Shots in the dark: Poaching’s impact on Snoqualmie Valley elk happens behind the scenes
Published 12:29 pm Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Shots cracked in the pre-dawn twilight across vacant, wooded land behind North Bend’s Mountain Valley Center.
The .22 caliber bullets felled two elk, one a year-old ‘spike’ bull, the other a 3-year-old branch bull. The older bull elk would normally be a fine prize, but at this time and place, both kills are wholly illegal.
Witnesses heard the shots, and the opportunistic shooter never got to claim his kills. Now, they’re just another difficult poaching case in Chris Moszeter’s file.
The dual poachings took place just before 7 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 15, and are exceptional because they were noticeable. Such visible, confirmed kills are the tip of a murky iceberg of poaching in the Valley, much of which is never reported.
Opportunistic shooters
Last month’s shooting happened in city limits. The weapon used was illegal for elk hunting, too small a calibre for a humane kill.
“In my book, that’s outright poaching,” said Moszeter, an enforcement officer for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. “There’s no rhyme or reason to why they did it,” other than opportunism.
Until lawfully harvested, all wildlife is considered the property of the state. The scavenging of animal parts, such as antlers, from animals that die of accidents or natural causes is also illegal.
Fines can run into the thousands of dollars. If the Nov. 15 poacher is ever caught and convicted, he would face two counts of unlawful hunting of big game with an unlawful weapon. The fines would start at $1,080, with an additional penalty of $2,000 per animal. Trophy bulls bring even higher fines.
Despite the penalties, the Valley’s 400-strong elk population draws poachers along with wildlife watchers, photographers and respectable hunters.
Generalizing local poaching is difficult. Poaching can happen at any time—local elk watchers say poachers generally hunt after dusk, and dress in dark colors rather than blaze orange. Shots in the dark can be a give-away, as are strange or out-of-place vehicles in areas elk are known to frequent.
Members of the Upper Snoqualmie Valley Elk Management Group have noticed cars occupied by armed men slowly trolling rural Snoqualmie neighborhoods, or heard bad elk calls followed by gunshots at odd hours.
Witnessing poaching
Driving home on a late afternoon last September, Kalli Willson saw a magnificent bull elk emerge from a construction site on North Bend’s Cedar Falls Way.
Turning her car around, the North Bend resident quickly looked to see if there were any other elk in the vicinity. With none in view, she resumed her trip.
“Just then, I heard gunfire,” Willson recalled. “Three shots—pow, pow, pow.”
Willson, a former member of the Upper Snoqualmie Valley Elk Management Group, knew that she was in city limits. She also knew it was archery season for elk—“there should not be any gunfire.”
With her three children in the car, she didn’t care to investigate further. But in her mind, the pieces fit—Willson couldn’t help but think she had nearly stumbled onto poachers.
The average person, unaware of hunting regulations, might not have realized what was going on. But Willson, who occasionally hears distant gunfire from her home, knows that illegal hunting happens here, wittingly or unwittingly.
“We’ve well publicized that we’ve got a lot of elk in the Valley. That is no big secret,” Willson said. “We’ve created a situation that perhaps, we did not intend.”
Elk Management Group member Jim Gildersleeve has witnessed poaching. He knows it happens locally, and feels revulsion at the waste, needless suffering and scoffing of the law.
“Frankly, it upsets me,” he said. “There are a lot of respectable hunters out there who do the right thing. Poachers don’t do that.”
A few years ago, elk watchers found several dead cows feathered by arrows.
“People are repulsed that poachers would so wantonly slaughter wildlife,” Gildersleeve said.
How many elk are poached annually is impossible to verify. Elk watchers believe that about 150 elk go missing every year, either dying of natural causes, road kills, predation, or migrating from the Valley. Legal hunting claims only a fraction of that total. For the entire game management area that includes the Valley, from Rattlesnake Mountain east to the Cascade Crest trail and north to Monroe, hunters take about 50 animals a year. Of the remainder, elk watchers are unsure how much poachers claim.
“Most of it goes unobserved and unreported,” Gildersleeve said. “Occasionally, we have arrests and prosecution. It’s very difficult to collect the evidence, catch them in the act, to infiltrate them… exceedingly difficult and time consuming.”
Some poachers may have their excuses—elk group member Harold Erland suspects that some may poach simply for food—but some do it for commercial gain. Elk horn, bear paws or gall bladders can fetch top dollar, for example, in medicinal black markets.
“A lot of illegal activity is obviously a commercial enterprise,” Gildersleeve said. “That’s what’s so despicable.”
The way Erland sees it, poachers deplete a public resource, which helps fund conservation and preserve future hunting opportunities.
Hunters “pay for licenses to harvest an animal,” he says. “Poachers are taking animals that legal people would be able to take. They’re taking from honest people.”
Road kills
Of course, not everything that looks like poaching is what it seems. The bulk of complaints to the local enforcement officer turn out to be road kills.
“Most of the time, what people perceive as poaching is not the case,” Moszeter said.
“You have to consider the counterpart that’s occurring on our highways,” Gildesleeve said. Between Exit 27 and Snoqualmie Pass, as many as 100 elk are killed on Interstate 90 every year.
In the Valley, 35 road kills were counted in 2011. But elk watchers have calculated that for every animal that falls by the roadside, three or four stagger away and fall in the wild.
Since few people see that carnage, it’s easy to forget or accept.
“The waste of wildlife is still there,” though, Gildersleeve said. Such waste is what moves elk watchers to do something about highway accidents and poaching. Right now, their main effort is in understanding the herd.
The Elk Group is engaged in a multi-year study of the elk herd’s numbers, habits and movement. This winter, the group will trap around a dozen more animals, then put radio-tracking collars on their necks. The devices, which transmit for one or two years, keep a running log of where the elk are. That data helps elk watchers understand how the animals behave, and gives city and state officials an idea about how elk affect neighborhoods and highways.
The Valley’s elk herd is currently stable at about 400 animals.
Does the Valley have too many elk? Some property owners whose land is affected by the herds might say so. But folks like Jim Gildersleeve or Harold Erland come down solidly on the side of the law.
“If it’s illegal, unethical, it shouldn’t be done,” Gildersleeve said. “That’s the side I’m with.”
Gildersleeve and Erland want to see the herd effectively managed and balanced.
The intersection between herd growth, legal, accidental and illegal kills “is a complex situation that I don’t think too many people in the Valley think about seriously,” Gildersleeve said.
Some residents may know about the ugly side of the Valley’s reputation as prime wildlife habitat.
“Is it enough for them to take action?” Gildersleeve asked. “I don’t think so. Only a few of us feel that way.”
Who to call
To report a poaching in progress, call 9-1-1.
In a non-emergency situation, call the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife at 1-877-933-9847.
To learn more, visit the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife poaching page.
