by Brian McCombie, NRA Media Contributor - Monday, September 15, 2025
The big, splashy poaching convictions show up in our newsfeeds and then spread across our social media platforms. Like the recent case of the Arizona outfitter who was sentenced to a year in federal prison for numerous violations of the Lacey Act. Charges included illegal outfitting, brokering of landowner vouchers, shooting from vehicles and holding hunts on unlicensed and unpermitted lands.
Hunters and conservationists are, of course, glad to read news of poachers and other wildlife lawbreakers being apprehended and applaud the efforts of wildlife law enforcement officials to investigate and prosecute these cases.
Unfortunately, research just released by the Boone & Crockett (B&C) Club, one of America’s leading hunting and wildlife conservation organizations, reveals that the majority of wildlife-poaching crimes never result in citations, much less news stories.
At a Sept. 9 press conference in Washington, D.C., B&C CEO Tony A. Schoonen announced the findings of the organization’s Poach and Pay Project, a five-year research study that is America’s most comprehensive to date. Titled, “Reducing the Illegal Take of Wildlife by Investigating the Motivators, Evaluating the Associated Conservation Costs, and Improving Detection Rates of Poaching,” the 205-page report addresses the very disturbing realities of wildlife poaching.
“We have long known that poaching is a major problem in the United States, but we didn’t truly understand the magnitude of the problem until this Poach and Pay research,” Schoonen said at the press conference. “With this defensible assessment of the ‘Dark Figure,’ we can clearly describe the conservation cost of poaching and prove that poaching is not a victimless crime. Not only do we lose individual wildlife, we are also losing a valuable public resource with a high cost.”
Schooner’s Dark Figure refers to the percentage of poaching cases that go undetected across America. Using 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, the Poach and Pay research concluded that only about 4% of all poaching crimes are detected.
Meaning an astounding 96% of the time, poachers get away with their criminal acts. Dark, indeed.
Other Poach and Pay results included:
The main researchers for the B&C project were Dr. Jon Gassett, Ph.D., the Southeastern Regional Field Representative for the Wildlife Management Institute (WMI) and a professional member of the B&C; his co-researcher and wife, Kristie Blevins, Ph.D., a criminologist with Eastern Kentucky University, and Steve Williams, Ph.D., past president of WMI and a former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Funded by the Multistate Conservation Grant Program, which is jointly managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program and the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, the research focused on the following:
Why is the detection rate so low? Schoonen cited several factors, starting with the small number of game wardens relative to the very large geographic areas they usually patrol. In addition, many of the poaching crimes are committed in remote areas that are difficult to access and offer few potential witnesses. Other such crimes occur on private lands owned by the poachers themselves.
According to wildlife enforcement officers surveyed, poaching for so-called “trophies” was the most common reason for the violations at 57.6 percent of all cases. “Peer-pressure” and
opportunistic poaching came in second at 43.9 percent. Although it is widely speculated that much poaching is done for the food it can provide, Poach and Pay discovered that “subsistence poaching” accounted for just over 3 percent of all poaching cases.
B&C believes this research can spur multiple actions leading to a larger crackdown on poaching and poachers.
At the state level, B&C hopes that certain wildlife crimes will be reclassified from misdemeanors to felonies, with punishments adjusted accordingly. One way to accomplish this is through the development of consistent “replacement costs” across the states. For example, how much is a big whitetail buck worth in an economic sense to local communities through legal, regulated hunting?
Similarly, B&C thinks elevating certain illegal activities from misdemeanors to felonies, which would then involve mandatory minimum sentences, could deter poachers, too.
B&C also wants more “boots on the ground.” This includes more wildlife enforcement officers as well as states developing anonymous poaching hotlines for hunters to take a
stand against poaching they witness.
Schoonen stressed that there needs to be a very strong public education component if we as a nation are to reduce poaching crimes. Part of that education includes public shaming of poachers.
As he noted, less than 50 years ago, drunk driving was more socially acceptable than it is today. But it took, in part, a motivated public condemning drunk driving to accomplish the social and legal changes we currently see concerning this crime. In addition, he called attention to how prosecutors and their staffs must be made aware of the fact that poaching is not a “victimless crime” for many reasons, including the financial costs to the states.
On a social level, non-hunters also need to understand a basic fact often lost in media reports of these wildlife crimes: Poachers and hunters are two very different things. Though animal rights extremists continue to conflate poaching with hunting, poaching is illegal while hunting is legal and regulated. Poachers are not hunters, as this NRA website and other outdoor media outlets continue to underscore.
“We need to show [the public] that lawful hunters are not poachers and we hunters will not tolerate wildlife crime,” Schoonen said, sharing the importance of making sure the public knows we hunters are taking an active role in spreading the word in our own ranks to improve the detection and conviction of poachers.
B&C’s final report on this critical topic contains considerably more data and recommendations. The full Poach and Pay Program report can be read here: poach_pay_final_report_-_press_conference.pdf