The end of summer is always a time hunters look forward to in Colorado. It’s the beginning of hunting season. September in Colorado, a state with an abundance of wildlife, has a variety of options for hunters and a variety of game to hunt. But there is a right way to pursue this recreation and definitely a wrong way.
In Pueblo County, Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers are working to solve a couple of cases of people definitely hunting in the wrong way, poaching. Poaching is the illegal trafficking and killing of wildlife. It’s heartless, cruel and, worst, never ending.
The most recent poaching incident occurred near Lake Pueblo State Park where the remains of a mule deer were discovered. The animal had been shot; its meat left to deteriorate. Also this month, the body of a pronghorn antelope was discovered South of Highway 50 near Swallows Road in Pueblo West. Again, there was no effort to harvest the meat.
“I consider them (poachers) vile human beings,” said CPW District Wildlife Manager Gretchen Holschuh. But catching and prosecuting them is one of the rewards of her 23 years on the job. “That’s why I got into this career, to curb this (crime).”
CPW defines the crime of poaching as hunting out of season, hunting at night using spotlights, taking more than the legal limit of animals along with several other categories. But few poachers have distinguished themselves like the Colorado Springs man who was convicted of the crime in 2021.
Iniki Vike Kapu, then a Colorado Springs resident, was followed for a year by CPW investigators for a series of illegal hunts across three Colorado counties in which he killed as many as a dozen deer, a bighorn sheep and two wild turkeys. For his crimes, Kapu was sentenced to six months in jail, fined $4,600, placed on three years’ supervised probation and ordered to surrender the weapons used in his crime spree. He also was banned from ever hunting again in virtu- ally every state in the country.
The pronghorn that was killed, Holschuh said, was fatally shot from the roadside. Pronghorn are found in significant numbers on the plains of Colorado and in other western states. Holschuh said they are also the fastest land animal in North America and the second fastest next to the cheetah. The animal is also, she said, considered a prized shoot.
While the deaths of the mule deer and the pronghorn are under investigation, because of personnel challenges and the vast areas of responsibility people like Holschuh are required to patrol, it is nearly impossible to determine the actual numbers of poaching incidents that occur.
“We each have assigned districts,” that can spread up to 2,000 square miles, recounted Holdschuh. The veteran CPW officer’s responsibility is Area 11, a landmass that “goes from Pueblo County to Fowler to New Mexico.”
What makes a person want to poach, is a question officers like Holschuh ask themselves all the time. “It’s a sickness…a sick addiction,” she suspects. Some poachers are in it for the money or the trophy, but for others she says it comes down to something a lot simpler. “Bloodlust and bragging rights,” she suspects. In Colorado the prize game for most poachers are elk, deer and pronghorn. But sometimes, it’s whatever is easiest and available.
But Colorado voters may take some animals off the hunting list, including trophy hunter’s, wish list in November. A ‘Yes’ vote on Proposition 127 would prohibit “the hunting or trapping of bobcats, lynx and mountain lions.” A “No” vote would allow for continued hunting of bobcats and mountain lions. State and federal law would continue to keep lynx off limits for hunting.
While the penalties for poaching can reach several thousand dollars, fines have not proven to be barriers to illegal hunts, especially for bighorn sheep which are prized among trophy hunters.
Drawings for a license to take one, go for $320 for in-state residents, $2,300 for out of state hunters. There is also no guarantee that your name will be called for a license, as drawings are the way licenses are awarded. Some hunters have waited more than two decades to win one.
While poaching is a known violation of the law, 2,700 tickets each year are written annually across Colorado. Some are for violations as simple as fishing without a license. But most citations, wildlife officials say, usually include multiple violations.
Though the penalties for poaching can be steep, this crime will continue to keep officials like Holschuh and her counterparts busy in Colorado and around the world. Wildlife officials say poaching is a multi-billion-dollar business.
