This is stuff we couldn’t possibly make up.
A Utah man pleaded guilty last week to stealing an Alaskan Dall’s sheep mount from a wildlife agency anti-poaching display trailer. And, if that act of apparent stupidity isn’t paradoxical enough for you, the n’er-do-well caught on tape at a January hunting expo was the same guy who illegally killed the ram in 1999.
Wade Hanks, 37, agreed to pay $6,000 in fines in a plea Friday that will be held in abeyance for a year.
The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Hanks, from Mapleton, Utah, was fined $2,000 and had his hunting privileges revoked for two years for shooting the ram and a grizzly illegally in 1999. The confiscated grizzly hide was returned to Alaska, while the Dall’s mount became part of the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources traveling “Wall of Shame” display featuring poached wildlife trophies.
Hanks and an accomplice, who also pleaded guilty to theft and burglary charges, swiped the mount after a wildlife division worker stepped away from the booth for a moment during the event early this year at the downtown Salf Lake City convention center. A well-placed security camera recorded the theft, referred to by the deputy district attorney as a “spur-of-the-moment lapse in judgment.”
Hanks’ partner in stupidity, Tyrell Gray, 31, called the duo’s act “embarrassing and humiliating.”
I’m tempted to use more common campfire/barroom language to describe these idiots and their despicable behavior.
What about our Outdoor News Hound readers? Is this a shoe-in for the Darwin Awards for Poaching, or what?