Way to go Kyle!


— It wasn’t the 10 bullets that initially linked the men to the dead antelope and her unborn fawn. It wasn’t the prairie where they dumped her.

It was Facebook.

David W. Erb, 29, wrote about the day on his page, calling it “crazy.” His friend, Dominick R. Apodaca, 19, commented, according to a Wyoming Game and Fish Department media release. While neither referenced the antelope directly, Game and Fish officials used the posts and an anonymous tip to piece together the poaching.

The two men, along with Kevin Wolfe, 21, pleaded guilty in December in connection with the June shooting death.

“In essence, two pronghorn were killed in this crime, because the doe was carrying a full-term fetus,” game warden Kyle Lash said in the release.

A Cheyenne-area landowner called Lash in June to report a dead antelope. Lash found the antelope riddled with bullets from a variety of guns and later received an anonymous tip with a name and possible connection to an antelope poaching.

Looking for more evidence, Lash tried Facebook to see if the name that had been reported posted anything. Lash declined to release the name given to protect the anonymous caller.

“The Facebook page didn’t talk about the antelope but hinted about it,” Lash said.

“The first post started off about how they updated their status and were going out to shoot some guns to release some stress.”

A check of Erb’s Facebook page discovered this posting at 6:55 the morning of the crime: “Goin to shoot some guns to releave (sic) stress havent shoot in 3 years.”

At 5:33 p.m. he added to the original post: “Crazy, crazy s—- lol”. Apodaca replied at 5:55 p.m., “lol it was fun tho.”

The Facebook postings helped identify Apodaca as a suspect, Lash said in the release.

With the comments, Lash collected more information on the other men. Several days later he and other wardens interviewed the men separately. They all confessed to the shooting, Lash said.

Using the Internet, cellphones and social media is becoming more common in law enforcement, said Brian Nesvik, chief game warden for the Game and Fish Department.

The Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation now trains game wardens on how to preserve cellphone pictures and websites, Nesvik said.

A gas field worker near Farson pleaded guilty to killing two antelope by driving into a herd in 2008. He posted photos of carcasses and bragged about the incident online.

In 2009, a Gillette man was also fined $6,000 for killing a golden eagle with a high-powered rifle. He had pictures of himself with the eagle on his cellphone that he left at a party, Nesvik said.

A year later, Game and Fish officials caught a man trying to sell illegal wolf-dog hybrids after he posted an advertisement online.

Three men were sentenced in 2011 to probation in Casper for their roles in pushing large rocks off of the spillway near Pathfinder Dam. They posted a video of the incident on YouTube, a popular video-sharing website.

The last of the plea agreements for the men who poached the antelope and talked about the day on Facebook was finalized in December.

Apodaca was fined more than $4,000, forfeited three rifles used in the crime and lost his hunting and trapping privileges for three years.

Erb has to pay more than $2,000, forfeited his 9 millimeter pistol used in the crime and lost his hunting, fishing, and trapping privileges for three years.

Wolfe was ordered to pay more than $2,000 and placed on 12 months of unsupervised probation.

There are a lot of dumb crooks out there.

I like the dumb ones, heck of a lot better than the full on scoundrels that are in it for the money.

All of it is sad! I don't know why people can't obey the law.

Something tells me a lot of dumb criminals think game wardens are a bunch of red neck yokels who can't even program the right time on their phones, let alone use the massive engine as a tool to track them down.

Stupid poachers. If your gonna do it shoot em load em no pictures and most important say nothing to noone. Facebook is a great tool. I have had numerous problems with trespassers and various lowlifes on the property I hunt. It is amazing how many connections you can make with just a little time on Facebook. I know who is connected to who and who is blowing smoke up my ass. Turns out everyone in the whole area is a bunch a lowlife pieces of chit that are connected in some way or another. Despite what they want me to believe and tell me I know exactly who to watch out for and who to suspect when something goes down.