“The integrity of the hunt is measured not by what you bring home, but by how you conduct yourself in the field.” — Aldo Leopold

Hunters don’t need reminders of who we are, we are, and have always been, the first defenders of wildlife. Roosevelt and our forebears didn’t save America’s wildlife by accident; they drew a bold, unbreakable line between hunters who give and poachers who steal.

That line is fading before our eyes. Too many now cross it. Some out of ignorance, but far too many by calculated choice.

And now we know just how bad it is, thanks to the newly released Boone & Crockett Club’s Poach & Pay Project, the most comprehensive look at poaching in U.S. history. 

The Poach and Pay research involved extensive surveys of fish and wildlife agency law enforcement officers, hunters, landowners, and convicted poachers, as well as interviews and focus groups with prosecutors and judges. 

Researchers also conducted a literature review and utilized survey and interview data to develop a better understanding of the typologies and motivations behind illegal wildlife activities.

After accumulating this data, the researchers used a Bayesian statistical framework to estimate the detection rates of illegal take using diverse datasets from various published research papers, along with citation, hunter, and officer numbers, survey responses from perpetrators, enforcement statistics, hunter landowner reporting, and wildlife telemetry studies.

Using criminology theory, the research also provides specific policy and outreach recommendations to help reduce the amount of illegal wildlife crime in this country.

At its highest level, the Poach and Pay Project reveals that only 4% of poaching incidents are ever detected. 

For every poacher caught, twenty-four walk away free.

That’s not merely a nuisance. That’s a full-blown crisis.

Every time a deer is shot out of season, every elk taken without a tag, every wild turkey poached, twenty-four out of twenty-five of those thieves vanish into the shadows without consequence.

Those shadows conceal staggering losses: $302.6 million in uncollected fines and $1.13 billion in replacement costs each year. Together, that’s $1.4 billion stolen from conservation annually. That averages out to about $28.8 million per state.

To put that in perspective: poachers cost us more than the $1 billion we raise through the Pittman–Robertson excise tax annually, and take our nearly half of the $1 billion from hunting licenses sales.

Maybe one of the fastest, and definitely the most noble, ways to lower hunting costs is to simply stop poachers.

Nearly $2 billion? That’s not petty crime, it’s the organized theft of America’s wildlife.

Hunters must shout this from the rooftops: poachers aren’t hunters. 

Hunting is legal. Hunting is ethical. Hunting funds conservation.

Poaching is theft, plain and simple.

The research proves it. 57.6% of poaching is driven by trophy hunting. The remaining 51.1% is opportunistic. Subsistence poaching barely even registers. These are not acts of survival. They are acts of arrogance, greed, and defiance.

And when the media blurs hunters with poachers, they don’t just smear us, they attack the very system hunters built to protect wildlife. Make no mistake: anti-hunting groups will use this research as ammunition if we don’t own the fight against poachers.

We can’t let that happen. Ever.

Every poached deer, elk, turkey, or bear is one less chance for an honest hunter, one more crack in the public’s trust. Every time we bite our tongues, the poacher’s shadow falls a little closer to our image.

Meanwhile, game wardens patrol alone across 5,000 to 7,000 square miles. They are often outnumbered. They are also underfunded and overworked. Without us, they cannot hold the line.

The data is brutal. Wildlife crime detection rates are abysmally low, the costs are astronomical, and the stigma isn’t yet strong enough to deter it. But there’s hope. If detection rose to even the level of larceny (25%), recovered fines and restitution could cover enforcement costs and more.

The Poach & Pay study suggests reforms, but don’t wait. Each hunter must act now to protect our tradition and wildlife. Take responsibility for conservation in your actions and words.

Take personal responsibility: report poaching whenever you see it. Silence enables poaching; active reporting stops it. Share your actions with fellow hunters to encourage vigilance.

Speak out publicly. Clearly inform people: hunters follow the law, while poachers commit theft. Challenge anyone who blurs that distinction, both in person and online.

Mentor future hunters: teach them that fair chase is essential, not optional. Share resources or guidance on ethics and reporting violations to build the next generation of responsible hunters.

Hunters saved America’s wildlife once. We will do it again, but only if we act.

As Theodore Roosevelt warned, “In a moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.”

If we choose nothing now, then nothing is all we will eventually have left.

Jay Pinsky
Editor – The Hunting Wire &The Archery Wire
jay@theoutdoorwire.com

By Jay Pinsky

The red deer stag I would eventually kill sits atop a New Zealand peak.

Most writers take pride in their leads. But the best one for the story of my red deer stag hunt in New Zealand was written by Charles Dickens in 1859:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness …”

Indeed, it was. In those early hours, optimism and excitement flooded me, I wasn’t in France, and there certainly wasn’t a revolution raging on the South Island. But by the end of my first day in New Zealand, the excitement had shifted to uncertainty and tension, and Dickens’s words fit my hunt perfectly.

Encounter

Within the first hour of the hunt, my guide, Bre Lewis, and I closed within forty yards of a magnificent red deer stag. Bre, a seasoned archer herself, had taken me to a ravine where red deer fed along the timbered slopes. The weather, wind, and terrain all favored us.

I was ready. After arriving at Glen Dene, I’d passed Bre’s archery proficiency test. My arrows stacked into a golf ball-sized bullseye at forty yards. Months of daily practice prepared me for this moment: shooting at every angle, in every condition, out to sixty yards. I thought I had covered every situation. Almost.

We slipped into position as the stags fed uphill. At forty-three yards, a break in the brush gave us a narrow shooting lane. Bre whispered, “They’re right there. Two stags. We want the first one… no, take the second.”

I drew, settled, and waited for the shot.

The Shot

The stag never stopped. In my mind, Bre’s whistle froze him. He kept climbing.

I released. The arrow flew true, exactly where I aimed, except the stag had already taken a step. Instead of slipping behind his shoulder, my arrow buried deep into his left hip.

I hadn’t missed. I’d done something far worse. My stomach sank, but there was no time to sulk. Bre, calm and professional, shifted gears. She always carries a backup rifle on archery hunts, a Blaser R8 in .308 Winchester. She looked at me and said, “This is now a rifle hunt.”

The Pursuit

We trailed heavy blood through the brush. We climbed higher and higher, until it vanished. When we looked up, we saw him on the very tip-top of the mountain.

Red deer don’t belong there. That’s where tahr or chamois live. But my stag, wounded and defiant, had climbed where no stag should – especially with carbon arrow in its hips. From that moment, he became the Tahr Stag.

The climb to him was brutal: steep rock, loose footing, and too much open space. At 300 yards, we stopped. He was sky-lined on the peak, untouchable. One wrong move and we’d lose him over the back side forever. So, we waited.

The Vigil

For six hours, we lay on that mountainside. I wasn’t comfortable, but I dared not complain given the situation. We couldn’t push him. We could only wait for gravity, fatigue, or mercy to bring him down.

The stag finally began to move. He half-crawled, dragging his ruined hindquarters, inching toward the scree slope below. Each agonizing step deepened my shame and helplessness. No hunter worth his salt can watch an animal suffer without feeling the weight of responsibility. He finally reached the rocks, and he paused broadside. The wait was over.

The Shot of Mercy

I contorted into a pretzel to get stable, rested the Blaser on my pack, and squeezed the trigger. The Hornady bullet struck true. Relief and sorrow hit me at once as the Tahr Stag collapsed, and with him went more than six hours of suffering, his and mine. This wasn’t redemption. It was mercy. And I owed him that.

The step angle of this photo shows where the red deer stag finally fell. 

Reflection

Hunting teaches humility in ways nothing else can. Preparation, practice, and planning matter, but wild animals don’t follow scripts. A single step changed my clean kill into a long, painful lesson.

The strongest and bravest red deer I’ll ever know didn’t fall to my perfect arrow. He fell because I had the courage, with Bre’s guidance, to finish what I started and not let him suffer. That realization brought a bittersweet sense of closure, with pride and sadness intertwined. The mountain reminded me: hunting is never about perfection. It’s about responsibility.

And that day in New Zealand, Dickens was right. It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times.

My wife, Wendy, left, and my guide, Bre Lewis, with my “tahr stag” at the end of the week-long hunt at Glen Dene