Poachers

Four 19-year-old punks plead guilty to killing or wounding more than a dozen deer, protected birds and other wildlife. Fish and Game conservation officer Mark Sands received a call that led him to a dead muley that was left to rot. I ran into Mark Sands a couple of weeks prior to this incident at the Boise Sportsman’s Show. “What kinds of people poach? People poach for greed, they do it for ego, it makes them feel good and some people just can’t help themselves. How much is not wanting to pay the license fee? It is a small portion. Some people just see that big animal and they just can’t help themselves, they gotta have it, they have to put it on the wall. How prevalent is poaching nationally? Very prevalent, pretty common. We only catch a small fraction of what goes on out there. How do you investigate? How do you catch them? Usually an investigation starts with a tip. Somebody is bragging and somebody overhears it and then sometimes anonymously tell us about it and we start from there. We start asking questions. If you have an animal that is headless we can take a DNA sample from the carcass, we have a lab, if we come across the antlers we can match them with the DNA sample. So loose lips sink ships? Exactly. Somebody is sitting next to somebody else in the bar and says oh you should see what I got? Exactly.