the guy and asked him what was up with the deer. The guy said it was hit by a car but he could see a bullet hole straight through the deer. Well, they came back to my house and decided to call the PGC, they were instructed by the PGC to contact the state police and they would take care of it. We thought that was a little strange but we called the state police and they informed us that wasn't something that they could take care of and we would have to call the PGC. Tried calling back and didn't get an answer. Since then I have a sore spot for the PGC and its laws. This was an obvious poacher, we contacted the PGC and if they would have actually taken care of the problem they may have been able to prevent this from happening again but they chose not to. Kinda hard to have respect for them after that.

We wonder why there is so much poaching/tresspassing, well, its because of instances like the one I described above and the fact that the laws just aren't hard enough on these people.