A Bad Day for Bad Outlaws
Outlaw houndsmen were a big problem for us. Many of them prided themselves in ignoring most hunting laws. They hunted at night during closed hours, they hunted out of season, and they dumped piles of meat scraps in the forests to illegally attract bears. The worst of them shot bears and took only their valuable gall bladders and maybe their feet, leaving the rest to rot. Occasionally we would get lucky and find their “meat piles” or “chum piles” as they’re sometimes known, in which cases we would set traps for them. We would be there when they came to hunt the bears feeding on their illegal bait.
The case illustrated in these photos targeted one of the worst of the outlaw bear hunters, a cruel and violent man who had once beaten his wife unconscious with a metal flashlight and on another occasion he had beaten one of his daughters nearly to death with a metal dog chain. We were there in the forest when he and two others arrived to hunt off his bait pile. As is their practice, he removed just one of his five dogs from his truck and walked it to the bait pile. Known as a “strike dog,” this dog immediately reacted to a “hot scent” at the bait pile. The houndsman released this dog, which raced away in pursuit of the bear, bugling loudly. At this point, all three hunters were guilty of hunting over bait.
My plan was to arrest all three men when they returned to their truck to release the remaining dogs to join the chase. But it didn’t happen that way. Upon seeing us, all three outlaws bolted away into the forest, leaving their open truck, all their gear and four more dogs behind.
We waited for a couple of hours at their truck, during which time I slipped away into the woods and walked a slow and stealthy circle around the whole scene, hoping I could surprise them waiting for us to leave. But I never saw them. When it became obvious that they were not coming back, we called for a tow truck out of Quincy, some 30 miles away to come for the truck. We were seizing the truck and the remaining dogs into evidence.
One of my favorite photos.
Did the outlaws really expect us to get tired of waiting for them and leave? Did they think they could simply return to their truck when we were gone and drive home? Well, as you can see, it didn’t work out that way. Their truck went to the truck jail, and the dogs went to the dog jail, and it turned out to be a very expensive lesson for the bad guys. In addition to the substantial fines they paid when they were convicted of hunting off a bait pile, they had to pay to get their truck out of the impound yard in Quincy, and they had to pay to get their dogs out of an animal control facility.