Local conservation officers have won a court case that sets limits on shooting wildlife on private property.
Peter Michael Potters, Jordie Charles Clarke and Loren Robert Doll were all convicted in an incident this past hunting season in a rural area between Prince George and Vanderhoof.
Conservation officer Gary Van Spengen was patrolling in the area when a call came in to the provincial hotline for pollution and poaching reports. A landowner in the backcountry southeast of Vanderhoof, Ross Wright, explained that a deer had been shot on his fields. He gave permission to the three in the hunting party to cross his fence and retrieve the dead deer, but no permission had been given to fire a weapon onto his property in the first place.
The case had forensic evidence to support Wright's claim that the deer was killed on the spot in the field where it was found. Tracks indicated the deer did not run there wounded from some other location, and the single gunshot wound severed its spine so it could not possibly have moved.
It was also noted by Van Spengen, when he pulled the offenders' vehicle over not long after the incident, that the deer did not have enough antler points to qualify for the four-point season that was underway in that area at the time.
With those facts established, the three pleaded guilty to an assortment of charges, some under the provincial Wildlife Act and some under the Canadian Criminal Code.
"The Criminal Code charges show the seriousness of these actions," said conservation office spokesman Sgt. Rory Smith. "It is a matter of life and death that when you discharge a firearm you know and account for your shooting lanes. You have to identify your target before you pull the trigger, but you also have to consider what is behind your target in case you miss, or your bullet passes through the animal, or if there is a ricochet."
In this case, the Wright family home was less than a quarter-mile from the deer and some of their outbuildings were in the direct path of the hunter's bullet.
Potters pleaded guilty to unlawful handling of a firearm, killing a deer outside of its season, and discharging a firearm in a no-shooting area. He was fined a total of $1,500 and prohibited from firearms possession for the next three years.
Clarke pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm without proper license, and hunting without reasonable consideration for the lives or property of others. He was fined a total of $1,000 and given a two-year firearms prohibition and a one-year hunting prohibition.
Doll pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm without proper license, and hunting without reasonable consideration for the lives or property of others. He was fined a total of $1,000 and has a three-year firearms prohibition.
