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they had been lectured about safe hunting. They had been drinking 

 and some apparently heavily drinking, and I think with some 

 young people in the field were out hunting with their shotguns, 

 people who made a conscious decision, apparently, to bag more 

 than the limit; people who made a conscious decision to shoot birds, 

 down the birds, and not go look for them; people who made a deci- 

 sion to stash birds in the clumps of brush that had been cleared 

 from the land so that this would not be confused with a wheat field 

 or a corn field and not go back for those birds later; people who 

 denied they were hunting, but later, the birds were found, I think, 

 in their vehicles, because they had been observed stashing them. 



And we have a duty to do what with these people who knowingly, 

 openly violated a whole series of laws? The baiting did not cause 

 them to unplug their guns. Baiting did not cause them to shoot in 

 excess of the limit. Baiting did not cause them to waste the re- 

 source. But now, we are going to put you on trial because you did 

 not stop it after the first hunter or the second hunter or the first 

 bird? And we are talking about a field full of people, many of 

 whom, apparently, were willing just to shoot birds and not caring 

 about picking them up or counting them for their limit? You are 

 on trial for this? 



I think what we have here is under the guise of a wonderful 

 cause an operation that kind of went rogue by the participants, be- 

 cause they did not much care about the fish and game laws; they 

 did not much care about the Migratory Bird Treaty; they did not 

 much care about baiting, and they did not care much about shoot- 

 ing over the limit, and they did not much care about wasting the 

 resource by letting the downed birds just go. Unfortunately, in my 

 life, I have been around those hunters — only once. And now, we are 

 going to hear from another panel that is going to tell us that this 

 is about this law? 



No, this is about the conduct of people in the field who sup- 

 posedly know better, who chose to hunt without licenses and to 

 hunt in other violations of the law. Not all of them, but you have 

 some higher duty to go out there and interrupt that at the outset. 

 I do not think so. I think you have a duty to follow prudent law 

 enforcement and the safety of yourself and other officers who are 

 involved in it, just like any other law enforcement agency when you 

 are put in that position. But somehow, they want to pretend like 

 this is a trial about the Fish and Wildlife Service. I think this is 

 a trial about some citizens, since we are collecting evidence here 

 and taking testimony and doing what nobody had the guts except 

 for one young man to walk into court and suggest, maybe it now 

 is not as Mr. Young suggested that they knew they might have to 

 hire an attorney. Maybe they knew the evidence was so clear that 

 it would have been a waste of money to hire an attorney. 



And that is the problem, that this Committee is becoming a 

 forum for beating on legitimate law enforcement agents when they 

 are enforcing the law — we come here months later in hindsight. We 

 have heard from the political people, and then, we have judgments 

 about what you should be doing in the field on something you 

 found out about the night before. I am sure we would all have 

 rushed out there and said stop in the name of the law; I am Con- 



