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According to New York State Environmental Conservation Officers, in November ECO Lou Gerrain received a complaint that an individual in the town of Queensbury had posted pictures on Facebook of two deer he had shot a few days apart in the northern zone.
DEC provided the following statement to the press:
“On Nov. 12, ECOs Gerrain and Alan Brassard found the subject in his driveway preparing to go out hunting. ECO Gerrain asked the subject if he was going hunting, to which he replied ‘Yeah, for a little while.’
“ECO Gerrain then asked, ‘Didn’t you already shoot a deer? In fact, didn’t you already shoot two deer?’ The hunter responded by silently looking down at his shoes. ECO Brassard asked the man for his hunting license and discovered that he possessed both his big game rifle and muzzleloader tags. Officer Brassard asked whose tags he had used to tag the deer and the hunter again looked at his shoes and said, ‘My cousin’s and my father’s.’
“A total of six violations were issued for illegal taking a deer, improper tagging of deer, and lending and borrowing tags of another. The father and cousin have previously appeared in the Queensbury Town Court and been fined a total of $100 each in penalties and court costs for lending their tags. On Dec. 18, the individual that used the tags appeared and agreed to $502.50 in civil penalties for his role in the case.”
Photo of ECOs Brassard and Gerrain with an illegally taken deer provided by DEC.
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Good catch by ECO’s!
The paltry fines, however, aren’t enough to prevent repeat offenders. Time to get real with penalties.
DEC should change their policy and start publishing the names of these violators as a further deterrent. They are knowingly breaking laws, just like every other criminal whose names show up on the public police blotter. I don’t understand why they provide them with anonymity.
“The game law violator is a thief.”
“Posted ” on facebook???
People who break these laws and demonstrate a lack of common sense,good judgement and basic intelligence should not be allowed to possess firearms.
The fines are a joke. Make these fines a lot higher and it may deter some of these criminals.
I agree Debra. Read the penalties for illegal hunting in Nevada. Illegal taking of big game can be prosecuted as a felony, and the civil penalty for the wrongful taking of a trophy animal can be as high as $30,000. I have no personal experience with this – I am just reading what is out there.
I agree that the fines are way too low. Hit em in the wallet and hit em hard.
These hunters are complete idiots. Ya can’t fix stupid.
“These hunters are complete idiots.”
They are not hunters – they are poachers – and not very smart ones. Unfortunately, there are plenty more poachers in NYS that are successful. How do you catch them? More enforcement officers and tougher consequences.
What arrogance !! I’m in agreement with others posting here: make the violators’ names public, confiscate their hunting licenses, and fine them HARD. Anyone poaching (which is what an illegal harvest is) should be denied a hunting license in the future. Come on, DEC – no more slaps on the wrist! Come down hard on this.
“an individual in the town of Queensbury had posted pictures on Facebook of two deer he had shot a few days apart in the northern zone.”
> a lack of common sense,good judgement and basic intelligence
> complete idiots. Ya can’t fix stupid.
> not very smart
> What arrogance !!
After reading the responses to the above post immediately I thought of……
That’s another whole topic I wont go there. I have never really caught on to this Facebook fad. It never really made sense to me why people would let the whole world know,with oftentimes narrow one-liners,the goings-on in their seemingly petty lives via this medium? Very strange! It would be too easy to say that Facebook users lead dull, boring lives, but I know this as not to be the case. I mean sure…lots of them do but certainly not all, not even close. And I know of some very good, smart people whose primary means of communication is via Facebook which baffles me but what can I say it’s ‘in.’ Can’t get nothing, or hardly a thing out of them personally, but put them on Facebook and their doors swing wide open. It is what it is.
One thing’s for sure though… there’s nothing individual about Facebook!
Yes, it’s clear you don’t understand how it can work. I don’t use FB either but it has privacy functions. The “whole world” doesn’t need to see what you post. When used with those functions this isn’t much different than a phone that let’s people far apart stay in close contact w/o a huge phone bill. It is especially good for people serving in the military far from their families. This is why it is wildly popular and the people who developed it are rich beyond their wildest dreams. And giving a lot of their wealth away to very good causes and people that need it.
Another social media genius.