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good read , i wonder how much of that goes on in BC and AL black bear capitals of the world??

norm

Thanks for great read.

Part 4

http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/nature/The-Hunting-of-the-Poacher-King-4.html

The average fine for illegally killing a black bear in Oregon is about $200, and the maximum penalty taps out at $5,000, the price of a couple of good hounds. In most states, game violations are minor offenses, although Colorado recently raised the penalty for killing a trophy-size bighorn sheep to $25,000. Prison sentences are almost unheard of. But Hillsman's poaching was so relentless that, for the first time ever, state game officials thought seriously of bringing him up on RICO charges.

The federal Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, passed in 1970, is widely known as the law that brought down the Mafia. Most states now have their own versions of RICO; Oregon used it most famously to prosecute leaders of the Baghwan Shree Rajneesh cult in 1985. In 1993 it became one of the first states to include fish and wildlife crimes as "RICO predicate offenses." The more Markee studied Hillsman and his associates, the more they reminded him of a classic narcotics ring.

"In a game investigation," Markee explained, "you have these little snapshots: Guy kills a bear, you take him to trial, prove he did it, he gets a ticket. With RICO, you've got a moving picture of the entire scope of activity." In December 1997, Markee touched base with Bob Hamilton and Brenda Rocklin, prosecutors in the Oregon attorney general's organized crime section. Hamilton agreed that a RICO case looked promising, but he'd need a mountain of evidence to take it to trial. So far, Markee had zero gallbladders and one dead bear cub. What Hamilton needed to tie the case together was an unimpeachable piece of evidence that would link Hillsman to the gallbladder market. "If you want these guys," Hamilton told Markee, "catch 'em red-handed with a gallbladder."

December 4, 1997:

Hartwig: "You don't have any to sell now, do you?"

Hillsman: "I got one that I brought back from [a hunt in] California...they're a lot bigger down there and I can't even get rid of it!"

"It's too big or what?"

"I don't know. The market's dried up."

"Is that right?"

"Oh yeah. You know, it should be twice what the other's worth and they want to give me the same or less. I've been trying to move it because you know I could use the money."

"What's it worth then?"

"[bleep], it should be worth 350, 400 bucks."

"Weren't you getting that for the galls before?"

"I was getting 200 and a little better.... You know, Jesus Christ, I'm trying to at least recoup my expenses."

"That's...that's the guy down at Eugene?"

"Uh-huh."

By the end of 1997, Ray Hillsman had single-handedly driven the price of bear galls down to $150 in Oregon. He'd let his bloodthirst for the hunt get in the way of economic self-interest, and now it was taking a toll. For one thing, his wife was fed up. When she found any gallbladders in the freezer she gave them to the dogs, and she told her husband that if she saw him leave the house with a rifle he'd find nothing but divorce papers waiting for him when he got back. That winter, while the bears hibernated, he kept his dogs fed by poaching bobcats and trading the hides for sacks of dog chow.

Meanwhile, Markee and his partners delved into the buy side of the market. They soon discovered the identity of "the guy down at Eugene": Kenneth Yi, the 69-year-old proprietor of Hi-Tech Cleaners. As far as the state police could determine, Yi constituted the major portion of Ray Hillsman's gallbladder market. Like most buyers, he took the organ's bile salts as a remedy for whatever ailed him. "Make you strong," he would later explain to the police. The problem was, Hillsman had glutted the market. Ken Yi didn't want to buy his big ol' California gallbladder because he already had 17 others crowding the orange juice in his freezers at home.

What Hillsman needed was a new buyer. Through the grapevine he heard about a fellow who might be interested in a whole carcass. That buyer was Duk Park, owner of the Day N Nite Market. Park had so many suppliers knocking on his door he'd begun to demand paws along with the bladders for proof. But he wasn't averse to considering Hillsman's merchandise and eventually did business with him, the cops believe, through another middleman.

From day one of his investigation, Walt Markee had been keen to find out how the Day N Nite fit into the backcountry black market. The more he learned, the more the convenience store began to sound like a bear-parts trading post.



By April 1998, the snow was melting and the bears were emerging from hibernation. When they came, Hillsman was ready. "These boys went back out into the woods and they were just going crazy, killing two, three bears a week," prosecutor Bob Hamilton recalled.

"That's when I realized, Hey, we need to shut these guys down, now," Walt Markee said. With or without a gallbladder, he started aiming for his investigation's D day: May 4. Chuck Hartwig was calling Hillsman more frequently, but the poacher king's boasts weren't going to cut it in court. Markee needed Hartwig to go out hunting with Hillsman, to bring home something concrete. So Hartwig went.

That weekend was a doozy. As Hartwig recalls it, he met up with Hillsman, a 20-year-old prot�g� of his named Nathan Gamache, and a couple other poachers on April 11 at a Denny's outside Eugene. Hartwig was armed only with a Pentax 35mm. "Hillsman knew I'd taken a lot of pictures of animals when I lived in Alaska," he later explained. "He was all for me going along taking pictures."

They convoyed up to Triangle Lake, away from their usual Umpqua grounds, because Hillsman had got word that a couple of poachers had been nabbed there recently by Richard Lane. At the turn, Hillsman and Hartwig stayed by the road while the younger guys went in after the dogs. Hillsman seemed to have grown more cautious; he hadn't brought a rifle, and he was letting his apprentices learn for themselves. But before Gamache went in after the bear, he rummaged through his truck for bullets and came up empty. Hillsman, steamed, pulled a loaded .22 pistol out of the lock box of his own truck and handed it to Gamache. "What you gotta do," Hartwig remembered him saying, "is climb a tree next to the bear and shoot across at it. Get real close." (At his trial, Hillsman claimed that he told Gamache to scare the bear off, not kill it.) Hartwig and Hillsman were leaning against the truck, listening to the dogs, when Gamache reappeared, looking shaken. He'd done what Hillsman told him, he said, but as soon as he got up the tree the bear shimmied down and ran up another. So he climbed a second tree and damn if the bear didn't do it again. "I ain't shootin' that with a .22 pistol," Gamache said.

Now Hillsman was downright mad. He said that once the dogs tree a bear three times, that bear has to die or the dogs won't hunt anymore. He told Gamache to wait there while he went after a rifle. "I know a fella down the road," he said. Hartwig hopped in the truck with Hillsman, and the two men drove to the backwoods estate of Charlton "Char" Richardson.

In his wildest dreams, Chuck Hartwig never imagined that a tip to a police hot line would lead him into such a spooky-ass den. He followed Hillsman into a cabin on the south bank of the Siuslaw River that was straight out of Snuffy Smith. "Walking into Char Richardson's house is like walking into a museum," Hillsman would later say. "He's got eye hooks and...these guns hanging just everywhere, pistols, shotguns, sawed-offs." Richardson, a peaceable man whose weathered face bore the scars of 85 hard years, loaned the men a spare .30-06. Hillsman returned a few hours later with the gun and offered Richardson a fresh gallbladder. "Well, I use it," Richardson later told me, "and I know three widow women who use it for their rheumatism." He accepted the bladder, along with $200 for a Winchester 308 Hillsman decided to buy off him.

Hillsman, Hartwig, and Gamache went hunting the next day, too. At the turn, Hillsman watched one of Gamache's younger dogs halfheartedly lope toward a treed bear and then lose interest. "If that dog comes back to the road without going to the tree, I'm gonna shoot it," he announced. Sure enough, when the dog came back, Hillsman pulled out his .22 pistol and put a bullet into its head. Gamache, who had paid $400 for the dog, all but thanked Hillsman for dispatching it. Neither was interested in feeding a dog that wouldn't hunt.

The dogs that would hunt that day treed a big one, which Gamache shot and de-galled. The bear was so big that he cut off a claw to show Hillsman, who had again stayed back at the road. Hillsman was impressed but not that impressed, so Gamache tossed the claw into an alder tree. "Say," Hartwig said, "I'd sure like to have that as a souvenir." Sure, Gamache said, and obligingly retrieved it.

Walt Markee was ecstatic when Hartwig pulled the claw out of his pocket. "How stupid are these people to give that to you?" he marveled.

Sycamore--I read the entire article, all 5 pages. Its a really well written PR piece for the Feds. There is hardly a paragraph that I can't call BS on.

If you are going to tell a big lie--make sure there is a grain of truth in it.

$15,000 in Fines and 20 days in jail and it only cost the feds a few million--But--they got thier RICO conviction.

The whole article supports Watch4bears contention that the whole bear gall thing is BS.

From reading the article, you were able to determine that Hillsman was not shooting bears?, and not selling their gall bladders?

I was not able to garner that.

It is uncommon in my experience that a journalist doesn't miss something, or screw something up, or get it completely backwards, I expect that. I try to take it into account while reading, anything, especially when it agrees with my pre-conceived notions. In this case, I had no pre-conceived notion about bear hunting in Oregon, or poaching.

I think this story was from the 90's, and I believe Hillsman has been re-arrested and re-convicted for poaching since.

I'd appreciate you sharing errors of fact or inference you found in the article. I'm sure there are plenty, when a reporter from Outside Mag goes to the woods.

Sycamore

Not to mention hysterical internet gals who heard anti-hunter propaganda through the grapevine Without practical knowledge; it's like a dem telling you about guns.

sun come up yet, Sparky?





Sycamore

Leave nothing to waste, even eat the hump

Article is full of BS. Just one example--2 officiers hear 3 shots--search and find cub bear shot and gutted. Bears lower jaw was shot off so dogs could wolly the bear around some. How the hell they know the Jaw was shot first?

Shootin a bear cub outta a tree is just wrong period--but why do they gotta make it sound so much worse?

I've bear hunted some with hounds--in Va,NC,East TN and West-by-god Va as well as ON and PQ--WS and MN too. There ain't no sucha thing as a king bear hunter. Houndsmen are too independant to do more than cuss each other.

Google up Dale and Clell Lee, famous houondsmen from Arizona, you won't find anything but glowing reports but I know a couple of ole timers who thought a lot less of 'em than what has been printed.

I tell you one thing Sycamore--for every loud-mouth Ray Hillman out there--there will be a couple of Ole boys who tree more bear in an afternoon than ole Ray has ever seen--and ain't nobody from the FFWS knows a damn thing about 'em.

Ever heard of Lee Doyle?

Lee Doyle hill isn't 8 miles from where I sit, but there probably aren't 20 people in the world that know the name of the hill.

So you do agree that people do poach black bear, and some of them sell the gall bladder when they can?

Sycamore

Folks don't poach bears for gall bladders. When it was legal to sell bladders, they paid for a little gas, but not as much gas as your full of

Thats cool. I've hunted 6 states and 2 provinces myself.

I could care less what a gall bladder is worth. Taking bear illegally is a problem in North Gerogia where I live and in parts of Western NC where I often visit. Don't really care about the motive. If they did the crime, then let them do the time.

I have no argument with hunting methods that are legal elsewhere, but baiting and hunting with dogs is illegal here. If you want to hunt legally using those methods, then go hunt where it is legal. If you get caught doing it here then don't cry about it being legal somewhere else when you are arrested.

It ain't legal to take a bear from a National Park by any method. I have a hard time feeling any sympathy for those caught. It is hard enough to kill one legally without these guys stealing game that others could hunt legally.

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/10/linn_county_poacher_sentenced.html

A 58-year-old convicted poacher from Linn County is going to prison again.

Raymond Edward Hillsman, who was sentenced in 1999 for killing bears and selling their gallbladders, was sentenced last week to 10 months in jail on three charges, including violating a lifetime hunting ban.

�He�s probably the most prolific poacher that we�ve had in Oregon,� said Keith Stein, deputy district attorney in Linn County.

Hillsman of Brownsville was convicted by a Linn County Circuit Court judge following an investigation by Oregon State Police Fish & Wildlife troopers linked to a report that he was trespassing on private land in an attempt to get his beagles.

Officers found a firearm at his home and evidence linked to violating the hunting ban.

In 1999, Hillsman was sentenced to 18 months in prison for leading a team that hunted bears in five western Oregon counties. The poachers removed the bears' gallbladders, often leaving the carcasses to rot. The gallbladders, which are used in Chinese medicine, were sold for as much as $200 to various buyers.

Hillsman will serve his latest sentence in Linn County Jail. Afterward, he faces 36 months of supervised probation and a lifetime ban on possessing game meat, hunting, training dogs for hunting or living with someone who trains dogs for hunting.

Beagle bear dogs. Interesting

That's a first.

Really,... thats not the impression I get from readin this thread.

No, it is most emphatically NOT a "New One".

In the Late 70s, Early to mid '80s the SOBs were leaving bear all over the goddam place on the Eastern Slopes West of Calgary,North and South........I had to have found maybe 45-50 over a three year period. Feet, Organs, and head taken, the rest left to rot and call in Coyotes.

The market,........"ChinaTown" in Calgary and Edmonton.

This is verifiable, on the record HISTORY, not hype.

Probably better I never caught any of em'in the act.

GTC

Iam not at all in favor of poaching wether it be deer, turkey or bear. I want to be clear on that.

JMR says they have a bear poching problem in North Georgia--I'll accept that--never been to Georgia. My only question is that bear poaching problem so bad that local law enforcemnt can't deal with it? The Feds have to be brought in?

Now I know that they used to have a problem with bear poaching in the Smokey Mountain National Park. I haven't been there in more than 20 years so I don't know how it stands now. Thats a National Park and it is a Federal matter. I also know the FFWS did an awful lot to exasperate that problem.

I also know the Gall trade was never the big deal the feds tried to make of it. I think it was a great PR campaign for more funding.

Sycamore--the name Lee Doyle rings a bell but I can't place it--was he famous houndsman or something--theres a lot of competent houndsmen came outta Arizona. Still some there I reckon.

Far as Hillman goes it appears he kept on runnin his hounds after it was illegal. It might be a case of break one law may as well break 'em all. Lifetime huntin ban strikes me as a case of swatting a fly using a sledge hammer.

If they outlaw AR rifles I wonder how much company is Ole Ray gonna have sittin in Jail?

Like exactly what?

And FFWS is? US Fish and Wildlife Service I imagine.