OREGON HAS A POACHING PROBLEM, and it is getting worse. In the Medford Mail Tribune (9/16/14) it was announced that a $10,000.00 reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of some jackass(es) who killed a prime bull elk on the Cascade Ranch in the Lake Creek area. What is particularly troubling is that the bull was killed only for its head & antlers, all the rest of the animal’s prime meat was left to rot, so either the poacher got scared away before s/he could pack out the meat, or the intent was to take the head as a personal trophy, or to sell the head and cape to a taxidermist who will sell the mount to a collector. The motive is probably the latter. I own 70 acres near the 4900 block of Butte Falls Highway and part of it is irrigated. The land backs up to thousands of acres of locked BLM property that extends all the way to Derby Road. It takes me about twenty-minutes to drive there from my home. Back in August of 2012, I was irrigating the property when the smell of death caused me to investigate. The photos here are only two of the elk I found. There were a total of five elk killed, and at least three were bulls. The cows killed had their rear quarters taken, while the bulls had their heads and rear quarters removed. All the rest of the meat was left to rot. On a hunch, I drove my ATV into the BLM property and discovered the remains of two more elk there. Prior to finding the five elk dead on my property, I had found a calf elk that had been killed and left to rot, along with several deer carcasses I found after I discovered the rotting elk. I immediately notified Oregon State Police, who enforce the fish & game laws in Oregon, and they came out to inspect the carnage. No too long after that, they made an arrest of a person named Robert Martin, who they literally caught red-handed gutting a four-point Blacktail buck deer on property he was renting very close to mine. The troopers told me they believed Martin had killed the buck on my property, but they couldn’t prove he’d killed the elk. I ran a criminal background check on Martin and couldn’t believe what I found. This guy was only in his mid-30’s, and he had a criminal record of arrests that floored me! He had multiple arrests for meth (of course), multiple arrests for child endangerment, probably related to his meth use, multiple arrests for felon in possession of a firearm, multiple arrests for wildlife violations and other arrests. The troopers told me they did not find any of the meat from the poached animals, so either he didn’t kill the elk I found on my property and the BLM land adjacent to it, or he sold the meat to locals in order to generate income. Martin was brought to trial, and I was later informed by the troopers that his guns were seized and his hunting rights were terminated (as if that made any difference to him), and he was given a sentence of just 6 days in jail plus a $9,000.00 fine he will probably never pay. The problem in Southern Oregon is the DA and the judges, many of who were locally raised, and the lack of mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines where poaching is concerned. With a criminal record as long as Martin’s, and with sentencing so lenient as in his case, I am relatively certain it will not discourage him or any other poacher from continuing to decimate our local wildlife. Another problem is the general acceptance of poaching by the locals. For years, it was common practice to go out and kill deer or elk out of season to feeds one’s family during the lean winter months when logging activity was low, and if you spend enough time talking to the locals, they will readily admit to this. Well, for the most part, those locals include the district attorney and the judges, so if anything is going to stop poaching, their discretion in bringing charges and giving light sentences, respectively, needs to be taken away from them by passing laws that restrict a DA’s authority to reduce charges and impose mandated minimum sentencing. Arizona had the exact same problem until they passed such laws. For years, sympathetic judges would hear the pleas of convicted poachers, claiming they just needed the meat to feed their starving families, and let them off lightly -- just as the judge in the Robert Martin case did here. But the legislature of Arizona finally had enough, and they passed stringent laws that just about stopped poaching in its tracks. Basically, Arizona law now requires a one-year minimum felony jail sentence, loss of the vehicle being used to poach, loss of the firearm or weapon used, loss of hunting privileges and heavy fines that include reimbursement to the State of Arizona for what it cost to produce the animal illegally taken. After the first couple of mandatory sentences were handed down, poaching in Arizona fell to a very manageable level, and now hunters in Arizona have a much better chance of legally filling their tags. Look again at the Robert Martin case: In Oregon it is a Class C Felony for a felon to be in possession of a firearm, so how come Mr. Martin got only 6 days in jail? Look no further than the DA and the judge, both of whom were probably fed on poached deer and elk when they were growing up! But times have changed, and nowadays we have entitlements called Food Stamps and Welfare, which make the, “I had to feed my family, your Honor”, excuse for poaching completely bogus. Poachers are thieves. When a hunter buys a hunting license and tag, s/he is being ripped off by poachers before they even enter the field. But there is something else few people consider, and that is the day may come when families really do need to eat wild game to survive and there won’t be hardly any left. Wildlife is a public and very valuable resource, and it should get the same protection as a bank gets from bank robbery. Nuff said. Carl F. Worden
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 17:47:06 +0000
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