The Indiana Department of Natural Resources marked a slightly unlucky milestone on Thursday, Nov. 10 when the Warren County Court issued 25-year-old turkey poacher and longtime scofflaw Hanson Pusey with the state’s first ever lifetime searching ban. In addition to the lifetime ban, he was additionally delivered a house detention sentence, probation, and was charged alternative charges for the price of the investigation, in keeping with a press launch from IDNR. As you possibly can think about, the checklist of infractions the West Lafayette man dedicated to obtain this punishment is in depth.
Pusey’s searching privileges have been first suspended in March 2019 after racking up a number of expenses for trespass, unlawful take of wildlife, and waterfowl searching violations in a November 2018 case. He saved chasing turkeys in Indiana, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania after the suspension. When the Indiana DNR obtained a tip in 2020 that Pusey was nonetheless poaching within the space, they surveilled his exercise and ultimately searched his residence.
IDNR officers discovered 83 spent shells with the dates and places of the turkeys Pusey had killed, relationship again to 2012. Fourteen of the shells have been dated inside three months of when Pusey obtained his first suspension in 2019, 4 of them in Indiana. While proof of this magnitude is uncommon in a poaching investigation, it seemingly helped expedite the method for Pusey’s expenses in Indiana and different states.
The punishments in every state are as follows:
In Pennsylvania, $4,125 in fines and an eight-year suspension of all searching licenses; in Connecticut, $324 in fines and an indefinite suspension of all searching licenses; in Massachusetts, $700 in fines and a full license suspension throughout probation; in Georgia, $2,335 in fines; in North Carolina, $278 in fines; and in Tennessee, $525 in fines.
Pusey was charged as soon as once more in February 2022 for persevering with to hunt with out permission and for stealing a path digital camera SD card, triggering the lifetime ban. According to state court docket data, Pusey has a historical past of prison mischief. He pled responsible to misdemeanor battery in 2015 after being charged with felony strangulation.