Undercover conservation officer
 

I find this quite funny -

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/4...-worth-of-fish

Haha that’s great. Goes to show what levels fish crops will drop to. No dignity. Also written by my buddy from high school.

How many other customers did this Iron fellow have? He was breaking the law and got what he deserved.

I say good job by the CO’s.

Hahaha spend thousands in taxpayers money to bring down the tony montana of fish fillets.....:sHa_sarcasticlol:

X2 another poacher hits the skids.

It's always the Little Fish that get caught in Sting operations. :lol:

Grizz

Well I know I will sleep better tonight knowing they caught this guy for trying to trade a fish for tobacco.

It starts with tobacco and what's next, beads and blankets?

It’s like staking out a homeless shelter for a year and a half and in the end busting a homeless crackhead for 20 bucks worth of crack. Lol. Officer might of had good intentions though. But still an epic fail.

Wow, and I thought CBC had poor reporting

Glad the offender got caught. He broke the law. If 90$ of fish is 'no big deal' and not worth laying charges, it sends the message to other poachers that illegally trafficking game is okay.

Doesn't matter how much it cost vs the quantity of trafficked natural resources. By that logic, Conservation officers should stop laying charges whatsoever, as virtually every time they catch someone in contradiction of the Wildlife Act or Fisheries Act, it costs more than the resulting fine is, with all the paperwork done in the office, court costs, etc.

Good to see the guy get caught but anyone with half a brain would see that this was a ridiculous waste of resources.

x2. especially when they are limited and could have been better used elsewhere.

Grizz

Am thinking there is a lot more to this story than what is being said.

No different than police spending tens or hundreds of thousands of $$$ watching thieves or drug dealers for years then busting them and they only get probation, a small fine or nothing at all. At least the perpetrator is on the radar, how do we know he wasn't netting thousands of fish but they couldn't pin it on him. How many drug dealers do we bust over and over again who sell thousands of grams of coke or meth that when the police get enough evidence and an OK to actually make a bust only catch them with a couple grams and the dealer gets a walk. Don't judge a book by it's cover.

Also - with poachers, where would be the threshold where you investigate and lay charges vs saying “it’s only a small amount of poaching. No big deal”
Who decides when to move forward with an investigation and when to cancel it?
It’s a slippery slope. Hammer all of them to the full extent, i say... whether they’re white, black, brown, green or orange. Colour of skin and race don’t matter to me.

When you "hammer them all to the full extent" the trust is gone from the outdoorsmen that are the officers eyes and ears and alot of times do 90 percent of the dirty work for them, like getting license plates and vehicle descriptions etc. It's a fine line. Anyone that's ever been on the wrong end of a conservation officer I'm sure can relate. If you haven't, you won't understand how far they go to get their conviction sometimes, even if it's a total waste of time and money. Maybe it's a job security thing for them or just a personal vendetta that goes too far. Bonnyville-cold lake area in the late 80's early ninties had a couple super cops that the locals ran circles around just for fun and made a game of it. Hiding in the bush with spotting scopes and ripping around on a jet ski 30 years ago was pretty agressive enforcement. The limits were 30 perch and we would catch 59 of them between two of us and hide them every conceivable spot knowing full well they would be around the corner when we left. Everyone on the lake knew they were being watched.

your right they should all be hammered down on but an 18 month investigation on a guy and they had zero evidence after 6 months. At that point the under cover operation is wasteful. It took them 7 months the guy finally bartered away 2 fish for smokes.

Why continue the investigation for another 12 months after that. The investigation was a needless waste of resources that should have been put to use elsewhere.

This sums it up perfectly.

I don’t claim to be a journalist of any sort but holy cow that was a painful read!! Definitely more to the story than reported by this joke of a story.

Have observed miserable CO's. A lot of smart asses. Have observed their aggressiveness & a lot of other things, a lot that many don't appreciate. The one thing I do feel though is that if anything they are not stupid. Not even close. I have a gut feeling, (no proof), that the implicated character had lots of tricks up his sleeve. Again only a gut feeling but I'm old & have never observed such a thing as a stupid CO. Last thing is I don't trust media in any sense. Others can think whatever they want.

Yeah, I've known a few. Most, and I emphasis, most, COs are great people, hunt themselves and are dedicated to conservation. However, there area a few cowboys in the group, who tend to get just a bit overzealous. They are like poachers, they give the rest a bad name.

Wish they would dedicate those kinds of resources to where they're needed instead of scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Most of the FW officers I met were very decent people,even met 2 having sex way back off some road thinking no one would show up.The guy was married and she was single,one thing I told them about doing it in a truck was to shut it off and leave a crack in the window to hear up coming drivers.

I never seen a women move so fast in all my life as I laid on the horn,at first as I approached I thought no one was in the truck,but when I got beside the front of the truck I seen a shoulder and that's when I startled them.

He left his wife and is still with the same girl that was in that truck,i don't think they will ever forget my face.About 20 minutes after I went by the lights came on and they pulled me over,i had a good laugh and told them about shutting the truck off plus I never seen a truck or no one since early morning and they smiled and drove away.Wasn't any of my business ,hell I was young not that long ago.To be all balled in a tight cab like some dog huppen a foot ball would probably put me in the hospital for a day,my back is toast since my accident.

Run into few donkeys ,but there's no perfect system no matter where you work so I take it as it comes.

Yup......wish we had more just out and about.

Just sayin: So the native fellow who has a hard time affording a pack of smokes will pay the fine?
I have a place for many years about an hour north of Canoe Lake and know the locals pretty good. Most of the Elders are real decent folks who really struggle to make ends meet. So offering this Elder smokes for a couple fish is really like giving a kid candy for a favor.

LOL! Thanks for the laugh! :sHa_sarcasticlol:

A 3rd party news site who got their information from a CBC broadcast...... I highly doubt we are getting the whole story here.

that is the best derail i have ever read.

the conservation officers began investigating Iron after they received numerous complaints, dating back to 1997, that he was selling Canoe Lake fish illegally.

everyone defending him must have skipped over the 1997 part....

That’s even funnier. So from 1997, 21 years ago, they finally nailed him to the wall with a sandwich baggy of fillets...:sHa_sarcasticlol: thanx for the laugh! Now he can move on to the next phone call received in 1998...:sHa_sarcasticlol: operation mullet man!

LOL at "It’s the rural Canadian version of ‘Point Break'"

"Utah! Get me two!"