St. Maries Idaho man convicted of multiple wildlife and other violations.

[44hunter45]

St. Maries man sentenced to months in jail, thousands in fines and decade-long hunting ban for poaching convictions

Paul D. Coward, 55, of St. Maries was sentenced for various wildlife-related crimes to months in jail, thousands in fines and a 10-year hunting ban following his guilty pleas.

idfg.idaho.gov

 

[David658]

Twenty.three.years. of complaints? And just now jailed? Just what do game officers do in Idaho?

David
NM

 

[Bigjay73]

Fitting last name

 

[F250]

A lot of work involved with an investigation like this. Congratulations to all the officers who worked on this !!

 

[Pmacc60]

The problem I see with game commissions , game wardens and game laws is that they all get treated alike ! There are violators out there and game wardens do a good job for the most part but then again there are serious criminals and this is a completely different issue . There should be Criminal investigation units in our game commissions handling the really bad violators ; this way twenty years of complaints don’t fall on the some poor understaffed department who is following up on daily business . If there was a separate division then guys like this would not be around long ! It’s a darn shame to see how long this guy operated and what he stole from honest sportsman for all those years !

 

[Hunting Wife]

Glad they got a favorable outcome.

There are investigators, and wardens, that do great work making cases all the time. In my experience, that isn’t where these things fall apart most of the time. They go in the ditch at the prosecution phase. If you don’t have a State’s Attorney or prosecutor who has the gumption to actually work on the case, it doesn’t get tried. Happens all the time. Wildlife cases are nowhere near the top of the priority list for prosecutors.

 

[dirtclod Az.]

Hang em' High!

 

[Mallardsx2]

The jail time will be served in 30 day increments during September 2022, 2023 and 2024 in order to prohibit him from being in the field during the archery elk season when many of his violations took place.

Are they going to make him watch the movie bambi too?

 

[morley.tyler]

90 days in the can (spread over 3 years), $16K in fines, and a 10-year suspension of privileges. For a goat, illegal guiding and baiting for 20+ years... At 1st I was super frustrated w/ this exceptionally light sentence, then I remembered that this is Shoshone County and in particular, St Maries... That's about as stiff of a sentence as the judge could impose and still expect to live through the weekend.

I wish that I was joking.

 

[TheJason]

The problem I see with game commissions , game wardens and game laws is that they all get treated alike ! There are violators out there and game wardens do a good job for the most part but then again there are serious criminals and this is a completely different issue . There should be Criminal investigation units in our game commissions handling the really bad violators ; this way twenty years of complaints don’t fall on the some poor understaffed department who is following up on daily business . If there was a separate division then guys like this would not be around long ! It’s a darn shame to see how long this guy operated and what he stole from honest sportsman for all those years !

You do realize the guy who wrote the press release is a regional investigator, right?

 

[westbranch]

It looks like this guy was charged with a cow moose poaching in the 90s and illegal trapping in 2015. I suppose they didn't charge him with firearms charges earlier since they were building the wildlife cases.

 

[westbranch]

90 days in the can (spread over 3 years), $16K in fines, and a 10-year suspension of privileges. For a goat, illegal guiding and baiting for 20+ years... At 1st I was super frustrated w/ this exceptionally light sentence, then I remembered that this is Shoshone County and in particular, St Maries... That's about as stiff of a sentence as the judge could impose and still expect to live through the weekend.

I wish that I was joking.

Here was another recent illegal guiding/poaching case out of Shoshone county. Guys like this probably have a pretty drastic effect on the moose and elk populations. Hard to imagine how many other illegal animal kills they were involved in. Minimal punishment.

Undercover IDFG operation busts local poachers

By CHANSE WATSON

shoshonenewspress.com

Poachers sentenced at Law Day

WALLACE – The first Shoshone County Law Day of July had District Judge Scott Wayman addressing the criminal cases of roughly 30 individuals this week.

shoshonenewspress.com

 

[NECALI]

Here was another recent illegal guiding/poaching case out of Shoshone county. Guys like this probably have a pretty drastic effect on the moose and elk populations. Hard to imagine how many other illegal animal kills they were involved in. Minimal punishment.

Undercover IDFG operation busts local poachers

By CHANSE WATSON

shoshonenewspress.com

Poachers sentenced at Law Day

WALLACE – The first Shoshone County Law Day of July had District Judge Scott Wayman addressing the criminal cases of roughly 30 individuals this week.

shoshonenewspress.com

 

[NECALI]

23 years. I thought the same thing. What in the world took so long. 5 year suspended sentence to 90 days in jail. Big woop. We know the 10 years of hunting privilege will keep him from poaching again. Ya, right. Although I realize the judge needed to hand that down.

 

[OntarioHunter]

90 days in the can (spread over 3 years), $16K in fines, and a 10-year suspension of privileges. For a goat, illegal guiding and baiting for 20+ years... At 1st I was super frustrated w/ this exceptionally light sentence, then I remembered that this is Shoshone County and in particular, St Maries... That's about as stiff of a sentence as the judge could impose and still expect to live through the weekend.

I wish that I was joking.

I also had the same reaction when I read this. I lived in St Maries for a couple of years in the eighties. Twenty-three years of "investigating" complaints? More like twenty-three years of ignoring them. I won't be singing the praises of local law enforcement if it took them that long to shut him down. Hauling a poached goat across state lines undoubtedly got the feds involved and they lit a fire under local LE that couldn't be ignored any longer.

One morning I introduced a new chapter to my ninth grade St Maries HS students, "Today we start the unit on ecology." Danny jumps to his feet at the back of the room: "I ain't putting up with that! My dad says them damn ecologists are communists!" Hmmm. Okay, what's a communist? After a moment Danny responds, "An ecologist." His dad died in a logging accident earlier in the year so there was no point debating further. I sent Danny to the office and let the principle try to reason with him. Didn't work. That kid really had a lot of promise as a wrestler but after his dad died he easily slid between the cracks in that community. Very sad.

Again, it wasn't hard to find where this poacher lives. A real estate ad with 39 photos revealed a three story rustic style home full of shoulder mounts and a large shop (containing classic Mercedes) with stocked trout pond out front (one photo of him dumping a bucket of fish into the lake). Coward is apparently doing well for himself. The stiff fine was appropriate. His broken up jail sentence allows for some "unintentional" sloppiness in enforcing it. I hope someone keeps an eye on local LE to make sure he does his time.

 

[44hunter45]

Twenty.three.years. of complaints? And just now jailed? Just what do game officers do in Idaho?

David
NM

They keep New Mexicans from getting disappeared by the locals.

90 days in the can (spread over 3 years), $16K in fines, and a 10-year suspension of privileges. For a goat, illegal guiding and baiting for 20+ years... At 1st I was super frustrated w/ this exceptionally light sentence, then I remembered that this is Shoshone County and in particular, St Maries... That's about as stiff of a sentence as the judge could impose and still expect to live through the weekend.

I wish that I was joking.

Damn straight. It is not worth trying to explain to NRs how big this is in GMUs 5 & 6. Half the hunters have tribal rights and the rest have 5'x8' Gasden flags mounted on their F350 trucks.

Other than the Claude Dallas murder of two CO's in Owyhee County decades ago, the only other IDFG CO being shot at THAT I KNOW ABOUT happened in GMU 5.
Others may know better than I.

St. Maries is the County Seat of Benewah County, It straddles the GMU 5/6 boundary. East of St. Maries, in Unit 6 is Shoshone County, whose County Attorney prosecuted this case.
Judge Wayman is from CDA, but sits on the ID Region 1 District bench.

I was scouting spring bears in GMU 6 in 2021 and was "contacted" by a SxS full of local boys letting me know I was not welcome.

For the unaware- there are actually those who keep proposing that IDFG designate anyone who does not live in a GMU to be a "Non-Resident Hunter"

Apologies to @westbranch - I did not see you had posted this news release a few days ago.

ID Poaching Case

Just saw this: https://idfg.idaho.gov/press/st-maries-man-sentenced-months-jail-thousands-fines-and-decade-long-hunting-ban-poaching Based on some searching it looks like this guy was involved in a moose poaching case back to 1992 and illegal trapping in 2015. Looks like this guy was heavily...

www.hunttalk.com

 

[TheTone]

Pretty massive difference in having complaints, good intel, suspicions and what can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt

 

[Pmacc60]

O

You do realize the guy who wrote the press release is a regional investigator, right?

View attachment 207626

Yes I did JLS but what does that mean investigator ? How many officers does he have in his department , what is their training level . You do not understand what I was saying , here in Maryland I have worked with the DNR to catch poachers and here is the problem ; the DNR are state police but get treated as second class law enforcement ! I have often heard them referred to as the fishy police by their LEO peers ! Yes they do a great job but they are spread thin and are under trained in investigation ! Unlike state police that come into a crime scene and turn it over to CSI officers many times they do all the investigating and follow up on their own. I have listened to these guys , I have watched the states attorney roll her eyes like this case was beneath her ! This is the very reason a guy goes on breaking the law for twenty plus years because the investigation of these crimes is archaic and not up to real law enforcement ability.

The reason is funding and a basic idea we are all troglodytes , in many court rooms poachers are just hunters who got caught doing what all hunters do ! There is a lack of concern for the stealing of resources by criminals , millions of dollars a year here in Md alone.

 

[TheJason]

Okay.

 

[morley.tyler]

getting disappeared by the locals.

People will find this hyperbolic. If you know, you know. The 5 northernmost counties are so unique, it's almost unfathomable. The Three S's existed up there, long before wolves and bears made their respective comebacks.