Moore Outdoors With Chester Moore 01/10/25--Chester talks about the problem of poaching and interviews wildlife criminal investigators.

the show, we're going to talk about that crisis. In the second half, we're going to have an interview with a game warden that will blow your mind about a poaching ring that was just busted. Dolphins are one of America's most beloved animals, from flipper thrilling families on television the nineteen sixties to modern day dolphin encounters the aquariums and resorts. The love affair families have with dolphins is

a strong one. So when game wardens in Orange County, Texas have found a dead dolphin impaled by a fishing arrow, it sent shockwaves across national media outlets. This happened in my hometown, so a couple of days after the incident, I spoke with the local game board. He revealed the type of fishing broadhead used in the incident was only sold at one location in the region, a popular archery shop. He said, quote that has really narrowed down our search.

We'll find out who did this, he said. What official did not expect was that the perpetrators were two teenage brothers who, while both fishing, came across a young dolphin that had wandered into fresh water. So, instead of enjoying seeing the beautiful protected marine mammal and reporting it was in an unusual area, they killed it. This happened only a few miles from my home in twenty fifteen and opened my eyes to a problem few in our industry

have discussed. In my opinion, America has a tar keeen poaching crisis that needs to be addressed in a major way, and it's very, very dark. Less than a year later, a team from Jefferson County, just one county over, was charged for killing two whooping cranes. A judge ordered the nineteen year old to pay twenty six thousand in restitution, barred him from owning or possession of firearms or ammunition, and prohibited him from hunting or fishing in the United States.

He was also sentenced to two hundred hours of community service. Shortly after this made headlines, I asked a Galveston County game warden if she had noticed any trends in game and fish violations among teenagers. The answer blew me away quote, Yes, they need to stop killing our eagles. Take for example, a seventeen year old Harris County, Texas boy who was charging connection with the shooting of a bald eagle near White Oak. By you, it was one of a pair

that actively nested in the area for several years. A bald eagle the symbol of the United States of America. Yes, a bald eagle. The most heinous instance of eagle poaching came from the Pacific Northwest Washington, Fish and Wildlife police said a Sheriff's department officer found evidence of teens purposely hunting for and poaching eagles. This is a quote from

an official press release. Officer Bolton and the deputy searched the area for downed wildlife and soon discovered a relatively fresh dough deer on the hillside near where the suspects had parked four older deer carcasses In various stages of decomposition were found in the same location. The officers learned that one of the young men shot the dough the night before by using a high powered spotlight. The animal was then near the other carcasses in an effort to

bait in and shoot eagles. That's not an incident of an impulsive act of game law violations. That's a calculated effort that involves multiple poaching incidents to purposely kill eagles, most likely for the black market trade and their claws and feathers. Over the last eight years now, multiple other incidents involving teens killing eagles have occurred across the country.

But it's not just eagles and dolphins. An eighteen year old and a twenty three year old we're charged with capturing, harassing, and harming three endangered key deer, the smallest subspecies of whitetail, which is also a federally endangered species. According to a report at Local ten dot com, the eighteen year old said he lured three of them with food, restrained them, and put them in the car in a plan to

take pictures with them. All three deer had to be euthanized due to broken legs, An article at go hunt dot com details two high school age males are guilty of poaching ten mule deer in Macombe County, Montana.

one of the most disturbing incidents he's ever seen. Two seventeen year olds and one boy age sixteen killed at least thirty deer by spotlighting with the headlamp or their car lights, exiting the vehicle in the deer rich area, and opening fire. Officials said they probably wounded many more than could be accounted for. Quote. It was almost like

a video game for them. They did it because they were bored, said Clinton Deneker, a wildlife conservation officer with the Pennsylvania Game Commission, and a press release issued after the Grizzly incident, there is no telling how many deer were killed or wounded, he said, adding that he can

account for at least thirty. A twenty twenty incident in Wisconsin involved multiple teens over the course of a month, killing forty white tails and one horse, all of them were left to rot, and there were numerous other incidents involving dozens of deer and other game killed in similar sprees by teens all around the nation. This is not an indictment of teens. It's not one of those diatribes we often hear in our culture, like the kids these days are rotten. I dedicate much of my life working

with teens. I believe in them and think there are things about the current crop up teams that shows incredible promise for our future. But this team poaching thing has to be addressed, and it has to start with an admission. Most, if not all, of these teens came from hunting families.

While we as hunters rightfully to note that poaching and hunting are actually radically different practices, these kids are familiar with game firearms, and in several instances we're engaged in legal hunting activities when an opportunity to poach came along. That means somewhere down the line, we have to for those of us in the hunting community talk about this issue and find ways to engage it. But we need to ask some questions first. How much does parental influence

play into this? There is no question some of these cases involve a long line of game law violations generationally. Twenty nineteen case from Alaska as a prime example, as a father and his seventeen year old son killed a mother bear and her two babies and a den. What they didn't realize was the bear had a GPS collar on it and a camera to monitor their hibernation habits,

so they got busted in short order. A father who raised his son or daughter to go to the level of killing baby bears in a den shows authority figures can play a large role influencing teen poaching, but it's not the entire answer. Social media notoriety in our culture, some of the most famous people are now famous for only doing something famous or controversial. They haven't actually accomplished anything, but those who are broken laws or done immoral things

and publicize them on social media are famous. Is there a link between social media celebrity in teen poaching? A twenty twenty Texas case was solved because as a team that poached to deer that was well known living in a neighborhood bragged about it on Facebook. Officials believe the aforementioned Pennsylvania teen deer massacre was being communicated behind the scenes through Snapchat. Something else to look at is the

power of suggestion. Social media and traditional outdoors media outlets have unfortunately been a place for dark sentiment regarding wildlife. While we can agree that much of the quote green movement has little to do with actually protecting the environment, some of the rhetoric rallying against it is quite dark and is hauntingly similar to things we're seeing play out

in some of these team cases. A few years back, I encountered several people who use social media and at least one outdoors radio program to suggest shooting dolphins as a cure for ailing flounder populations. And when we come back, we'll talk more about this special investigation of poach. Welcome back to More Outdoors on News Talk five sixty KLVII.

This is Chester Moore talking about an ugly issue in the outdoors, poaching, and we've been talking about what I call the teen poaching crisis, a phenomenon that I literally am the only one that is addressed. I mean, we've had stories about it here there in terms of isolated events, but I'm linking these things together. And if you have any feedback on what I'm calling the teen poaching crisis, please message me at chesteratchestermore dot com. I would love

to hear from you. This was a quote from an email I got when I responded to this on my social media quote. They are always out there in the past is flipping those flounders out of the water and eating them, So we should start killing some of the dolphins. End quote. Interestingly, this radio program that said this broadcasted in the area where the teens shot the dolphin. This idea, by the way, gained a large enough following that I

received multiple emails and social media messages about it. I don't know how many times I've heard things like while meat tastes like bald eagle or spotted owl. Those comments aren't funny and could be damaging to the cause of hunting uttered in front of a non hunter, but could they also influence teams who want to impress adults. It's something to ponder. Games are also something that needs looked at. A few years ago, I received a hunting video game to review in the mail. I'm not a gamer, and

since it was unsolicited, I did not review it. But when I came across this team Poaching crisis, I studied the game. The game had multiple opportunities to kill non game and even endangered animals. Some hunting games are very ethical, with bag limits, seasons, and other aspects of how true hunters conduct themselves. I would even say most hunting games I have seen are not set up in a way that are negative toward animals. But there's another side to it.

There are some games based on survival that have nothing to do with hunting and killing animals as part of it. This includes non game protected and endangered animals, And it makes me circle back to the quote from the warden in the charge of the Pennsylvania case quote it was almost like a video game for them. They did it

because they were bored end quote. Looking into the content of first person shooter games is certainly something we should do as families, and maybe for those of us who work in the hunting industry start looking more seriously at it. There is obviously a gap somewhere in wildlife education and awareness of the penalties for these kinds of atrocities. Teens have had their lives uprooted by the consequences of these

senseless actions. The great news is there are more teens engaged in conservation than there are poaching, and it's time we highlight them even more in media outlets like this one. The Houston Safari Club Foundation education work with Houston and area school districts is a shining example. Teens get to see conservation centric hunting information and are inspired to give back to our natural resources. Programs like Texas Brigades often

do a great job of instilling a conservation ethic. I have personally been inspired to see how mentoring can help teens through our Higher Calling Wildlife expeditions and mentoring program, and one particular occurrence touches directly on this issue. I took fourteen year old Nathan Childis on a quote green hunt for Nubian ibex at a friend's ranch. Instead of a standard rifle, he had a dart gun and the mission was to dart the massive ibex billy that had

jump the fence and gotten into another pasture. After a long afternoon of hunting, Nathan made a perfect shot. He got to inoculate the Ibex against Disease post with some cold photos with it, and helped move it to another pasture. As the sun set on the Texas Hill Country that evening, Nathan said something profound quote, when people teach you the right way to hunt and you get to do things like this, you want to do the right thing to

honor that. I will never poach animals because I respect them too much and want to make sure kids ten years from now can have opportunities like I just had end quote. We can have more testimonies like this, like Nathan's testimony if we invest more time and effort not only into youth education but mentorship. But we also have to dig into what is happening with teens in this

poaching crisis raging across America. Something is influencing teens and not only damage wildlife populations and tarn us to reputation of legal hunters, but it also damages their lives. As an industry that I'm part of, we must confront it is for the sake of the future of wildlife in

our youth. And there's a lot more to poaching, of course, in this team poaching crisis, and I recently had the opportunity to interview a game warden from New York on one of the most shocking poaching incidents I've ever heard. I recently came across a shocking poaching situation that law enforcement officials made a case on in New York and it is absolutely incredible and not in a good way.

The good part of it is the great work of the law enforcement officials of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation and joining us on the program, I have Captain Joshua Verhague and we're going to talk about this shocking case. How did wildlife officials first become aware of this scheme of what was going on?

opportunity to reach some max potentials. So through that these photographers were noticing some other people come into the area as well as as time has progressed and more and more with shed hunting and people become aware of shed hunting online social media groups, through the wildlife photographers and the shed hunting social media groups. Really we're putting it out there that hey, look what I found, Look what

I'm seeing. And so between those two is the individual started noticing gut piles as well as an other suspicious activity and that was reported to us.

out there. And so they commonsense was being done from a remote setting, and what more of a better avenue than wildlife photographers taking pictures of one hundred and sixty one hundred and eighty inch deer, and you could say at wherever they were looking at the size of these deer. It had been going on for a while. Unfortunately, with statute of limitations after the fact, we were limited on

the enforcement. We did have other violations going beyond the statute, but that's just how the law works, and that's okay. We need to work within the confines of the law, and that's fine. So we had estimated that it was going on for about five years, going back to about twenty and eighteen twenty eighteen.

d Chester Moore, Instagram, Hire Calling dot net. My blog goes. Subscribe to that blog. A lot of exclusive stuff there and of course catch me here every Friday sixty seven pm Central Standard Time on news Talk five sixty klv I with More Outdoors. Back to our conversation with the game warden from New York.

are season. What's interesting about this case is the use of social media, which we have seen before, but how the use of the wildlife photographers and the shed hunting groups to specifically target bucks, to use their accounts as well as text messaging threads and specifically target a buck. Hey, this weekend, we're going to go shoot this and whatever the name of the deer was, this one hundred and sixty inch deer, this one hundred and eighty inch buck.

I'm not going to settle for this one hundred and forty inch buck in the area. I want this one the most efficient organized I should say for targeting specific deer. It's not just hey, we're going to go put some meat in the freezer. This is we're going to go shoot this monster buck on this day because we know it's in this area, because of this wildlife photographer, because of this social media account puts it there two days ago, and so I know, even in the middle of the

rot this deer is relatively close here. We're going to find it, We're going to shoot it.

suburban setting, so using all avenues possible. We did see some potential for hiding smaller bows, compact bows.

person had a bow in their backpack. They also, which I've never seen before, I had walking sticks, and they would hide the arrows within the walking sticks, again to give home that additional level of just being out there and enjoying it. So any individual and probably even law enforcement would not think that they were up to poaching activities.

somebody's really tiny crossbows. But when I noticed it mentioned compact bows, I went and checked out an archery shop. At the smallest bows they had, I'm like, you know, you could fit that in a backpack, you know. So

that was an interesting aspect of this. Now in terms of the individuals and maybe some of the other things you looked at, did you get any sense that this might have been part of the reason they did it, was the thrill of going in and doing this and particularly targeting certain bucks, or was there any kind of like we're going to sell the racks off of these or anything like that.

it was owned by another entity. The deer after it was shot, because we put the time piece together wobbling as the complainant had told us, in what was on the patch of woods, but not in physically owned by the complainant, but would be what you would consider like, hey, that's my backyard, Like what are you doing. Yes, the individual and the dying deer as it was mortally wounded and eventually deceased not too far from where the complainants sought it would have been in a person's backyard.

that just doesn't make sense. You know, if you're common to this area and you're the wildlife photographer and you've never seen somebody hiking of this nature for you know, the last ten years you've been in there or whatever it is, see something, say something that you know Post nine to eleven is a common thing, even in the Wildlife tract. If it's uncommon, please call your local agency and specific to New York. You know, we get complaints all the time. We get hey, I saw this, and

we love it. If it's at the local diner, coffee shop, gas station. Communication is the only way because you know, majority of your natural resource law enforcement, your game boarder is out there. Were green for a reason to hide, but believe it or not, where we are not out there twenty four to seven and we do need the public's help, and we appreciate it the public's help, and hopefully it's a give back to those people that are doing it the right way.

but they're still holdover fish. Those are fish that are gonna be there three sixty five at some level in our base systems and around the jetties and things. But these tarp and mysterious. As a matter of fact, there's not even that much information about these populations in the part of the Gulf of Mexico and the Western Gulf we're in compared to other species. So let's just kind of dial it back a little bit and down in this southern the very southern tier of the Texas Coast.

You mentioned that these fish will come in, So do you have any fish that are there year around about maybe juveniles and that kind.

to migrate out with them. Once they get to be that size, I feel like these smaller ones will lag behind and they'll get picked off by something big because it's a big ocean out there, and there's bigger fish than tarpin out there, and these little fifteen pounders that try to keep up with these one hundred pounders just wouldn't be able to do it. So they like to find places to stage along along their migration and they'll

sit there. You know, lots of places south of us in Mexico a couple of little mini fisheries, and you know north of us here too, you'll see some juvenile tarpin and some backwaters and stuff that'll ha until hang for a year or two even longer, until they get that size that they can keep up with those big ones. Like I said, we have a good juvenile population here, so tarp and that'll hang out year round. Some months are harder than others to find them, but they're always there.

they'll push through it and they'll come back down. From what I've read and what I have seen, they'll come back down and pass through again, you know. And that's when you get a lot of them very big ones that are hugging the shores and stuff like that, very big ones that are here at the end of the season.

a tarpin if they know tarpin exists. And for Texas anglers, I mean, we have a tarpain alley up here on the upper coast by me, about forty fifty miles from me, down between High Island and San Luis, passed that area. There's some good fishing at different places around Port O'Connor, different pockets of tarpin. But you mentioned something earlier like you could probably catch in July, late July through September tarpin,

particularly on any day out of High Island. But literally in that ninety day window you might have fifteen days you could fish out there. So I'm sure you guys, like everybody in Texas kind of has to work around the weather on this stuff. Yep.

We can always find them. There's a lot of them there. We just need the weather. We need the opportunities is what we really need.

to syite cast those roles fish early. We'll either hang out at the Jed's or hang out a couple of spots I know where the tarpain like to get up and get active in the morning and show themselves and we'll try to sitecast them with artificials, usually early the first two hours of the day two and a half hours day, once the sun gets up a little bit, I'll go and you know, throw a net, get a couple of baits, whether we're doing live bay or dead

bait that day, wherever they've been eating for me lately, and we'll start cruising around and looking for the big ones. And once they get to an area where I know they are, you know, I'll set out, usually one live bait or something or one dead bait something hanging off the back, and I'll have my clients up in the front trying to sitecast rollers or trying to blind cast in the pockets in certain areas where we know they

hang out, and I'll see them on my GPS. You know, they're not always rolling on the top, but I see them on the GPS. I have the side imaging and I'll see them. You know, it's like out to the left, maybe twenty five yards on the GPS, they'll say it's actually feet, so it'll say fifty sixty feet. I'll say, okay, I just saw one pass by on the GPS about fifty feet to the left through a couple of blackcasts in that area. You hook up. Sometimes they hook up,

sometimes they don't. You know, lots of times that fish that I see on the GPS is the first fish of like a twenty fish school, you know, so they cast right in there and hook up real quick. They're not necessarily hooking the one that I saw on the GPS, but they're hooking you know, fish that are there.

two of them are on circle hooks. You know, if you can get the big ones on the circle hooks and they run away from you, you've got a good chance of hooking them because that circle will get them right on the top of the the you know, when they pull it away. But if they eat it coming at you and jump at you, you've got less of a hook up ratio. Just because of the way that circle hook is named.

habitat and environmental issues that we can. You can get this award winning coverage by subscribing to Texas Fishing Games Print Edition six issues a year by calling eight hundred seven five four are going online to fishgame dot com. You can also sign up for three times per week e newsletters. They current on everything affecting fishing, hunting, shooting, camping, and enjoying the glorious great outdoors. On things like the bait Buster. You do any kind of modifications with your hooks?

Are you doing extra sharpening or anything in particular that might help with hook set? Are you just going that comes right out of the factory.

it's like a black nickel hook. I'm not exactly sure they'll quote me on it, but it's a lot sharper of a It doesn't need to be sharpened at all. That thing is ready to go. And my numbers on tarp and have jumped up big time as far as the hookup ratio since using that new style of hooks that they went to, So I don't sharpen anymore.

survive the first jump, or two. We might be onto something you know.