Man receives up to two years prison time for bighorn sheep poaching

Man receives up to two years prison time for bighorn sheep poaching
 
CODY (WNE) — A man already in prison for multiple poaching violations pleaded guilty and was sentenced recently in Park County District Court to between 20 and 24 months in a state penitentiary to be served following his term in Sheridan County, also on a felony poaching conviction.
He was also assessed $15,000 in restitution and more than $10,000 in fines for harvesting a bighorn sheep without a license in 2012.
Russell Vick, 56, of Alabama, also pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors for assisting another man’s illegal harvest of a bighorn sheep.
Vick illegally hunted sheep in the South Fork in 2012 along with Oklahoma resident, Robert Underwood, who was charged with crimes related to poaching.
Underwood and his son, David Underwood, along with Vick, went on a hunting trip in Park County in late October of 2012 and stayed at a North Fork cabin near the Blackwater Fire Memorial. Robert Underwood, who also claimed Wyoming residency from an address in Gillette, was the only one found possessing a bighorn hunting license for Hunt Area 3 at the time.
He also claimed at a Sheridan Game and Fish check station that he had harvested the group’s only sheep on Oct. 28. 
Robert Underwood turned his legally harvested sheep into the check station on Oct. 29 and claimed he had shot it on the 28th, even though photos proved he did on the 27th.
But using photographic analysis, investigators found substantial evidence pointing to at least one sheep hunted by the group near Legg Creek in the South Fork, also in Hunt Area 3.
Vick is accused of killing a sheep on the 28th. Separate pictures were found of both Vick and Robert Underwood posing with this carcass.
 
This story was published on June 29, 2022.