Decoy Patrol Bags Jump-The-Gun Hunters Seasoned Montana-Idaho Border Watch Uses Big-Game Props To Bait Poachers
The hunter can’t believe his eyes.
The bull elk he’s just blasted twice with his brand-new .300 Winchester Magnum just stands there staring back at him only 40 yards away.
“Damn, I know I hit that son of a gun,” the astonished hunter says from the seat of his pickup as he peers through the scope of his rifle poking out the truck’s window.
But the hunter, and his wife sitting beside him, are even more surprised when several Montana game wardens jump out of hiding and order him to put down the gun.
That scene took place just at dusk a week before the opening of Montana’s general big-game hunting season, on a side road off Interstate 90 near Lookout Pass.
The episode came as no surprise to Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks warden Doug Dryden. Many times in the eight years Dryden has worked as a game warden based in Superior, he has set up the department’s elk decoy on the same road, about 1-1/2 miles on the Montana side of the Montana-Idaho border. The ploy is designed to catch poachers in the act.
“Every single time I run it, I nail ‘em,” Dryden said. “And all of ‘em are from Shoshone County in Idaho - from Mullan or Wallace or Kellogg.”
The hunter involved in this latest bust fits the familiar mold.
“Sir, do you know where you are?” Dryden asks him.
“Well, I know Idaho is somewhere around here,” the Kellogg hunter says.
“It’s always the same thing,” Dryden says. “Oh, I didn’t know I was in Montana. Or, I shot it in Idaho and trailed it over into Montana.
“And the classic is, ‘Where did you come from?”’
Dryden charges the Idaho man with illegally shooting simulated wildlife - the elk decoy - as well as shooting from a vehicle.
With another $100 restitution charge tacked on for damage to the expensive, remote-controlled robotic decoy, the man’s fines run to more than $700.
The arrest of the Idaho hunter on Oct. 19 is symptomatic of a widespread and historic pattern of poaching in Montana by Idaho residents along the border.
Patrolling that vast stretch of border for hunting and fishing violations on the Montana side is the responsibility of just three FWP wardens. Dryden is in charge of 80 miles of it himself, mostly remote back country, most of it in Mineral County.
Dryden spends much of his time in the fall patrolling the state-line back country by horseback. But the biggest poaching problems occur along several loop roads that run through Montana and Idaho and connect with I-90 on both sides of the border.
“Guys that poach like loop roads so they can get out different ways after the shooting starts,” Dryden said.
Big-game poaching along the border goes on year-round, Dryden said. But the activity heats up in the two to three weeks between Idaho’s earlier hunting season-opener and Montana’s.
Shaun Donovan, a Mineral County attorney since 1979, has prosecuted all of Dryden’s poaching cases that have gone to trial.
“Of course, I’m only involved if they plead not guilty,” Donovan said. “Ninety percent of them plead guilty right off the bat, or later after I talk to them.
“We only write tickets we’re ready to take to trial and argue to a jury. But the ones we write we take to the wall. Only about a half-dozen of his cases have gone to court. I know he’s writing way more than that.”
Poaching along the border in Mineral County was a problem long before Dryden arrived.
“Everybody who’s lived around here a long time recognizes this has been a problem forever,” Donovan said. “The geography up there around the border, I had not realized how really conducive it is for people to just run over the hill from Kellogg and Wallace.
“They can get out of there easier than people from Superior or St. Regis. Those roads have been here for a long time. It’s just been a matter that Doug was willing to do the night patrols and other things to identify it.
“He’s been above and beyond the call of duty in a lot of respects. And he’s getting a lot of community support.”
It’s difficult to determine just how much poaching by Idaho hunters goes on along the border, Donovan said. But he and Dryden are convinced that the number of poachers caught is small compared to the total scope of illegal activity.
Dryden says he issues about a half-dozen tickets each year to Idaho residents for hunting violations. He warns many more.
But most of the time there’s no question about a violation, according to Donovan.
“When we’ve used decoys, we make sure not to put them 50 yards over the line, so an Idaho guy doesn’t have a good-faith argument on where they are,” Donovan says. “We place the decoys 1 to 1 1/2 miles inside Montana and there’s no problem getting people to shoot at it.
“These are fairly gross violations most times. We’re not running into that many people making good-faith mistakes. They know where they are.”
Most of the Idaho poaching in Montana is clearly intentional and premeditated, Dryden adds.
“Usually they’ll pull up and shoot at the decoy in the first 10 seconds if they’re going to shoot,” Dryden said. “That tells you that they were purposely intending to poach.
“And every guy that lives over there knows exactly where the border is.”
Dryden’s enforcement area may be one of the worst for poaching along the border because of the heavy traffic on I-90. But his FWP colleagues in Thompson Falls and Troy have similar problems.
Warden Mark Soderlind in Thompson Falls said his poaching problems with Idaho hunters aren’t as severe as Dryden’s. He said he has issued about one ticket a year to Idaho hunters in his eight years in the district. But he knows more poaching occurs than that.
“It’s been going on forever and probably will be going on forever,” Soderlind said. “I lost a nice bull elk on the Montana side to an Idaho hunter the night before the Montana season opened last year. A logger spotted him but we never caught him.”
Steve Anderson, a warden stationed in Troy the past three years, said his Idaho poacher problem is similar to Dryden’s because of the presence of several loop roads between the two states.
“The border’s kind of a gray area up here,” he said. “Most people, if they do know where the border is, don’t pay any attention to it. Of course, it works both ways up here. Wardens in Idaho have problems with guys from Montana hunting over there. It’s a significant problem.”
Dryden said it takes the combined efforts of law enforcement officials and law-abiding sportsmen to combat poaching. And Dryden said he needs the cooperation of Montana sportsmen.
“The idea I want to get across to our hunters is they’re stealing our game,” he said. “My goal as a warden is to get the sportsmen fired up about the problem. They need to tell the warden about violations.”
As for Idaho poachers, Dryden said he hopes they get the message he’s out to get them.
xxxx POACHING SEASON Big-game poaching along the Montana-Idaho border goes on year-round. But the activity heats up in the two to three weeks between Idaho’s earlier hunting season-opener and Montana’s.