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WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2021
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Oregon man guilty of poaching near Crater Lake
Zach Urness Salem Statesman Journal
USA TODAY NETWORK
An Oregon man was sentenced Fri-
day for illegally poaching a trophy bull
elk in Crater Lake National Park, a vio-
lation of the Lacey Act.
Adrian Duane Wood, 44, of White
City, was sentenced to three years’ fed-
eral probation, including a six-month
stay at a reentry center, along with a
$42,500 ﬁne, a lifetime ban from Ore-
gon’s only national park and a ban on
hunting during his probation, U.S. At-
torney Billy J. Williams said.
In addition to the elk, Wood is also
suspected of killing several other deer
and elk within the park by baiting them
into a meadow with rock salt, police
said. At one point he bragged about hav-
ing killed as many as 24 elk, oﬃcials
said.
Oﬃcials also said Wood brought his
son along on poaching trips and
“bragged about his criminal behavior to
others,” Williams said.
“Our nation’s environmental laws are
in place to protect vulnerable wildlife
populations and ensure that future gen-
erations will have the opportunity to en-
joy these animals as we do today,” Wil-
liams said. “Mr. Wood preyed on elk and
deer who were unaccustomed to being
hunted and thus uniquely vulnerable to
poaching. Thanks to the hard work of
federal and state investigators, justice
has been served and Mr. Wood has been
permanently banned from Crater Lake.”
James Ashburner, special agent in
charge of the investigation for the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service, said Wood’s
“blatant disregard for the law caused
great harm to the elk herd in the park.”
This is how the investigation played
out, according to court documents from
the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service and Oregon State Po-
lice:
In July 2014, the three agencies be-
gan a multi-year investigation into
Wood’s illegal hunting activities based
on reports that he was poaching wildlife
in Crater Lake National Park. At least
two sources stated that Wood had killed
several deer and elk on the west side of
the park after baiting them into a mead-
ow with rock salt. OSP received further
reports that Wood was illegally poach-
ing wildlife at night.
On August 31, 2014, an OSP trooper
observed Wood and his son leaving the
national park after dark. When the
trooper approached him, Wood hurried
toward his vehicle and acted as if he
were trying to hide something. After
speaking with Wood, the trooper locat-
ed a loaded AR-15 semi-automatic riﬂe
outﬁtted with night optics beneath his
truck. Wood initially claimed the riﬂe
was for bear hunting, but after the
trooper pointed out that the riﬂe was not
lawfully equipped to hunt any wildlife,
Wood then claimed it was for personal
protection. The trooper cited Wood for
being a felon in possession of a ﬁrearm
and seized the riﬂe. Wood was convict-
ed in state court of the charge and
placed on probation.
Throughout 2015, NPS and OSP con-
tinued receiving reports of Wood’s ille-
gal poaching. NPS rangers found car-
casses and piles of rock salt in an area of
the park frequented by Wood. In Octo-
An Oregon man was convinced of poaching an elk at Crater Lake National Park. STATESMAN JOURNAL FILE
ber 2015, an NPS ranger found an elk
skull, jaw, and vertebrae in the national
park. The remains were determined to
be near a custom track log found on
Wood’s GPS unit. Investigators later
learned Wood entered and won second
or third place in a Sportsman’s Ware-
house Big Bull elk hunting contest.
In August and September 2016, Wood
engaged in several incriminating text
conversations. On August 28, 2016,
Wood texted his wife about his attempt
to locate a bleeding elk he had shot. A
photo later discovered on Wood’s
phone, taken on August 28, appeared to
depict a trail of blood. Investigators also
found a custom waypoint named “Hit”
on Wood’s GPS device created the same
morning as the date-stamped photo.
The “Hit” location was within the
boundaries of the national park.
On September 7, 2016, Wood texted
another individual, bragging about his
hunting activities: “I’ve been in the elk
since opening season and passed up 5
last Sunday because I have a problem
shooting a small 5 point when there is a
monster 50 yards away screaming at
me…I’m pretty good at ﬁnding elk
around here, I’ve killed 24 and get one
every year.”
On September 22, 2016, OSP contact-
ed Wood in his vehicle as he was pulling
a horse trailer near the boundary of the
national park. Although Wood stated he
had not been hunting in 2016, the troop-
er observed blood on Wood’s hands and
clothing. Wood then gave the trooper a
partially validated Oregon Department
of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) archery elk
tag, which also had blood on it. The next
day, an OSP trooper returned to the area
where they had contacted Wood,
walked a short distance into the nation-
al park, and discovered a freshly killed
and partially butchered elk. The carcass
was in the same meadow wherein Wood
was previously reported to have hunted
elk. The trooper noted that the elk’s
head was sawed oﬀ and some meat was
removed. Shortly thereafter, Wood text-
ed photos of himself posing with the elk.
OSP obtained the photos and matched
them to the carcass.
On October 4, 2016, FWS agents exe-
cuted a federal search warrant on
Wood’s residence. They located multi-
ple ﬁrearms, assorted ammunition, and
several wildlife specimens. FWS special
agents later searched Wood’s GPS units
and conﬁrmed he was in the national
park when he killed the bull elk on Sep-
tember 22 and had marked the location
of the kill. They further conﬁrmed that
the majority of his GPS hunting way-
points and track logs between 2011 and
2016 were within the boundaries of the
national park.
Forensic scientists at the FWS Na-
tional Fish and Wildlife Forensics Lab,
conducted forensic examinations and
genetic analyses of the wildlife speci-
mens taken from Wood’s residence and
compared them to animal remains re-
covered in the national park. DNA
analyses revealed that Wood possessed
parts of at least 13 elk, 12 deer, and one
black bear, and the blood found on
Wood’s ODFW archery tag matched the
DNA of the elk poached on September
22. A forensic pathologist further deter-
mined the elk killed on September 22
had been killed by a gunshot. In total,
investigators deﬁnitively linked six
seized specimens to elk or deer poached
by Wood in the national park in 2015 and
2016.
On May 1, 2019, Wood was indicted by
a federal grand jury in Medford, Oregon
for violating the Lacey Act by unlawfully
taking and transporting a trophy bull
elk from Crater Lake National Park and
illegally possessing ammunition as a
convicted felon. On August 17, 2020,
Wood pleaded guilty to the Lacey Act
charge and agreed to pay restitution to
NPS for the wildlife illegally taken from
the national park.
This case was investigated by the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Oﬃce of
Law Enforcement, National Park Ser-
vice, and the Oregon State Police Fish
and Wildlife Division. It was prosecuted
by Adam E. Delph, Assistant U.S. Attor-
ney for the District of Oregon.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is
responsible for protecting America’s
wildlife from poaching, illegal commer-
cialization, and other kinds of wildlife
crime. If you have information related to
a wildlife crime, please call 1-844-FWS-
TIPS (1-844-397-8477) or email
fws_tips@fws.gov.
Zach Urness has been an outdoors re-
porter, photographer and videographer
in Oregon for 13 years. Urness can be
reached at zurness@StatesmanJour-
nal.com or (503) 399-6801. Find him on
Twitter at @ZachsORoutdoors.
Simple tips to improve your ﬁnances in big ways
Russ Wiles
Arizona Republic
Follow these highly effective
shortcuts
USA TODAY NETWORK
One of the common misconceptions
about achieving ﬁnancial success is
that it requires complexity, sophistica-
tion and intricate eﬀort. Sure, you might
want to construct a detailed analysis of
investment allocations, debt-payback
schedules or whatever, but you proba-
bly don’t need to.
Sometimes, just a handful of
straightforward guidelines, consistent-
ly followed, can do the trick.
People use mental shortcuts all the
time elsewhere in their lives to achieve
goals such as losing weight, eating bet-
ter, exercising more and so on. You can
also successfully apply rules of thumb
to money matters such as saving more,
investing better and keeping debts un-
der control.
“Good rules are really simple ones,”
said Ryan Murphy, head of decision sci-
ences for Morningstar Investment Man-
agement. “They can be just a couple of
words.”
He and Samantha Lamas, a Morning-
star behavioral researcher, set out to de-
termine which rules people view as
most important, which they actually
use and which are more closely correlat-
ed or associated with ﬁnancial well-be-
ing.
For that latter part, their report
looked at which rules of thumbs are fa-
vored by successful individuals com-
pared to those who are struggling, based
on a 10-question ﬁnancial well-being
survey developed by the Consumer Fi-
nancial Protection Bureau and viewable
at consumerﬁnance.gov.
Murphy and Lamas gleaned respons-
es from 867 adults about their use and
perception of ﬁnancial rules of thumb.
Several rules were deemed both popular
and relatively eﬀective. These include
goals to:
h Pay down debts in full, when pos-
sible.
h Pay more than the minimum (espe-
cially on credit-card balances).
h Save as much as you can.
h Separate spending from savings
(an element of budgeting).
h Keep an emergency fund equal to 3
to 6 months of expenses.
h Diversify your assets.
h Try to save 10% to 30% of your in-
come each month.
h Invest in line with your risk toler-
ance.
Others rules didn’t fare as well.
Among them: avoid borrowing money
from a 401(k) plan (if available), take ad-
vantage of matching funds on retire-
ment accounts and organize your ﬁ-
nances frequently. These are all smart
ideas, but they didn’t resonate as much
with respondents.
In a few cases, the researchers no-
ticed that sound rules were followed
more by people who described them-
selves as not well oﬀ (according to their
responses to the CFPB survey).
These included “paying yourself
ﬁrst” and “trying to ﬁnd ways to earn ex-
tra money.”
Another rule of thumb embraced rel-
atively more by struggling individuals
was the notion of investing a percentage
equal to 115 minus your age in stocks and
stock funds, with the rest in more stable
bonds or cash. (For example, if you’re 40
years old, you would strive to hold 75%
of your assets in stocks/stock funds, as
115 minus 40 equals 75.)
Again, that’s not a bad general idea,
but more aﬄuent individuals said they
didn’t follow them as much.
Focus on what works for you
The researchers didn’t explain why
people with less ﬁnancial success tend-
ed to use various guidelines more often.
But some rules, such as paying yourself
ﬁrst, might be too vague, they said.
“Good rules are speciﬁc enough to be
actionable but not too speciﬁc,” Murphy
said in an interview.
Some rules also might be too com-
plex, such as the one about investing a
percentage equal to 115 minus your age
in the stock market.
Some ﬁnancial rules are neither ap-
plicable nor practical, according to the
report.
For example, the notion of investing
as early as possible wasn’t deemed es-
pecially useful or valuable by respon-
dents. The idea is a sound one — people
who start investing in their 20s or early
30s often will wind up well ahead of
friends or colleagues who start later in
life.
But it might not be practical, Lamas
said, for people who must prioritize oth-
er objectives such as paying down stu-
dent debts ﬁrst. And for those who have
gotten a late investment start, it’s a
moot point anyway.
And sometimes, rules of thumb and
the goals they seek to achieve are lim-
ited by various factors, such as insuﬃ-
cient income. But usually, people can
control some or most of the factors that
aﬀect their ﬁnancial decisions.
How to turn rules into habits
The researchers emphasized that ﬁ-
nancial rules of thumb are most eﬀec-
tive when they become second nature
from habitual use, and when they are
easy to remember.
Various tips can help you build them
into habits.
For example, if your objective is to
save more for large purchases, you could
learn to set aside money as soon as you
get paid. You could then reward yourself
for good behavior with a coﬀee drink af-
ter you complete the transfer to your
savings account, Lamas said.
The point here is to associate the
good behavior with something that
makes you happy, thus encouraging you
to keep it up.
Other tips for building good habits,
though not discussed in the study, in-
clude sticking with a routine for at least
a month, enlisting a buddy keep you on
track and writing down and posting
your goals on a bathroom mirror or re-
frigerator, to keep them front and cen-
ter.
Often, people must make ﬁnancial
decisions despite obstacles such as time
constraints or a lack of experience or in-
formation. But that’s also a reason for
following rules of thumb in the ﬁrst
place — they’re simple, easy to apply
and don’t require much analysis or de-
liberation.
“Each person is diﬀerent, and the
rules (to be eﬀective) must ﬁt into our
lives,” Lamas said.
Reach Wiles at russ.wiles@arizona-
republic.com.