Three Men, Including Former Cop, Accused of Illegal Alaska Hunting Operation
OutdoorHub Reporters 09.07.17
A former police officer with the Missoula Police Department, along with three other men, have been charged with a series of federal felonies as part of an alleged illegal hunting operation in Alaska.
According to Missoulian, Casey Richardson had been with the Missoula Police Department since 1998 until retiring in 2016.
From the sound of it, Richardson had been involved in a handful of hunting violations, including – but not limited to – leading other hunters on illegal hunts for Dall’s sheep – despite not being registered hunting guides, submitting false paperwork about the game they took, and Richardson himself was accused of shooting a Dall’s sheep and bringing the trophy to his home in Montana without filing any paperwork.
Another one of the 15 total counts against the three men accuses Richardson and Jeffrey Harris of Washington, of putting xylitol – a sweetener that’s toxic to canines – on bait piles and stuffing rabbit carcasses, to kill wolves and increase sheep and moose numbers around their hunting land.
More than once, authorities have documented Harris making plans to plant xylitol in bait for wolves, writing to Richardson on Facebook, “We’re gonna kill a couple rabbit and fill them with xylitol and hang them about 3 feet from the ground.”
In another instance, Harris instructed the winter caretaker of the hunting lodge to “make meatballs and put them in the very middle of the lake. They will be dead before they can leave the lake,” the post read, according to the indictment.
Casey Richardson is scheduled to be arraigned in the U.S. District Court in Anchorage on September 19.
