A number of people charged under the Wildlife Act during last November's hunting season have pleaded guilty to charges before Commissioner Danny Elliott in Didsbury provincial court.ï Glen Vincent Chapman pleaded guilty to a charge of unlawful possession of wildlife.Chapman was hunting with a group of friends near Westward Ho east of Sundre on Nov. 1 when he encountered a mule deer that had been shot and wounded, court heard.Chapman told the court he shot the animal to put it out of its misery. He did not have the appropriate hunting tag to shoot the animal.After gutting the animal and returning to his truck, Chapman was questioned by a Fish and Wildlife officer who noticed blood on Chapman's clothing.Chapman was fined $1,000, with $900 of the total going toward a new Alberta Sustainable Resource Development wildlife DNA research project, and the remainder going to the Alberta government.ï Eric U. Rose and Nicola Anthony Arena each pleaded guilty to a charge of possession of a prohibited item under the Wildlife Act.Both men admitted placing salt near two haystacks on a property south of Bergen. Rose explained that the salt was used in an attempt to keep elk away from his large hay pile in a fenced compound half a kilometre away.Rose and Arena were each fined $1,000, with $900 going to the DNA research project.ï Michael Joseph Butler pleaded guilty to a charge of hunting during a closed season.Butler admitted shooting at what he thought was a female whitetail deer near Burnstick Lake on Nov. 9. The deer was actually a decoy set up by Fish and Wildlife officers.Elliott fined Butler $2,500, with $2,400 going to the DNA project.ï Christopher B. Taylor pleaded guilty to a charge of discharging a firearm from a highway and allowing edible flesh to be wasted.Taylor shot a whitetail deer from a roadway west of Sundre, court heard.Taylor did not recover the animal, which was later located by other hunters in the area. Those same hunters got Taylor's vehicle licence plate number and contacted Fish and Wildlife officers.Elliott fined Taylor $1,200, with $1,100 going to the DNA project.ï Dana Harris pleaded guilty to charges of giving false information to a wildlife officer and unlawful possession of wildlife.Harris placed an out-of-date hunting tag on a whitetail deer he had shot west of Sundre on Nov. 10, court heard.When questioned by a patrolling wildlife officer about blood in the back of his truck, Harris said it came from a deer a friend had killed some time earlier. He later admitted the blood in fact came from the deer he had shot.ìI know what I did was wrong,î said Harris.Elliott fined Harris $2,000, with $1,400 going to the DNA research project.
