Poaching: Who does it, and why?

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f you shoot a couple extra does or bucks with messed up racks, is that poaching? if said landowner eats every scrap?
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I do believe that to be poaching. If we let every landowner play "wildlife biologist" I have a feeling that, despite their possible good intentions, the negatives would outweigh he good. Last I checked, the regulations didn't permit landowners to shoot deer with "messed up" racks or "extra" does. My family operates a large cattle ranch in south central South Dakota. I know I "could" easily get away with the behavior you've described....but I don't. I buy a tag and hunt the same way everyone else does....legally. If you have excessive deer, most states have depredation programs to help you address the problem. However, that usually doesn't give ANYONE, landowner or not , carte blanche to shoot whatever deer they see fit, regardless of what they do with it after the fact. I consider such acts poaching just as I would spotlighting deer on the neighbor's roperty. Having "good intentions" doesn't excuse one from following the same laws as everyone else does. Excess does sounds like a great oprotunity to allow some kids to hunt on your land or something. Why not give SOMEONE ELSE the chance to kill these "excess" deer? There are lawful and ethical ways to manage deer on your own land that don't involve the landowners blasting whatever they feel justified in killing. Depredation programs and allowing "other" hunters being two of the primary ones. I look upon both as far better solutions than the landowner taking matters into his own hands, law be damned.

I have a challenge for THR members
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Unless that challenge includes looking for a job or purchasing a hunting/fishing license so one can legally acquire meat, I'm not the least bit interested. As for the argument "theres no jobs here".....relocation seems like a prudent idea iff there is absolutely no opprotunity for gainful employment in your current location. Like I said, here, we have unemployment below 3%. Anyone able bodied enough to handle a downed big game animal or take to the woods is able-bodied enough to get a job and work. One of your options is "you can eat meat you poached" Why not include "You can eat meat you lawfully took during hunting seasons following the regulations set forth by the state?" Its not as though poaching is the ONLY way to obtain game
 
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Here's a scenario to consider:
How many of you feel shooting an obviously sick,diseased, injured, or wounded deer to end its suffering to be "poaching"? This is one exception I make to the "dont poach unless you are starving" rule. The first few times it happened, the game warden was called and informed of the situation. After a few "You did the right thing" talks, that step isn't necessarily always taken anymore. I was taught you never allow an animal to suffer needlessly, and I believe that particujlar moral obligation supercedes the law....and in my experience, local wardens feel the same, and would rather you save them the trip to do what you could easily do yourself.
 
The real poachers I've encountered in Alaska are a long way from hungry. They own $100,000 airplanes and there only interest is sucking money from out of state hunters on a "guided" hunt. They drop unsuspecting hunters off in national parks, bait [secretly] brown bears for clients [illegal] let clients hunt same day airborne [illegal] waste meat [don't worry I'll come back for the meat]. I've know some that not only did not have a guiding license they didn't even have a license to fly the plane they flew the hunters in with.

Pays good though. Alaska department of F&G confiscates all gear used in a game law violation, including airplanes. I know one poacher who, having lost one $100,000 plane to F&G sensed he was about to lose another said "they ain't getting this one" and set fire to it.
 
Looking through the fence

relocation seems like a prudent idea iff there is absolutely no opprotunity for gainful employment in your current location. Like I said, here, we have unemployment below 3%. Anyone able bodied enough to handle a downed big game animal or take to the woods is able-bodied enough to get a job and work.
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Here in the Ol' South, the Black Belt region(named for the rich black soil), is the poorest area in the United States of America. With the highest rates of poverty and lowest per-capita income. Along with family connections, lack of adequate education, lack of work history, and lack of money, moving to a more vigorous job market is not an option for some people. Like an old bookie told me "you got to have money to make money".

I'm not advocating poaching and I do NOT have a liberal agenda. Desperate people will do whats necessary to eat.
 
Here in CT, we have a major deer overpopulation problem, especially in the southern part of the state. It is largely in part due to the dense population of the state. It provides a lot of edge for deer and decreases viable hunting land. We have one Highway that I take to work where I see herds of deer standing along the edge eating the grass. It's dangerous and problematic. And Lyme disease (named for a town in CT) is a major problem in the area. So much so they have hired sharpshooters to kill deer at night with silencers and night vision. Some liberal towns actually spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on birth control for deer. Given the circumstances around here with deer, it doesn't bother me when people take game outside of regulation.

The same goes for coyotes in this area. They kill pets like mad because of the population of people encroaching into the woods to build homes. I shoot then all on sight and have been contacted by friends to cull the population because they have been so aggressive and brazen even towards humans.

Reading this makes me realize that the population all over the country isn't so high and there are wildlife concerns in other parts. In which case I would be against "hunting outside of regulation."
 
Using the game you kill, or feeding your family from hunting, is absolutely no excuse to poach. It's like saying, "I eat all the food I steal. I don't waste any part of the meat I steal. When I stold Mr. Farmer's cow, my family ate the entire thing and used the hide to make clothes. That's because I'm an ethical person. I steal food to survive. It's my right. If I break the law, it's okay, because I'm special. I won't work, but I will poach. If not for poaching, my family would starve. So, I deserve to do illegally what others don't do because of the law."

It is criminal. A misdemeanor, but still criminal. Criminals do not respect the law and they don't care why the law exists or what damage their criminal behavior creates. Why don't we change the law to where only specific people can poach?
 
Those hard working honest men that poached to feed their wife and children during the depression are now long gone. The idea that there is any significant amount of folks out there in the lower 48 that NEED to poach to feed their family because it is the only feasible means available is foolish. The overall percentage of poaching is done by folks that get caught up in the excitement of seeing a game animal outside the limits of legal hunting, those folks that get thrills from killing things and those folks that are doing it for the mount or money. The majority of these folks are not starving or even hungry. Ask Ted Nugent how hungry he was the two times he got caught. Like most poachers, Ol' Uncle Ted has plenty excuses for why he got caught. Like most poachers he is only trying to justify it to himself. Like most poachers, odds are he stretched the boundaries of legal hunting many times before and after, without getting caught.
 
There are many reasons for poaching. I've read of a group in Texas that sold venison in some sort of underground market. Then there are those who sell the gall bladders of black bear into the Chinese market. Some Indians in some reservations sell elk antlers in velvet into that same market.

Others claim the need for meat because of their poverty. Given the lack of jobs in some areas, it's rational although illegal.

Some will poach trophy animals, commonly as a guide who gets paid a lot of money by an unethical "hunter".

Going back almost fifty years, I used what I'd learned during WW II from my grandfather's teaching about carrying capacity of the land. I moved back to the old family ranch to discover way too many deer on the place. At the time, the state of Texas did not recognize the problem of overpopulation, and had no provision for culling. I culled. Within three to four years, the average body weight of "my" deer increased by 25 to 30 percent. Was that poaching? Technically, yeah. But I was interested in the good of the species, not the absence of proper game management. I note that the Texas Parks & Wildlife Biologists finally caught up to my grandfather's knowledge although forty years behind my own learning.
 
I have "poached" on several occasions throughout the years. One time that I know of was on the old family ranch in NM. We had multiple depredation permits for elk. I was driving past a hay field and caught a group of cows grazing. I shot and killed several of them with the rifle I had with me at the time. That rifle was a .223 using 55 grain ball ammo. It is illegal to use anything smaller than a 6MM (.243) on big game in NM and it's illegal to use full metal jacket ammo for the taking of big game animals. FYI They are quite effective through the head or upper neck.

I shot a bull elk once across a canyon. He went straight down. I dropped down into the canyon to retrieve him and much to my dismay down in the bottom of the canyon was a fence and a no trespass sign! The elk was shot on public land and had slid down the hill and wound up on private land. The ONLY tiny, thin, strip of private land within hundreds of thousands of acres of public land BTW. I was completely unaware of it's existence. This was in the days long before GPS technology was widely available and back then it never occurred to me to have a map, only city boys get lost, right? :rolleyes: In any case the land owner was an absentee owner. I retrieved my elk and moved on out. But that could have had the potential to be a major pain in the legal buttocks under different circumstances.

I'm sure that with the vast amount of hunting I've done over the years that I have unwittingly broken some of the finer details of the local game laws. For instance;

Tagging Bobcat Pelts:
Any person taking a bobcat in New Mexico must present the pelt for
tagging by April 14 or prior to leaving the state—whichever occurs first. Persons presenting a bobcat for
tagging must display a current Trapper License (except residents 11 years of age or younger). Tags may be
obtained from NMDGF regional offices (see page v,
Regional Offices
). Pelts also may be tagged by
New Mexico licensed furbearer dealers—following the policies established by NMDGF.
No person shall transport across state lines, sell, barter or otherwise dispose of any bobcat
pelt taken in New Mexico unless it has been properly tagged.
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If you are going coyote calling in NM as a resident or with your non resident friends and you call in a bobcat the non resident must have a trappers licensee to kill it and must get the pelt tagged before leaving the state...People call in and shoot bobcats all the time, no big deal right? Well it is in NM.

Who would have thunk it? And how many folks would NOT shoot a bobcat on a small game license if they did call in a bobcat? I've known several people who have done it and I didn't know it was a problem for a long time. You have got to read the fine print folks. The devil is in the details.
 
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H&H, while you may have technically broken the law, I feel intent plays a huge roll. You didn't MEAN to shoot that elk on private land. Accidents happen, I'd be loathe to call you a "poacher" for that act. When I think poaching, I don't necessarily consider it the guy who accidentally shot a hen pheasant, honestly believing it to be a rooster when the trigger was pulled, or things along those lines. While technically violations of the law, its a lot different, in my eyes, then spotlighting the big buck everyone in the country has seen two nights before season opens.....I certainly think of the two acts as being considerably different anyway
 
Here in the Ol' South, the Black Belt region(named for the rich black soil), is the poorest area in the United States of America. With the highest rates of poverty and lowest per-capita income. Along with family connections, lack of adequate education, lack of work history, and lack of money, moving to a more vigorous job market is not an option for some people. Like an old bookie told me "you got to have money to make money".

I'm not advocating poaching and I do NOT have a liberal agenda. Desperate people will do whats necessary to eat.
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Alabama also has over 775,000 acres of public hunting land, I believe some is in every county in the state. So I wouldn't say it's a need to poach, it's just a convenience.
We also have over (normally) 900,000 Alabamians on EBT (food stamps) that generally eat better than me. So again, I wouldn't say it's a need to poach, it's just a convenience.
 
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Davek1977 said:
Unless that challenge includes looking for a job or purchasing a hunting/fishing license so one can legally acquire meat, I'm not the least bit interested. As for the argument "theres no jobs here".....relocation seems like a prudent idea iff there is absolutely no opprotunity for gainful employment in your current location. Like I said, here, we have unemployment below 3%. Anyone able bodied enough to handle a downed big game animal or take to the woods is able-bodied enough to get a job and work. One of your options is "you can eat meat you poached" Why not include "You can eat meat you lawfully took during hunting seasons following the regulations set forth by the state?" Its not as though poaching is the ONLY way to obtain game
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If they don't have have a job, how are they supposed to afford relocation?

Also, one of the biggest misconceptions people who haven't been there recently have about unemployment is that the solution is as simple as sauntering into the nearest fast food joint for a new job. I remember a few years ago McDonalds launched a PR/hiring campaign where they sought to fill something like 50,000 positions nation wide. They hired 60k but still had to reject nearly a million applicants.

I'm not justifying poaching, of course. I just tire of the cliche bootstrap rhetoric that the employed perpetually spout about the unemployed.
 
Some folks who have a job do not qualify for food stamps. Nutrition Assistance, as the government calls it, is probably not the solution to the problem. To me it's the give a fish and teach to fish deal. To me and it propagates its self and keeps the ones who can on the government teat along with the ones who can't. Now we are in a topic grey area.

The OP asks why and who poaches. I threw out some examples just as stated in my first post on this thread. Some argue that there is no reason to poach. I argue that there may be a reason.
 
i have never had to kill any thing to eat, but what i kill hunting we eat, so poaching is not a issue with me, but my father told me that during the depression things were realy hard, his dad died in the coal mines in 1926 and that left his mother,my grandmother to raise two sons and she died in 1932. they went to live with a aunt and uncle who had children of their own and things were bad untill 1938 when my uncle and dad moved out and found work in a mill and they slept in the mill untill they saved enough to rent a room. he met my mother in 1940 and her dad allowed him and his brother to stay in the celler, dad married my mother in june 1941 and my uncle went back to the coal mines, when the war started they both enlisted and they said after the war was the first time in their lives things got good for them, kendell died in 2001, mother died in 2003 and dad died in 2007.my dad never said he poached, but if he had i would have helped if i could have. go talk to people or their children that lived thru that time to get a real sense of real hard times. i,m not make excuses for poachers but there were and are times when it was a no brainer. eastbank.
 
It should be mentioned that if one has access to undeveloped land and one is truly desperate and protein deficient, there are probably ways of getting plenty of protein without violating any laws.

For example, in many states, at least some fish species are fair game year round. Pest animals (pigeons, starlings, groundhog, etc.) are often unregulated. And, if you're truly desperate, insects pack more protein per unit of mass than beef.

On that last point, has anyone else ever thought it a bit ironic that bugs that live on the bottoms of oceans, ponds, and muddy creeks eating rotting meat (lobster, crab, crayfish) are considered delicacies, but bugs that live in your garden eating only vegetable matter (grasshoppers, crickets) are taboo?

It's perfectly possible, that a guy could drown, sink to the bottom of the ocean where he is in turned devoured by lobsters and crabs. Those same critters could then be caught in traps and boiled for well heeled restaurant patrons while they still have partially digested human remains in their digestive tracts. Bon appetite. That'll be a $100 plus tip!
 
Loyalist Dave laid down a great post. It sums up a lot of what I've seen.

My brother-in-law and I still talk about this old guy who came up to us at the gas station one day after the morning hunt. He was a real old guy, local his whole life. He started rambling on about all manner of things.

The best part was when he warned us not to be poaching out in that area. Not that he had a reason to issue such a warning...we've never poached in our lives.

Not two minutes later he was telling us about how he used to squirrel hunt on the property across the road from his house...been hunting it his whole life with the land owners permission. The property was eventually sold to someone else and when he asked them for permission to hunt they declined. He said he told them that he'd been hunting there his whole life and that "if I so much as see one person hunting over here I'll hunt it all I want."

It was hard not to laugh in his face. That's just the mentality some people have. They don't care about property rights. I can't tell you how many times we've had people on our places riding ATV's, riding horses, grazing their horses, hunting, stealing stands, stealing ATV's, burning tractors, setting fires, you name it. These farms are all in west TN and north MS but I imagine it's like that everywhere. Some people just don't care about any rules, and they don't believe that you have rights.
 
Maybe it is just me, but The way I see poachers is they do not respect the animals, other hunters, or game laws in general. The perception I get listening to others talk about poaching or just boasting about hunting is the animals don't have value to them alive or otherwise. I do not know any hard core hunters who are poachers, but lots of slob hunters that would take any shortcut necessary to say they got a buck.

Stories my grandpa told me about feeding the family with whatever meat you can get are from a place that doesn't exist anymore in the us. The poor in America have some of the highest obesities rate anywhere, and that isn't from eating all of the poached wild game either.
 
Stories my grandpa told me about feeding the family with whatever meat you can get are from a place that doesn't exist anymore in the us. The poor in America have some of the highest obesities rate anywhere, and that isn't from eating all of the poached wild game either.
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A lot of that is due to the fact that we in the US no longer have any shame or embarrassment from taking gov handouts, when our legislature debates whether EBT cards can be used in Pot Shops or Strip Clubs we have lost the battle. Personally I'd have less shame standing before a judge for shooting a dry cow or doe than filling up my shelves with taxpayers bought food or having my kids on the school lunch program.
My dad has a lot of stories about living in poverty growing up in the woods of Minnesota and from that I've always valued a job, kept some money in reserve and appreciate my ability to provide for my family.
 
Poaching

I am a life-ling poacher. Started when I was a kid in the hills of northern Georgia. We did it with a .22 for food. A bullet in the eyeball. Later in life I acquired land in Ohio which permitted me to hunt with no license but it was required to check in the deer at a deer station. Never did it. I only shot one deer during the shotgun hunting season (no rifles in Ohio) but took any deer that was within 200 yards of my house. I only shot one buck over the years, a yearling, as I only wanted the meat. I shot does when the fawns were able to take care of themselves or before the rut around the middle of October and only what I could eat. I figured that they were eating my hay pastures so they were mine. Actually, I could have gotten permits to do this but why bother?
 
Art, with respect, those time you poached to cull the herd was not in harmony with sound doctrine. You can't set yourself above state regulations, because by doing so you announce to yourself that you know more about game management than the state. Maybe you do, but I suspect you don't. You can't say the state is wrong and you are right, based simply on your observations. You don't know that the state didn't do its own observations. You don't know that the outcome of your culling did any good for nature's balance.

I'm of the opinion we ought to never make a decision to take action contrary to law. (Too long in LE, I suppose.) It's easy to break game laws and not feel guilt. It's easy to exceed the speed limit on an open road without traffic and feel no guilt. It's easy kill the summer bear raiding your garbage can and not feel guilt. But it's illegal. As long as we have a society that is working to a reasonable degree, no individual should take it upon himself to correct anything if it involves breaking the law. Just because your individual opinion is whatever, and just because you can do it with no change of getting caught, is no reason to disregard the reasons laws exist. No individual can fix a society problem, and no individual can correct a disharmony in nature.
 
Cant stand trespassers ! And those thiefen poacher,s that say they are just feeden there family , Well they allways have money for beer an cigarettes !
 
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