43 



As soon as I drove on the field, it was obvious to me that this 

 was a heavily-baited field. I turned around and left the area. This 

 was about 5:30 in the evening. I returned after dark, and with the 

 aid of a penlight, I was readily able to document large amounts of 

 grains over the major portions of that field. There were literally 

 tons of grain scattered throughout that field. 



On the day of the hunt, it was such a large field; I wanted to 

 have as many officers as I could have with me to approach those 

 fields. It is traditional when you have afternoon hunts that you 

 have big barbecues and feeds. There is usually a lot of heavy drink- 

 ing that is associated with that. We have traditionally had prob- 

 lems when we have encountered some of those situations, and I 

 have found in my experience that the more officers you have with 

 you, the fewer problems that you have. 



I called as many officers as I could the following morning. Most 

 of them had to drive a couple hours to get there. I placed the field 

 under surveillance beginning about 2:00 p.m. I had to wait for 

 other officers to arrive on the field; hence, the wait until 4:15 p.m. 

 At about 3:30, my supervisor called me and told me that we had 

 a group of officers available; we then approached the field at 4:15. 



What I found on the field was when I approached hunters as 

 soon as I stepped onto the field, the bait was evident to me. When 

 we contact hunters on the field, it is common practice for us to try 

 to secure the situation, because as you can imagine, we had over 

 100 hunters. As soon as we hit the field, people started running. 

 There were vehicles driving around shouting at Federal game war- 

 dens. The back end of the field looked like an interstate highway 

 as people were exiting the field. 



We were only able to contact a portion of the hunters on that 

 field. There were many other violations that I personally observed 

 when I was watching that field from a distance: things such as 

 hunters shooting birds and hiding them. When I then contacted 

 them, they denied they were even hunting on the field. I watched 

 people shoot protected birds; I watched them kill over the limit; I 

 watched them shoot obvious unplugged guns. There were all types 

 of violations that I witnessed. 



When we contacted the hunters, we had no problems with the 

 vast majority of hunters except for a small group of individuals. I 

 suspect there was heavy drinking involved with those individuals, 

 and that may have contributed to that situation. When we contact 

 hunters, many of them do request that you show them the bait im- 

 mediately, but we cannot safely do that. I offered anyone who 

 wanted to wait until we gathered up our information to accompany 

 me out into the field to examine the bait. No one chose to take ad- 

 vantage of that opportunity. The documentation that we had was 

 overwhelming on that baited field; I personally cannot understand 

 how any person could walk across that field and not see the bait. 



We took over 70 photos from all locations on that field. I have 

 a representative sample of what was found on that field. These are 

 just a small portion of the photographs that were presented as evi- 

 dence in court in Gainesville. We took over 20 bait samples from 

 all locations on the field. There was no doubt in anyone's mind who 

 investigated that field that this was not only a baiting violation; 

 this was a gross baiting violation. I have worked for the Service for 



