Wildlife officials not anticipating Ohio's high unemployment will lead to more poaching

With Ohio’s unemployment lines lengthening and food shelves diminishing, any fear that an increasing number of people will turn to poaching is premature, if not highly unlikely, wildlife officials are saying.

Ohio’s filings for unemployment has climbed to nearly one million, an increase of more than 109,000 people alone for the third week of April. This latter figures means Ohio’s unemployment rate stands at11.6 percent, the tenth highest in the nation.

Thus it might be assumed that some Ohioans hankering to help fill a dwindling freezer would find it too great a temptation to bushwhack a buck or jack-light a doe.

Perhaps, though that is not being seen, says the Ohio Division of Wildlife.

And part of the reason for this is possibly because any number of those individuals who are out of work still wont take kindly to seeing their natural resources being taken advantage of, says an agency official.

“I can’t say that I ever made a case of road-hunting or spot-lighting because the poacher was doing it for food. It was always about antlers,” said Brian Banbury, the Wildlife Division’s executive administrator of information and education. “That’s been my experience anyway.”

Banbury says people – of all stripes, hunters included – are becoming more aware of the importance of wildlife; their value as both objects of lawful hunting as well as watching.

“I saw a federal study last year that said 55 percent of all the respondents had eaten some type of wild game within the previous month,” Banbury said. “Fifty-five percent. That’s amazing; they see it as a shared resource.”

Consequently, “people - even those who are unemployed - are our extra eyes out there,” Banbury said.

“And poachers are used to knowing when their neighbors or a landowner goes to work or when they are home,” Banbury said. “Now, they don’t know, and they aren’t sure if they’ll be watched.”

Just as assuredly, Banbury believes, “there is no honor among thieves.”

“Poachers don’t want to see someone stealing ‘their’ resources, either,” Banbury said.

For now, Banbury says also, the Wildlife Division is not noting any uptick in poaching of any kind. That sort of deer-poaching jump – about 90 percent of the time - typically occurs in the fall and winter; at the same time as the hunting season, Banbury says.

“And understand, too, we are still doing our patrols, still conducting jack-lighting surveillance; none of that has changed,” Banbury says. “Our officers are just doing it properly by observing social distancing.”

- By Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
JFrischk@Ameritech.net
JFrischk4@gmail.com