By Brian McCombie
The man Wyoming game officials dubbed the “Riverton Rabbit Rustler” was caught shooting 11 cottontail rabbits out of season near Riverton, Wyo. In court, the Rabbit Rustler fessed up, so the judge fined him $410, gave him a year’s probation, and yanked his hunting and fishing privileges for three years. Then the judge really put the hammer down, assessing the Rabbit Rustler an additional $200 per bunny as a wildlife “restitution” fee. The Rabbit Rustler’s tab totaled $2,610—some pricey hasenpfeffer.
To make game thieves pay, Wyoming now has a full slate of wildlife restitution values, including $25,000 for killing an endangered grizzly, $15,000 for a bighorn sheep, $6,000 per elk and $4,000 per deer. Wyoming uses a multi-criteria formula to determine a wild animal’s worth to the state. According to Erin Smith, Wyoming Game and Fish Department spokesperson, those criteria include hunter expenditures for a particular species “and other commercial expenditures, like taxidermy and outfitter costs.”
Scott Vaca, assistant chief of wildlife enforcement for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, says, “The basic premise is that you’re reimbursing the state for the cost of growing the animals, whether it’s fish or bird or big game.”
When Texas revamped its restitution values in 2004, a special calculation
was made for trophy big game. First, there’s a base value of $881
for mule deer, whitetails and pronghorn antelope, and $4,780 for a
desert bighorn sheep. Then, the price tag goes up, depending on where
the animal falls on the Boone and Crockett Club (B&C) scale. For
deer, the “trophy” designation kicks in for any buck toting antlers
over 100 inches. The formula is: Recovery Value=(gross score-100)2x$1.65,
plus the deer’s base value. A poacher found guilty of taking a 140
B&C deer in Texas, for example, will have to pay a civil fine
of $3,521. That is: 140-100=40, squared (1,600), and then multiplied
by $1.65, which comes to $2,640, plus the base value of $881.
“A 178-inch deer breaks the $10,000 threshold,” says Vaca. “It comes
to $10,038.60. That’s a good South Texas deer. People know about
those big fine amounts. They make the newspapers, so the large recovery
values do help, as far as being a deterrent.”
Big restitution fines made state media outlets in December 2007, when
Texas wardens arrested a deer-poaching ring that had killed at least
27 deer. In addition to the numerous criminal charges (over 240),
the 20 defendants were levied wildlife restitution fees totaling $15,000.
An increasing number of states now use these civil restitution values,
which typically far exceed the criminal fines. Ohio, for example,
instituted new wildlife values in March 2008, and state hunters helped
make that happen. According to Ken Fitz, Ohio Department of Natural
Resources law enforcement, several years ago Ohio wardens nabbed a
half dozen guys who’d poached over 30 deer. The poachers received
hefty fines, lost a vehicle and hunting privileges. Hunters complained
to the DNR that the poachers got hit hard, but not hard enough, says
Fitz. Several massive bucks taken by poachers only highlighted the
larger problem. “When a guy was killing a trophy deer that might be
worth $20,000, we were getting $400 out of him through the courts,”
says Fitz.
But what’s a trophy buck worth? To find out, DNR staff researched
exotic animal auctions and high-fence hunting operations.