Poaching for Fun and Profit
Me and my neighbors gear up for crabbing season the way my old ones in Wisconsin did for deer hunting season. Well, we don’t put out salt licks and no, we don’t jump in a boat to ‘shine’ our prey with headlights, but we do start talking about the hunt and we do gather up all the regalia and make sure the lines are good, the bait is ready and the boat motors start. In my case I check to see if my oars are rotted or the oarlocks rusted. Crab fever is an annual pandemic around here. Covids come and go, but crab fever, it’s like the common cold, it comes every year.
The past couple of seasons we’ve had trouble with poaching. You can expect some of that, maybe a kid just checking your traps, seeing if he could catch an easy dinner, or guys like Poacher Paul who poach deer and crab both, no license necessary. But I’m not talking about the casual poacher here, I’m talking about organized crime. Up and down the Camano coast the crabpots are hauled up and the crabs stolen. Just out front of me, we’re talking hundreds of crabs every day or night, and if you add in the rest of the island, think thousands. Multiply that by over ten bucks a pound, and no, we’re not figuring this guy or these guys are eating all these crustaceans themselves, we’re looking at tens of thousands of dollars, probably more like six figures every season. This is grand theft crab! This is a major felony.
But … no one in fish and game seems to be too interested in catching our poacher. One of the neighbors called in the boat license of a suspect rifling his pots to the Washington Fish and Wildlife folks only to be told they would need to see the theft themselves. Nevertheless, the nice man on the phone said they would send an agent down to the Everett boat launch and see if the suspect put out there. Oh, right, like he might just have his own dock or he might be launching just about anywhere in Puget Sound? Couldn’t go to the trouble to look up the owner of said boat, maybe wait in his driveway, see what was in those multiple coolers? Nah, that would be police work. That would be, I guess, work.
So we crab hunters are left to fend for ourselves, looks like. A buddy suggested a vigil on the bluff with binoculars and a deer rifle, maybe add a little vigilantism to this year’s crab season. But I reminded him of the guy a few years back who watched from his bluff a guy pull his pots out in the bay, pulled out his 30-30 Winchester and shot a few times in the general vicinity, which, you might have guessed, sent the miscreant fleeing. Course half an hour later the doorbell rang and there was the game warden, plenty pissed at being targeted checking our shooter’s pots for regulation violations.
Just goes to show, it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. I’m trying to decide which one I am this season.
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Tags: Crab Pot Poaching, Crab Theft, Crabbing for Crooks