30 grand loss lic. 15 years
Elk
Shot two elk in a very difficult eastern Wyoming unit, tried to pass them off as shot in mountainous western Wy.
Thanks to an alert citizen noticing the surroundings didn't match the unit they had tags for, then a call to game and fish got the perps caught.
Pricey 30k and 15 years no license in the majority of USA.
Good that the ban is across the board rather than just wy.
People are dumb as hell.
Low life scum....glad they got busted.
Listening to the intro to their show..."we do things most wouldn't". Yeah, like break the law and steal from those who are waiting their turn to draw a coveted tag, ya piece of $hit.
I just read about a UT man who claimed WY residency and received an $11k fine and loss of licenses in most states for 10 years!
Glad the good guys won this time! Game wardens have a tough job. I bet it's pretty satisfying to nail those two.
I wonder if they smoked em with a Rage in the cage. Mills needs to be fined extra for his stupid camo face paint. How do these loosers sleep at night and look in the mirror in the morning? Hopefully, this type of crap will put an end to the horn porn TV shows and ass clowning that goes on in the hunting industry.
WTF. What a couple of dumb@sses. 51 looks nothing like 113. And I agree, you paint your face like Hawk and Animal you should get an extra douche surcharge.
That's crazy they aired that on television. The area doesn't look remotely close to North Western WY. I've never seen rolling sage brush hills and flats with ponderosa pines, juniper's and pinion pines in NW Wyoming. I didn't watch very much of their video, but none of the scenes I watched even had a mountain in the background (although one of the "hunters" did mention they had to climb a mountain, which was really a small hill).
Not enough. An honest mistake is one thing. Blatant, intentional poaching is quite another.
Glad they got busted. Can't stand knuckleheads like these two.
Yup, douchery at its finest! Glad they were caught and prosecuted.
Meet Loyd and Harry everyone! Wow Dumb and Dumber are real people.
I wonder if the 15 minutes of fame was worth it to them.
Their fame is now, on the wall of shame, because I have not heard of these guys until now.
The quest for fame and hunting notoriety....
Not the first, and unfortunately won't be the last.
That is crazy dumb!
Thanks for the link Huntcell
Good luck, Robb
They killed big bulls on tv so everyone would know who they are. Nailed it!! Sad part is this is not the first time this has happened, and it sure won't be the last. If I understand that right they should have thrown in a good flogging for wasting the meat.
My question is why are there only 43 states participating in this pact?!? They should not be able to hunt at all for 15 years. They will probably just poach again but you have to try.
Peco first one was a rage second was a ramcat in the guts. Both had half the arrow sticking out the entrance side. Some classics on this video. Hiked "10-12" miles into the mountains(rolling hills). After the last guy kills he says,"now I'm nervous". I bet he was, probably had their cheeks puckered all the way back to Kentucky. Kinda makes you wonder about the other guys on that hunting show. Glad I've never seen it until now.
Tried to be heroes, wound up as zeroes!
I watched the end for the kill shots. Ramcat in the gut for sure, and he claims a double lung. Poor penetration on both shots. Everyone involved here should be hammered.
I'm glad the fines were steep. Can't imagine those guys had the money to pay. I'd like to see a follow-up as to whether the money was collected.
SHould have slapped an extra $15k for face paint.
Why wouldn't they have the money to pay the fines ??
It just goes to show you that if you work real hard you get what is coming to you...they got exactly what they deserved.
Fines and loss of hunting privileges are minimal justice.
This crime was not committed to feed a starving family, it was for profit and greed !
IMO, the sentence should have included a year in jail for each year the Elk, lived.
If a poacher's sentence included a year in jail for each year the animal lived, I think there would be a lot less poaching !
I know this may be to cold and harsh to some,
It's just my old .02 :^{
"We work longer, harder, smarter; we do things most won't." Yeah, ok, I think you nailed that last part, might want to rethink the first half though.
What an ugly, ugly picture of pride and ego. Pride and Ego drive us to do things that are self destructive. It's the only disease where the one who possesses it feels great while making everyone around them sick. GB just had a great podcast with Corey J on the book "Ego is the Enemy" - thought it was appropriate to plug it here.
I agree as well, the penalties were nice, but wish they were much steeper.
--Mitch
Having worked in corrections , the last thing we need are people incarcerated for killing elk, deer or whatever illegally . The system is overrun the way it is .
Release the pot smokers, and replace them with trophy poachers. One year for each year the elk lived, times the number of points the elk had. Also fine them $1,000 per inch that the animal scores.
buskill, then we need more prisons.
“I believe the two defendants were driven to get kill shot footage for the television show and that resulted in their making bad decisions,”
For me the thought of losing hunting privileges is more of a deterrent than anything I can think of. I don't think putting them in prison is the way to go. Put them in prison and then they won't be able to pay the fines.
I wonder if the land owner knew what was going on and was payed handsomely?
everyone wants to be the next hunting TV star......so pathetic.
Me, I just want to hunt and be a part of nature, and stay away from the crowds.....
I agree that it would be interesting to see if the landowner knew what's up and made a bunch of money off it . If so , surely that would be some sort of offense.
what do the cops say - 'thank god criminals are so stupid or we'd never catch them.' Props to the alert viewer that went "wtf?" on the supposed location, and huge props to the Wyo FG investigator and game warden Rod Lebert for nailing it down. Can you imagine finding a kill site off of a video way out in the great beyond? Great work! If there was money involved there could have been jail, but the penalties seem pretty commensurate with the crime. As one poster noted though, what's to stop poachers from poaching again? Hopefully Swill and Dumdum are shamed from showing their faces again (I've got them memorized).
Seems like a penalty that fits the crime for a plea deal since they didn't fight it. The fine may be easily covered or a huge burden. For an average guy in his 20's or 30's, its not any easy check to write. They likely lost their pro-hunter careers with their loss of privileges and reputation. They also lose out of many prime years of hunting. Not excusing or minimizing anything they did, but I was taught by a smart man to be careful judging a person soley on their worst day or by their worst action. They crossed the line and paid the price. Hopefully it was a hard lesson that they learned from and others will as well. Fame, ego, & money can be as powerful as any drug.
The face paint was the only cool thing about it!
I totally agree with there was a plea bargain. Since they confessed chances of one are very likely. If they are incarcerated we pay the price. If the fines and restitution are steeper they pay for it. The courts will gladly set up a payment plan for them.
I am not a fan of loosing hunting privileges. I feel too many times its not a deterrent for them to just shoot animals with out a license anyway. I do think it's fitting with the 15 years. There TV careers are over now. Time to get a 8 to 5 job for them.
I also feel that the penalties are adequate. To lose hunting privileges for 15 years in your home state and most (all) western states is huge IMO. Definitely a life altering event for them.
At the beginning of the video they said they were doing a DIY public land and hiked in like 12 miles. I could not take the whole show so skipped to the elk poaching shots. So I guess they moved to private land at some point in the show?
Wouldn't be my kind of show to begin with. Throw in the poaching and it becomes less so.
Wonder how their hunting show partners are feeling about this extra publicity?
"We do what most wont" Part of the intro to the show,,,,,,,
Sickening. I'm ashamed they are from Kentucky. I'm glad our department helped with the investigation. You can be sure they will be watched closely for hunting here. I just did a quick search. These are the 5 states not in the pact in 2015: Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and New Jersey.
I'm retired FW. I'm going to contact a good friend in the NE agency and find out why they don't participate.
It's just a guess, but I doubt the fish and game agency made the decision to not be a part of the pact. I would expect it to be a legislative decision.
I believe a few years back a local (southern region) well known bow hunter filmed his hunts. I was determined after someone in the public, viewing the hunts and checking the scenery, that this guy was hunting in the Yellowstone National Park and tried to get away with it. CAUGHT!
The so called hunting and fishing shows are one big infomercial.don't watch them and getting to the point of not looking at all the hunting magazines much.
Paul:
Here's a link to a Bowsite feature on that story. These two were small time compared to Don Lewis. He went all in. He was caught with multiple muleys in Utah which led to discovering he was killing elk in Yellowstone. Who knows what else was never discovered. He basically hunted the west with no regard for any rules for a decade in his quest for fame.
Vanity, ego, and pride is all it is. I like the SoloHunter guys. They work hard for their animals and they don't always get one. Heck, I've never shot a deer on any of my semi-live hunts. I enjoy telling a good story and posting interesting pictures.
Not just TV hunters who will break the rules to kill something big. I've been told by a few it's not so much what the rules are as what the risk is..... the drive of "success" or "winning" makes cheaters out of many people in many things in life.
How many do such things and will never be caught because they are not filming their hunt and nobody will see it? More than a couple I would bet. And many times they focus on so many petty things like how long it takes for someone to tag their animal and such other trivia while other major things that hurt hunters and the sport itself like this, people do and get away with. Not just once either.....
I tried to watch that video today from the link and was not able. Is it gone or did I just screw up?
I'm sure they pulled it. The show's Facebook is down and their web site has a page explaining they are suspending operations while they decide how to move forward.
Wow that Don Lewis article is crazy. Just mind boggling what some people will do.
Reminds me of a dirtbag bum named Kirt Darner from Colorado years ago. I'm sure a few guys would remember that guy.
Reminds me of a dirtbag bum named Kirt Darner from Colorado years ago. I'm sure a few guys would remember that guy.
Darner fell from grace when the ghost writer of his books exposed that one huge 1977 buck was actually killed in 1948 by someone else and sold to a taxidermist for $5. There was a string of game violations after that culminating in him being caught transporting wild elk across state lines to a game farm and having two sheep heads that were stolen from a taxidermy shop and actually belonged to the DOW. That was just 8-9 years ago.
What astonishes me is that ANYONE, much less guys with a national TV show, can think they can post a video or air a show with a stunt like this and somehow think they're going to get away with it.
Don't kid yourself, this kind of fake crap is going on all the time because the hunting industry wants their products on camera. If the animals don't cooperate and get shot, the show needs to find a way to make it happen. Only a matter of time before this gets people to do illegal sh!t.
I know guys who have outed a fishing show where they claimed to be fishing out on Lake X, but were really fishing Lake Y, less than 10 miles away. Obviously, the resort owner was sponsoring the show, so they wanted all the action to be "on" his lake, but the fish weren't biting. The terrain and shorelin was very similar, but they still got busted.
So if that kind of difference gets noted, how big of a retread tool do you have to be to think you're going to get away with nobody noticing the difference between Eastern and Western WY?
Grouse
What a couple of tools. Hope the private land owner is in for some trouble too if he knew what these two Schleps were up to. Public but kickings for all extra for face paint boy.
Labby, I talked with one of the investigating officers with the WGFD at the Bowhunters of Wyoming banquet this last weekend and the landowner wasn't in on it. He said he was a real stand up guy who had given them permission to hunt deer only and really helped in the investigation.
Good news. Glad he was not in on it. These guys were pretty stupid to think they would get away with it.
they're poachers - if he wants to, he'll hunt/kill again this fall illegally until the prison time is substantial, the risk/rewards of poached weigh in favor of poaching
