Prosecute or forgive poacher? How would you handle the following situation?

We were heading to town for an appointment on the last day of the deer season when we discovered an unfamiliar pickup truck parked in the driveway. Snacks in the cab, camouflage gloves, 4x4 in the bed.

Photo shows white pickup truck of poacher in our driveway.

Trespasser's truck in our driveway. Neighbor's tractor and truck on hill, upper right.

Sure looks like a National Forest to me.

“Maybe one of the neighbor’s boys wounded a buck and they’re trying to find it,” I proposed to my wife.

“No, there’s Dave truck up by his tractor.”

We drove over. “Nope. None of us,” the neighbor reported. “I was wondering what that truck was doing there.”

Our cameras had captured the truck and license plates, but we went back to the house to make double sure we’d locked all the doors. Finding a strange truck obscured in a hollow on your property brings out the caution flag.

“There they are!” Betsy pointed south. Three people hunched over a dead deer beside a patch of brush. “They must have been behind that cedar when we went by.”

“Well they’ve obviously shot one.” I grabbed my big telephoto zoom before locking the house, then returned to record the action at the scene of the crime. They never looked up at our truck idling above them. The trio was a good 400 yards away through dense grass and sage on the other side of a stream choked with hawthorns. And I was wearing street shoes. Besides, we had plenty of photographic evidence without needing a confrontation with strangers packing rifles.

Photo shows adult showing two teens how to field dress a deer taken without persmission from private property.

Teaching young hunters how to field dress a deer shot while trespassing. Questionable mentoring.

“Looks like two kids with him.”

We hated to ruin a hunt for a youngster, but enabling trespass bordering on poaching was not the kind of hunter training we support, either. We called the poaching hotline.

Long story short, the father claimed one of his teen sons had shot the little buck. They thought they were on Forest Service land. His Garmin GPS provided wrong information. Etc.

But… To reach the spot where they shot the buck they had to drive past an active farmstead, right through the cattle yard, past an obvious metal ranch gate, across a cattle guard, past two small grain fields in which a big tractor announced itself boldly, and over another cattle guard to enter grassland enclosed by an electric fence. In fact, they passed the solar panel and fencer with a big kestrel nesting box towering over it all. No forests in view. No USFS road markers.

In other words, typical Forest Service fencing and scenery, right? Who wouldn’t think this was public hunting land?

PHoto shows four strand elecrict fence surrounding property the prosecute or forgive traspassers entered.

Trespassers had to cross this 4-strand electric fence to reach our "National Forest" property. No clues there.

The Fish & Game officers did a prompt and thorough job collecting evidence. Now, do we want to press charges?

This is the deal. To enforce trespass and trespassing-to-hunt laws, the landowner must press charges. The trespasser called and apologized, begged forgiveness. How could he make it up to us? His boy shot the deer. Did we want the deer? Honest mistake. Etc.

I’m a soft touch. I’ve been fooled myself by confusing borders and un-fenced wild lands near public lands, too. But crossing an electric fence? After driving through a farm yard and grain field?

“He’s lying,” Betsy surmised. “Operating under the 'easier to ask forgiveness than permission' philosophy."

“But the kids. Hate to ruin a kid’s first hunt. Then again, hate to see them learning to fudge the law and cheat…”

The Conservation Officer awaits our decision. Options include: full-on citation for illegal trespass plus trespassing-to-hunt. (The adult would pay a few hundred in fines and court costs, lose his hunting rights for a few years.) Or just trespassing for a much lighter financial penalty. Or just an official written warning to establish a paper trail on the guy. Or nothing.

Photo shows young forkhorn mule deer buck, the size the trespassers shot.

One of the few young mule deer bucks roaming the area will not mature, thanks to our trespassing hunters.

Exacerbating this incident is a deer population that has been struggling to recover from several hard winters. Neither of us even hunted our ranch this year, hoping the few young bucks we'd been watching all summer would grow up. Well, not this one.

Prosecute or forgive poacher. What would you do?

The author and his wife manage a small off-grid ranch for wildlife, controlling invasive weeds, planting native trees, and abating erosion.

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