Elk Poacher Sentenced

An Arlington, Washington, man has been sentenced in U.S. District Court in an elk poaching case that took place in the park in 2004. Dean Harriman, 48, who pled guilty to federal charges of acquiring and transporting illegally taken wildlife, was sentenced to a year’s probation and required to pay a fine of $500 and restitution in the amount of $2,500. He’s also been banned from the park for a year and has had his Washington state hunting privileges revoked for a year. On November 6, 2004, a park volunteer discovered a fresh elk kill site on Carlton Ridge, which is located in the park’s southeast corner. Rangers verified that the kill site was well within the park and began an investigation. Three days later, they contacted six hunters camped just south of the park in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. They had with them a four-point elk that they’d killed and tagged two days before. Harriman, who was a member of the party, told the rangers that he’d shot the elk in the White Pass area on the opening day of elk season. Rangers asked for tissue samples from the tagged elk to determine whether or not it was the same elk that had been taken in the park, but Harriman refused their request. The rangers gathered DNA evidence from blood spatters in the camp where the elk was stored and blood drippings from sacks of meat hanging in the trees and from the carcass at the kill site. The evidence was sent to the Fish and Wildlife’s forensics lab in Ashland, Oregon, for analysis. The lab confirmed that the DNA from the two locations matched.  The case was investigated by rangers, with significant assistance from Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Forest Service officers.