Sheee-it. 30 years for a violation of the Lacey act? Yer average homicide gets less time. And about a snowballs chance in hell of a crooked politician even getting a slap,on the wrist.

Ya, and you wonder why everyone rolled over on those they knew, the definition of "tyranny". Shameful.

After the reading the article, one word comes to mind. Entrapment.

friar

Can you imagine spending 30 years in jail for bringing home a trophy you legally killed in Canada, but couldn't be imported because it wasn't "sport hunted".

Not sure I fully understand why the US Fish and Wildlife service is still funded by taxpayers.

I am not sure I understand the entire matter.

If the sheep was legally shot, why falsify the papers?

When you read the guide/hunters version one concludes that it is harrassment, but this "hunting" has been going on for a very long time and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Unable to convict is different than innocent!

He was convicted last week. Facing possible 5 years. Not 30, but 30 years for multiple Lacey Act violations too tough? Nope.

Entrapment? Don't understand that.
http://www.adn.com/2014/02/15/...guide-convicted.html

quote:

Originally posted by Alasken:
He was convicted last week. Facing possible 5 years. Not 30, but 30 years for multiple Lacey Act violations too tough? Nope.

Entrapment? Don't understand that.
http://www.adn.com/2014/02/15/...guide-convicted.html

He will go 30years in prision for illegal import of trophies
Can't be true..

Seems like every month or two there's a case where an Alaskan guide gets convicted--some major, some minor violations. What's the standard rule--For every conviction there's many more that aren't caught. Some of these guys push the limits way beyond what is legal. If anything, the enforcement agencies are too forgiving.

If you are a client, you'd better research what is illegal yourself--don't rely on the guide's claims.

It does appear that he knew the law, and was knowingly violating it.

I don't see how any one could call this entrapment.

he chose his path and then walked,ran, down it

Snitches disgust me.

A friend of mine from Iowa spent 8 months in a federal prison for a Lacey Act violation. As a hobby, he would take shed antlers he had found and graft large tines onto large main beams using wooden dowels and antler-colored putty. His fakes were impossible to detect with the naked eye and could only be detected by X-ray. He was strapped for cash and made a dumb mistake and sold one of his bogus racks to a guy in another state. That guy went on to try to enter the rack in Boone & Crockett, where the fakery was detected. In addition to fraud, he violated the Lacey Act by crossing state lines, and went to a federal prison for 8 months! Sad, but true.

When the feds didn't get Katzeek & his brother on their desired charge (Brown Bear violations), Collins said they decided to pursue this case about mountain goats and Dall sheep.

There are always two sides...

Here's some of the rest of the article I found interesting. You may come to a different conclusion. I stand by my first statement - entrapment.

prosecutors say Katzeek hunted legally in the winter of 2006 in the Kluane Wildlife Sanctuary in the Yukon. Katzeek is as a member of the Kluane First Nations tribe and is allowed to hunt for subsistence there...
The legal trouble, however, arose in trying to bring the horns back to the states for a trophy on his wall. Prosecutors say the friend Katzeek went on the hunting trip with falsified paperwork to deliver the horns to Katzeek in Haines, and that Katzeek received them knowing it was illegal...
Katzeek’s attorney Tom Collins said the only reason that Katzeek did not take the horns back with him to Haines in the first place was because the hunt was over the weekend, and the Canadian government’s Fish and Game office was closed. Collins also pointed out that both hunters took shots at the sheep, in reference to which hunter killed it.
Collins, however, showed that Katzeek had only hunted at the sanctuary a few times before, and never by himself. Katzeek always went with Johnson, who is much more familiar with the terrain. The defense attorney emphasized the sanctuary is 10,000 square miles, and the location listed in Katzeek’s report was only 20 miles off from the actual kill site.
Graves was looking for possible offenses such as guiding clients for brown bear over bait, or guiding clients over an unregistered bear site, two offenses they got Katzeek’s brother Ronald L. Martin for. But Katzeek did everything by the books, Graves said, and Graves went back to Colorado.
During the hunting trip, Katzeek at one time mentioned that sheep horns had been stolen from him, but he did not say anything else about them, according to Graves in explaining how his testimony was relevant to this case.
On Thursday, Katzeek’s attorney Collins told the Empire he believes the government targeted Katzeek because of his brother’s illegal activities. When they didn’t come up with anything big, such as brown bear hunting, Collins said they decided to pursue this case about mountain goats and Dall sheep.

friar

I am still looking for the part that is entrapment.

Below is the legal definition of entrapment;

"In criminal law, entrapment is a practice whereby a law enforcement agent induces a person to commit an offense that the person would have otherwise been unlikely to commit.[1] It is a type of conduct that is generally frowned upon, and thus in many jurisdictions is a possible defense against criminal liability."

RyanB,

tell me again how if you were a part of a criminal conspiracy to commit multiple violations of Federal Law and they arrest you and promise you years in federal prison on each count, how you would leave your wife and children to fend for themselves, rather than tell the truth in court...?

They seldom if ever, want the little guy. They want the man responsible for the whole program.

You formulate a plan to break the law; you go to jail. It really is that simple...

regards,

Rich

quote:

entrapment is a practice whereby a law enforcement agent induces a person to commit an offense that the person would have otherwise been unlikely to commit

quote:

Katzeek’s attorney Tom Collins said the only reason that Katzeek did not take the horns back with him to Haines in the first place was because the hunt was over the weekend, and the Canadian government’s Fish and Game office was closed

So it's entrapment because the Fish and Game office's were closed on this weekend; just like every other weekend of the year?

Am I missing something here?

Maybe the problem is that he isn't a sufficiently large corporation. I was not familiar with the Lacey Act and looked it up on Wikipedia.

Interesting, a key case, with much greater financial value was against Gibson Guitar, who only had to pay a fine vs. individuals facing jail time.

Ronnie Martin has been caught numerous times, so this is nothing new. Slap your hand and you get to keep doing what you do. Have a friend personally involved and he lost a lot of equipment that he won't get back. Probably a lot more to the story than what is being reported.

quote:

Originally posted by Bud Meadows:
A friend of mine from Iowa spent 8 months in a federal prison for a Lacey Act violation. As a hobby, he would take shed antlers he had found and graft large tines onto large main beams using wooden dowels and antler-colored putty. His fakes were impossible to detect with the naked eye and could only be detected by X-ray. He was strapped for cash and made a dumb mistake and sold one of his bogus racks to a guy in another state. That guy went on to try to enter the rack in Boone & Crockett, where the fakery was detected. In addition to fraud, he violated the Lacey Act by crossing state lines, and went to a federal prison for 8 months! Sad, but true.

For a first offense that's ridiculous. Repeat offenders deserve everything they get and more.

I see somewhere that the three Canadians that were charged were found not guilty of all charges ... apparently an assistant guide broke his leg on the mountain and they did not bring back all of the goat - instead bringing down the injured guide .. the only conviction to the outfitter was that he didn't put down the correct amount of meat brought off the mountain on some paperwork ... not guilty of everything else ... the case cost over a million dollars apparently to prosecute .. I can only imagine what it cost the defence .. the trial took several weeks ....

Many many years ago the local fish cop tried to 'hang' myself and another fellow over a couple of grizzly bears ... I was to find out later that three experts had given their opionion that we were innocent but the game warden refused to drop the charges ... a few days before trial the prosecutor dropped the trumped up charges ...

So without knowing all that much (except from the newspaper out of Juneau) about the case I am not ready to rush to judgement on things like this ...

quote:

Originally posted by vicvanb:
Seems like every month or two there's a case where an Alaskan guide gets convicted--some major, some minor violations. What's the standard rule--For every conviction there's many more that aren't caught. Some of these guys push the limits way beyond what is legal. If anything, the enforcement agencies are too forgiving.

If you are a client, you'd better research what is illegal yourself--don't rely on the guide's claims.

You raise a key point as far as I'm concerned: MAJOR v. minor offenses. It burns my ass that these bastards treat someone who signed on the wrong line the same as someone killing trophies out of season, without a license, while trespassing, etc. That turns someone like me into their adversary rather than their advocate.

The vast majority of those of us that have been hunting for awhile have made some minor mistakes usually without even knowing it.

I had someone tell me one time that he'd turn in his buddy if he accidentally killed an extra duck. Last time I ever spoke to him.

quote:

Originally posted by Norton:

quote:

Originally posted by vicvanb:
Seems like every month or two there's a case where an Alaskan guide gets convicted--some major, some minor violations. What's the standard rule--For every conviction there's many more that aren't caught. Some of these guys push the limits way beyond what is legal. If anything, the enforcement agencies are too forgiving.

If you are a client, you'd better research what is illegal yourself--don't rely on the guide's claims.

You raise a key point as far as I'm concerned: MAJOR v. minor offenses. It burns my ass that these bastards treat someone who signed on the wrong line the same as someone killing trophies out of season, without a license, while trespassing, etc. That turns someone like me into their adversary rather than their advocate.

The vast majority of those of us that have been hunting for awhile have made some minor mistakes usually without even knowing it.

I had someone tell me one time that he'd turn in his buddy if he accidentally killed an extra duck. Last time I ever spoke to him.

Do you mean accidentally as in accidentally kill two with one shot etc? Regardless it would be the last time I would speak to the guy as well

quote:

Originally posted by Jarrod:

Do you mean accidentally as in accidentally kill two with one shot etc? Regardless it would be the last time I would speak to the guy as well

Yes, accidentally.....scotch double or miscounted his birds, etc. In any case, he would turn a "friend" in for a minor mistake. To me, that kind of guy deserves to end up in a ditch.

quote:

He will go 30years in prision for illegal import of trophies

Well....the law is the law...don't like it...then you change the law...you don't break it. The real question is why an animal legally taken can't be disposed of by the legal shooter as he sees fit. Why the horns become ilegal because they cross this or that line seems just a basis for bureaucracy.

A friend sent his dog to retrieve a crippled duck on a slough in ND...a duck he discovered while walking back to his truck with his legal limit. He was observed by a F and G officer and fined because he already had a legal limit.
Trying to explain that hehad no intention of keeping the duck and that hedidn't shoot it, and the duck was just going to die of infection on the water did no good.

So much for sportsmanship.

Another friend was approached by a man in a wheelchair 4/5 years ago at Artos Motel in Harvey ND. The gentleman explained he had been wounded overseas and asked if he could have a pheasant. My friend gave him one and thanked him for his service....at which point the man got out of the wheelchair and gave him a summons...a quick $100 for the State of ND.

True story.

Doesn't surprise me.
These goons are something. They watched too many movies and they wanna be John Waynes all of a sudden.

quote:

Originally posted by JonP:
Another friend was approached by a man in a wheelchair 4/5 years ago at Artos Motel in Harvey ND. The gentleman explained he had been wounded overseas and asked if he could have a pheasant. My friend gave him one and thanked him for his service....at which point the man got out of the wheelchair and gave him a summons...a quick $100 for the State of ND.

True story.

If that's true......oh man, that burns my ass. I'd love to see what a jury thought of that tactic. I've heard stories about those ND pricks. They're too stupid to realize they're creating legions of adversaries rather than advocates by treating sportsmen that way.

Thats all kinds of messed up. Have to be a bit of a rat bastard to impersonate a veteran, in a wheelchair, just to give somebody a ticket.

quote:

Another friend was approached by a man in a wheelchair 4/5 years ago at Artos Motel in Harvey ND. The gentleman explained he had been wounded overseas and asked if he could have a pheasant. My friend gave him one and thanked him for his service....at which point the man got out of the wheelchair and gave him a summons...a quick $100 for the State of ND.

I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I'd like a source if you have one.

In addition, I read the ND hunting guide and it says regarding gifts, "Game may be gifted to another, however this does not allow a person to exceed a daily limit. Any gifted game to be transported must be tagged with the above information (owner's signature and address, date taken, number and species of game, and license number of the person who harvested the game) and display sex and species identification as required. Termination of possession can only be accomplished by: (1) gifting of legally harvested game; (2) by consuming the game." So unless the game was to be "transported" then I don't see what the hunter did wrong.

I too had to read to see what the Lacey act is. It said one purpose is to prevent unwanted species from being introduced into an area. Seems the govt is guilty of that. The English sparrow which is one of the nastiest birds was imported. Carp were introduced into some streams --I forgot what purpose. Nutria were introduced right here in Texas to eat unwanted vegetation in a lake--now the nutria are a bigger problem than the vegetation. Many Texas lakes that were formerly good Black bass and crappie lakes have been ruined by the introduction of Stripper bass--a trash fish in my books.

quote:

Another friend was approached by a man in a wheelchair 4/5 years ago at Artos Motel in Harvey ND. The gentleman explained he had been wounded overseas and asked if he could have a pheasant. My friend gave him one and thanked him for his service....at which point the man got out of the wheelchair and gave him a summons...a quick $100 for the State of ND.

True story.

Now that is Entrapment, that game warden should get the yellow perch treatment. Some might remember a case in MN many years ago where a particularly aggressive warden harassed one too many Red Lake Indians and got a half dozen yellow perch shoved up his arse!