Plastic Moose Nabs poachers $16,200

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/nova-scotia/story/2006/07/28/moose-fri.html

A Nova Scotia father and son got their moose last fall.

But the moose they shot fair and square was a plastic decoy set up by conservation officers.

And instead of a freezer full of moose meat, they ended up with fines totalling $16,200.

The Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources has been using a robot moose to nab poachers for several months.

The plastic moose is hidden in the bushes near a country road. Conservation officers sit and wait for hunters to come along.

The Halifax Chronicle-Times said Francis Langille, 52, of Liscomb, N.S., and his son Trevor, 24, of Halifax, pleaded guilty on Thursday to charges of trying to kill a mainland moose last fall and were fined $8,100 each in provincial court.

Poaching sting

The Langilles were two of eight men charged after conservation officers used the robotic decoy in a sting to nab poachers.

Court was told the men were on their way to a deer hunt on Oct. 29 when they spotted the decoy about 65 metres off Liscomb River Road near New Chester in the District of St. Mary's.

Defence lawyer Shawn MacLaughlin told the Chronicle-Herald that out of instinct, the two hunters each fired a single shot from their rifles when they spotted the decoy.

Conservation officers went to the trouble of building a plastic decoy because there are only about 1,000 mainland moose left in the province, making it an endangered species.

It has been illegal to hunt mainland moose in the western end of Nova Scotia since 1936. The ban was extended to the eastern end in 1981.

Anyone convicted under the Endangered Species Act faces a fine of up to $500,000 and a jail term of up to six months.

[Gene_SC]

Well they learned there lesson the hard way.. They will be an example for a long time to all those powder hunters not to stray from the proper game in the proper season. Guess that goes for us small game hunters as well.  I pay the government enough without giving them more.. he he

Gene

[longislandhunter]

A few years ago, up in the catskill mountains where I have my summer home and where I do my deer rifle hunting, a guy shot a moose (there is no moose season in New York) and when caught his defense was that the moose charged and attacked him and he fired in self defense.  He was found guilty and got a huge fine after the autopsy on the moose revealed that all the bullets fired at the moose entered the moose from the "rear"      Funny story to be sure, but the real trajedy is that Moose are extemely rare in NY and the authorities had been watching this one ever since it wandered down from Canada, through the Adirondacks and down into the Catskill Mountains.