Hunter Caught in DFG Trap in Poaching Case

For several months, some Eastern Sierra residents talked of a magnificent pronghorn antelope on the range between Mono Lake and Bridgeport, near the 1859 ghost town of Bodie.

Technically, North American antelope are not true antelope but pronghorn, or Antilocapra americana, but, one Bishop man said, “It was the biggest antelope I’d ever seen.”

In September, a Bishop hunter named Tom Nelson turned up with a pronghorn whose left horn measured 17 1/2 inches, the right a little less, which could put it among the top pronghorn ever taken on the Boone and Crockett Club’s trophy scale for North American big game.

The California Department of Fish and Game says the pronghorn that Nelson shot was the animal that had roamed the Bodie range, where pronghorn hunting is not allowed.

Nelson said he shot the pronghorn in Wyoming and produced a Wyoming tag to support his story.

Then, apparently intimidated by the possibility of federal prosecution, he admitted to the DFG that he had shot it near Bodie.

But after five misdemeanor charges were posted against him in Mono County Dec. 27, he was saying again that he shot it in Wyoming--or, at least that’s what his wife was saying.

Either way, Nelson, 48, is in trouble. Arraignment is scheduled Jan. 16 in Bridgeport, the county seat.

Simply, the charges boil down to a single poaching violation, not a crime to place anyone on the FBI’s most-wanted list but one taken seriously in rural centers such as Bishop, where hunting ethics are generally respected. And in a town this small (pop. 3,200), anyone labeled a poacher would find it a stigma to live with.

One night last week, Nelson agreed by phone to discuss the case with The Times. The next day, when a reporter phoned back to ask directions to his house, his wife, Brenda, answered and refused to allow an interview, saying their lives already were in turmoil over the affair.

“We’re in a very small town,” she said, angrily. “We’re tired of people coming down on our home life for such a minor, minor thing. He’s not a child molester or anything. My husband went to Wyoming, and he did get his antelope in Wyoming.”

The DFG doesn’t dispute that Nelson went to Wyoming, but says he just used the trip as a cover.

Nelson’s troubles started on Sept. 29, when one of his neighbors phoned the DFG on the CalTIP (Turn In Poachers) line, which routes all calls to Yountville in Napa County. Warden Joe Baima was fielding calls that day.

“A guy (said he had) overheard a conversation and heard a person’s name used and (said) simply that the person shot an antelope (in California) with an out-of-state tag,” Baima said. “(The informant) was telling me that the guy was boasting about how he did it. The individual said, ‘I thought you might like to know about that.’ It was so sketchy, the only reason I stayed with it was to (determine), how could a person get away with this?”

Baima checked with other states, and Wyoming’s computer revealed that Nelson was one of six Californians granted pronghorn permits last season. Then Baima learned that a state law requires anyone bringing fish or wildlife into California must declare it, usually at an agricultural inspection station.

“The only way I could suspect that he did something illegal was if he could not produce a declaration of entry,” Baima said. “That’s when Dave Fox went to check him out.”

D.J. (Dave) Fox is a DFG warden based in June Lake. Fox phoned Warden John Ortmann in Bishop, he said, “to see if he could find the animal. John called back that evening and said it had a Wyoming tag on it. At that moment I felt sure the CalTIP was good.”

Ortmann found the animal in the freezer at the Meat House, a local business that processes game for hunters. The head and cape were intact. The rest had been cut up into packaged meat. Fox paid a call on Nelson.

“He was really proud of it,” Fox said. “He bragged about such a long shot. It sounded unbelievable. After that I just kept building circumstantial evidence . . . if someone knew for sure about that animal. The best person was Steve Yeager.”

Yeager is a concrete contractor in Bishop.

“He told (Ortmann) he had told Nelson about this big buck in this little meadow--Little Mormon Meadow,” Fox said.

According to the DFG, when Nelson showed Yeager a Polaroid picture of his animal, with the severed head in a cardboard box, Yeager told Nelson, “ ‘It’s probably the same buck.’ ”

But Nelson reportedly said, “ ‘No, it’s not.’ ”

Still, Nelson couldn’t produce a declaration of entry to prove he had brought the animal from out of state.

On Oct. 2, Fox went to the Meat House and confiscated the animal. Then he went to Nelson’s house and waited for him to get home from work. It was 5 p.m.

“I tried to catch him off guard,” Fox said.

But Nelson wasn’t fazed.

Fox said: “He said, ‘Ah, no big deal, I’ll get my animal back. The court’s not gonna do much.’ They charged him only $268, which he paid--promptly. He was happy to get over it. Then he wanted his animal back and I said, ‘Well, I’m still investigating this other problem. I had the (federal) Fish and Wildlife Service put a hold on your animal, too.’ ”

Fox had learned that Wyoming couldn’t tell whether Nelson really had taken an antelope in that state because, unlike California, it doesn’t require hunters to validate their kills by having a law enforcement officer sign the tag and record the information.

But Fox had another card to play. A Wyoming warden had told him that although Nelson could have come in and shot an antelope without anyone knowing, besides his $100 non-resident license to take an antelope, he also was required to buy a conservation stamp when he got there.

“So I asked him if he had that stamp,” said Nelson. “He said no. That’s when I said, ‘Well, that means you killed that animal illegally in Wyoming.’ I had him squeezed.

“He said, ‘Well, I guess now I’m in trouble with Wyoming.’ I said, ‘Yeah, but they have no jurisdiction here, so I’ll probably turn it over to the Fish and Wildlife Service. Then it becomes a Lacey Act violation.’ ”

The federal Lacey Act prohibits the transportation in interstate commerce of wildlife taken or possessed in violation of state law--i.e., no stamp.

On Dec. 4, special agent Roger Gephart of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service phoned Nelson from Fresno and, without accusing him of anything, explained the Lacey Act and said that Nelson’s Wyoming license was invalid if it didn’t have the stamp.

Gephart mentioned, offhand, that the fine could be as high as $5,000. Upon further checking this week, he told The Times it could be up to $10,000 and a year in jail.

Gephart said: “I was gonna investigate it, and if (Nelson) wanted to change his story, he needed to talk to somebody about it. ‘At this time you’re under federal investigation.’ I downplayed the jail time, but it’s a possibility, depending on the judge and how much effort you’ve gone to to obstruct justice. That includes making up false statements.”

Fox said: “It must have got him thinking, because the next day he confessed.”

Nelson apparently decided he would take his chances with the lesser charges in California, where each of the five misdemeanors could run to $1,000 or six months in jail, but jail time and conviction on all five citations were unlikely.

Nelson’s wife said last week that Nelson really had killed the animal in Wyoming and that he told Ortmann he had killed it near Bodie only to escape a federal charge.

If Nelson is found guilty, the DFG has asked the court to revoke his hunting privileges in the United States, Canada and Mexico, and his life in Bishop might be difficult.

Brenda Nelson maintains: “We didn’t do anything illegal. He’s not a murderer. He’s not like a Charles Manson running around out there.”