RE: Nice Work RSB
Thanks Guys!
This definitely was one of the better cases of my career and it has been along time past due for this bunch. I have known for a long time that these guys were killing illegal deer but all I ever managed in the past was to scratch the surface of what all they were up to. They had a pretty good system set up, but this time I got lucky and managed to get other Officers in position to keep them from getting the evidence of their illegal deer covered up before we could get to the evidence.
The snow cover on the ground was also a big help because we could use it to sort the truth out of their fairy-tails. In fact, if it hasn’t been for the snow I likely wouldn’t have found the first two guys hiding with the dead deer that started it all. Then they had good stories about having killed their deer in units for which they did have license but of course with snow on the ground we were able to find the real kill sites in the wrong unit and over twenty miles away from the right unit.
I think there is a good possibility that they even had another three deer hid in the woods that I didn’t find that day. Some hunters found three field dressed deer hid in the woods near a gated road on the National Forest between the location of their camp and the cooler they stored deer in about ten miles away. I suspect they probably had killed those deer earlier in the day and hid them there to be picked up when taking deer to the cooler that night. I wish I had been in a position to prove those other deer on this crew but that just wasn't a possibility by the time the deer were dicovered.
The worst part was that they should all have been individually found guilty of even more deer and with even higher fines. The good news is that they will all lose their hunting privileges in this state and if they do return it will be a lot easier to convict them in the future. What would really be nice though would be to have the violators compact with other states so these guys couldn’t hunt the other states and kill illegally there while they are out of business here in Penna.
In any event it turned into a bad season for those guysand hopefully the legal hunters will have a better chance for success in the future with these guys out of action for a while.
R.S. Bodenhorn