55 



stuff all the time for charity events, and they were advertised all 

 over the place. I assume you folks were aware that this was com- 

 ing; is that correct? 



Mr. Oliveros. That is correct. We were aware of one newspaper 

 article. 



Mr. Hansen. And so, you were also aware that there were cer- 

 tain people being specifically asked to be there, people of some dis- 

 tinction and notoriety that were brought out that you could see 

 that they were coming to be the attraction, you know, like people 

 come back here, and they want to have Members of Congress go 

 to dinner with them and all of that type of stuff You are fully 

 aware of that; is that correct? 



Mr. Oliveros. We were not sure who was going to be there, be- 

 cause there were a lot of inaccuracies in the article. In other words, 

 there were insinuations there in the article of who might be there, 

 but we had no knowledge of who might be at that particular hunt. 



Mr. Hansen. Did you know the location of the hunt and where 

 it was going to be? 



Mr. Oliveros. Only generally. The article just gave a city. 



Mr. Hansen. Did you go out and inspect the area prior to the 

 hunt, say the day before or the week before to have the opportunity 

 to examine the area to see a bird count or just look at it? 



Mr. Oliveros. I went to the area that I later learned to be the 

 Sanchez field the evening before. 



Mr. Hansen. Did you at that time indicate or find any thing that 

 would indicate to you that there had been some type of baiting? 



Mr. Oliveros. Yes. 



Mr. Hansen. That was before the hunt. 



Mr. Oliveros. That was the evening before the hunt, yes. 



Mr. Hansen. At that time, do you not think it would have been 

 proper — and I do not know what your laws, rules and regulations 

 are — but to at that point stop it before there was any embarrass- 

 ment given to any of these people who were there? 



Mr. Oliveros. Well, we have found over the years that many 

 states have experimented with that type of a procedure as far as 

 warning people. And what that does, all it does is warn the people 

 who are intentionally baiting. This field was obviously intentionally 

 baited. Who baited it, we do not know. But it was intentionally 

 baited. If you warn somebody — in other words, as we later learned 

 on the invitation, there were four fields for this hunt. If we had 

 warned them about the one field, they probably would have just 

 gone to another field and did the same thing that we were not 

 aware of 



And that is what we find: if we have a policy where we warn peo- 

 ple or post areas that we find, what a person does who wants to 

 bait is they will bait two or three areas and then wait for the game 

 warden to call them. And if he finds this one, I will say, well, I 

 found that one that you have in this county. But then, the day of 

 the hunt, nobody is contacting them about the other one. They say 

 gangbusters; let us go. No one is going to contact us. 



Mr. Hansen. In the spirit of the law, do you not see a specific 

 difference between the situation where someone is baiting some 

 type of game to come to an area for the idea of bringing that ani- 

 mal or bird there and one where there is quite a group of people 



