IL: Poachers hit with heavy fine for illegal hunting methods in southern Illinois

https://www.newsbreak.com/belleville-newsdemocrat-1592547/4114647075849-poachers-get-heavy-fine-for-spotlight-hunting-deer-in-southern-illinois

07/17/2025

Five Mississippi men have been fined thousands and sentenced to years of probation after they used illegal hunting methods to poach deer in five southern Illinois counties, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced Thursday.

Lee Johnson, 54, of Saucier, Mississippi, organized deer hunts in which he and four others used motor vehicles and spotlights to locate deer, mark their location, then would go back to shoot them with a rifle, according to court records.

This operation began sometime around October 2018 and ended in February 2022, the documents said.

The group would rent hotels, motels and cabins during their time in Massac, Jefferson, Union, Pope and Clark counties, court records said.

After poaching the deer, the men would then transport the carcasses over state lines into Mississippi, documents state. The men would take trophies such as mounted heads and antlers; Johnson had deer taxidermied on occasion, the documents said.

Johnson and the others — Steven Pique, 56, and John Pritchard, 57, both of Biloxi, Mississippi; Gerald Moran, 40, and Joshua Marshall, 30, both of Saucier — all pleaded guilty to the charges against them, a U.S. Attorney’s Officenews release said.

Everyone except Pique was charged with one count of unlawful transport of wildlife in violation of the Lacey Act, documents show. Pique was charged with conspiracy to violate the Lacey Act.

“This was not an isolated incident of unlawful hunting; rather, it was a calculated, multi-year operation that exploited Illinois’s prized wildlife resources for personal gain,” Assistant Director Douglas Ault, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Office of Law Enforcement, said in a news release.

“Targeting trophy deer under the cover of night, across multiple counties, and transporting them across state lines reflects a deliberate disregard for wildlife laws and the ecological balance we work tirelessly to protect,” Ault said.

The fines and restitution for all five men totaled $117,000.

Johnson received the largest financial burden for leading the operation that poached the deer, and was ordered to pay $75,000 in restitution and a $10,000 fine.

Pique was ordered to pay $2,000 in restitution; Moran was ordered to pay $5,000 in restitution and a $2,500 fine; Marshall was ordered to pay $7,500 in restitution and a $2,500 fine; Pritchard was ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution and a $2,500 fine.

Everyone was sentenced to five years probation except Marshall, who was sentenced to three years, documents said.