by Benjamin Sobieck, online editor

Poachers are not intelligent to begin with, but these guys are exceptionally stupid. If you're going to poach a "celebrity" white-tailed deer hundreds of people have photographed, here's a hint: don't take pictures of your illegal harvest and post them on the Ohio Division of Wildlife's Web site. You have to be enthusiastically idiotic to think you won't get caught.

No, I take that back. All poachers should follow thatlead. They should immediately send photos to their respective state wildlife agencies.

Source: Toledo Blade

If you're going to brag about poaching a trophy buck, you'd better have about $15,000 to back it up.

That is how much two men have been ordered to pay in fines and costs, including a record restitution penalty of $13,277 under a new state law, after they were convicted of illegally killing a celebrity white-tailed deer in Side Cut Metropark in early October.

The deer was a large-antlered, 15-point buck known to some Side Cut fans as "Big Boy" and to others as "Stickers," said Steve Thomson, a wildlife investigator for Ohio Wildlife District 2. It was among the most-often photographed and familiar animals in the park's ever-growing deer herd and was featured in The Blade last year.

It had been aged by a state wildlife biologist at 8 1/2 to 9 1/2 years old.

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