Did the same thing for an idiot in Pennsylvania who uploaded lots of evidence bragging about his "first kills" as a new "hunter." He killed a bunch of chickadees with a pellet gun. Never heard from PGC about it though.
Having been a young kid with a Sheridan Blue Streak pellet rifle, I'm glad there was no YouTube in the 1960's. I killed more birds than a feral cat. The kid did grow into an ethical hunter.
A phrase my grandfather used to use comes to mind, some all along the lines of “crazier than a shit house rat”.
Crazier than campfire poop burner.
Back to the OP. -
I have my local CO (warden) in my contact lists in both my mobile phones, as well as the Idaho CAP (Citizens Against Poaching) number.
I send text, photos, videos, and OnX pins to the CO every year.
Some of my reports have resulted in citations and gone to court. Certainly not all, I don't know. I'm not the CO, he is. I just report, he is trained to make the judgement calls. Sometimes we will discuss the circumstances of what I found and what evidence I have. Every report is different. I also do everything I can to protect whatever evidence there is on the scene if he says he is coming out. That means not walking all over it. But also photoing it or protecting it if the weather threatens to ruin it.
I have self reported - Like the time I tipped over two turkeys. This was before the easy cell phone days. I tagged the targeted bird, recovered both, and called the CO (who has since retired) when I got home. It was about a half hour after the incident. He had me gut the second bird and put it in my freezer until he could come by to pick it up. No citation, but I did get the obligatory speech about shot pattern spread and target isolation. It worked, as I have never dumped two turkeys since.
This same CO called me out once on a non-hunting whopper I had told. Never assume you are smarter than the CO, or your mother.
BTW - "Self Reporting", and "Anonymous" are grammatically incompatible terms. Self reporting is when you call and say, "This is Mark and I screwed up...". Anonymous means you want the incident to be reported, but you don't want the law or perpetrator to know who you are.
What I think is missing from this discussion is the need to have a relationship with your local CO. This gives you credence when you report, and grace when you screw up. (Provided you deserve it.) No LEOs on earth cover as much territory as game cops. They usually do it alone and they are dealing with armed folks a good part of the time. Part of being an ethical hunter is to be, in whatever way we can, part of the system that protects the game, human lives, and our reputation. This opinion has put me at odds with some of the local bubbas who think IDFG is right up there with "Those Damn Feds..." If the bubbas think of me as a narc, too bad.
If your CO knows you well enough to call you out on a whopper, you are the better for it.
I grew up in a meat party hunting family. I was unaware that we were poachers in every sense of the word. Until I went to Hunter's Ed I did not know there was another way. We raised beef, but still saw venison for food as a natural right. This leaves me skeptical of the, "just feeding the family" excuse. I have no sympathy for a guy who has a cell phone, an ATV, trail cameras, and $2K worth of ink on his body; but says he can't afford to feed his kids. My wife is feeding his kids every day down at the school district. In fact, during COVID, the school buses delivered those meals to the families.
Maybe a conviction will break this theoretical man's kids out of that cycle, maybe not. I know I can point his conviction out to my grand kids and explain a better way.
One more and I'm out. - How do we bring this around to breaking the cycle of poaching culture? If there had not been a group of Hunter's Ed instructors to teach me another way, I might still be shooting deer in the head with a .22 like we did in the 60's. I continue to keep becoming a certified instructor too low on my bucket list. That's on me. You can't judge me for being a game narc, but you can judge me for that.
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