Hunting and fishing rules lay out the times when animals are fair game and when they aren’t. People who ignore those rules are poachers, and the state’s Fish and Game Department works hard to stop them. The Department has added a new member to its enforcement team. He’s dark, handsome, and a little over two feet tall. NHPR’s Kerry Grens went along on a hunt for illegal fish and filed this report.
[ice crunching noises]
We circle an empty bob house on a frozen bay on Lake Winnepesaukee.
[sniffing sounds bark]
Conservation Officer Mark Hensel is working with his partner, a three year old black lab named Poacher.
Poacher has found the source of a scent trail.
[good boy…]
Hensel tosses a ball as a reward and Poacher lopes across the ice to fetch.
Hensel: That’s what he works for is just his ball. All he knows is that when he smells that odor, when he barks he gets that reward, it’s just a game for him.
And though patrolling is real work for Hensel, he says having Poacher with him makes it the best job in the world.
Poacher isn’t just his work partner, but his pet too.
He lives with Hensel like any other family dog.
Photo courtesy James Gallagher, Dept. of Environmental Services
Yet nearly every day Poacher sets his nose to work—on missions like finding a lost hiker, or on routine patrols like the one this day.
[walking sounds crunch crunch]
About a hundred yards further out on the ice, we approach some anglers sitting on lawn chairs near a fishing hole.
Aside from one solo fisher closer to shore, they are the only ones out here.
Hensel: We’re just going to come out, check license, see what you caught.
Fisher: Want to see what I caught? You’re looking at it—ice!
Poacher sniffs around the area, nosing for any illegal fish that might be hidden.
He doesn’t find any today.
But the forty five Conservation Officers in New Hampshire’s Fish and Game Department issue over six hundred fishing violations a year.
The fines are for things like fishing without a license, keeping salmon during the winter season, or taking more trout than are allowed.
Hensel says poaching happens a lot more than the conservation officers are able to catch.
Hensel: There’s so few of us, and there’s such a big area to cover. We cover the whole state and we only have one dog in the state and how ever many thousands of lakes we have in New Hampshire.
Poacher is trained to do more than just help find poachers.
His nose is also trained in search and rescue, tracking, even sniffing out gun casings.
He goes to school at the Working Dog Foundation at Pease Airforce Base, which trains K-9s for law enforcement.
[dogs barking]
Here, German Shepards and Bloodhounds leap around on obstacle courses and practice obedience tasks.
John Usher, who runs the Working Dog Foundation, says Poacher’s just beginning, but he’s an asset to Fish and Game.
Usher: To me I think a great dog is a great locating tool. And it’s great to have. I think everyone should have one. And then they’re cheap for what they do.
Poacher is New Hampshire Fish and Game’s first and only working dog.
Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has eight K-9s.
Sergeant Roger Guay says the dogs more than pay for themselves.
Guay: We get at least a dozen cases or more a year with the dogs. And they’re usually cases that we would never get otherwise. And they’re usually real high amount cases—large overlimits and things like that where people have really taken the extra time to hide them.
This year Guay retired his chocolate lab Reba after working with her for fourteen years—she’ll spend her senior years at home.
But while she was in service, Guay says she was responsible for bringing one hundred thousand dollars in citations.
Guay: The bottom line is is that no one can hide a fish that we can’t find.
But to get to that point takes years, Guay says.
His fish detection program has been around for over a decade.
Poacher has yet to find any illegal fish.
This is only his second ice fishing season on the job.
But he’s getting plenty of practice—he can find legal fish no problem.
Hensel: Where is it? Where is it?
[Bark Bark] Good boy!
For NHPR News, this is Kerry Grens.
