ANDOVER — Thanks to a Maine game warden’s diligence recently, a Roxbury trapper got his stolen coyote traps returned quickly.
One of two people who Warden Brock Clukey of Andover suspected of taking the traps was charged in the incident.
On Oct. 15, Clukey summoned Jesse Farrington, 28, of Andover and Rumford Center, on a charge of disturbing the traps of another. Farrington will be arraigned Dec. 4 in 11th District Court in Rumford.
Another man, who Clukey said Farrington implicated as helping him take the traps, had not returned to his East Andover home as of Tuesday. When he does, Clukey said he would summon him on the same charge.
“The significance of this case is that I caught the guy within about three hours,” Clukey said. “It did not take very long.”
The incident began Oct. 15 during Maine’s early trapping season on foxes and coyotes. Clukey said he received a call from a trapper in Roxbury who told him that two of his coyote traps were stolen the night before.
The warden met the trapper on Farmer’s Hill Road in East Andover and the trapper took Clukey on his four-wheel all-terrain vehicle into the woods and showed him where he’d set the traps.
Clukey said he found a couple sets of tire tracks in the dirt beside where the traps were set. Marks in the dirt also indicated the thieves hooked onto the traps with a chain to pull the stakes from the ground, Doug Rafferty, Maine Warden Service spokesman, said in a news report on Oct. 26.
Clukey said he visited some homes in the area and started asking questions. That eventually led to Farrington’s apartment in Rumford Center, he said.
“I had a good idea that maybe the stolen traps were there,” he said. He waited and saw Farrington come out of the house with two traps in his hand.
Clukey pulled up and asked him where he was going.
“He said, ‘Oh, Brock, I’m so glad you’re here. I was just getting ready to take these traps back up to the guy, the trapper, who they belong to,’ which I knew that wasn’t going to happen,” Clukey said.
“The reason why he said that is because he got a phone call that I was looking for him and he didn’t want to deal with me, because getting caught stealing somebody’s traps carries a mandatory three- to five-year loss of licenses,” the warden said.
He said it’s unusual for a warden to track down trap thieves so quickly. He typically gets four or five complaints annually of traps stolen.
“It’s stuff that doesn’t happen very often, but when we do catch them, we have to send that message out there to let people know: ‘Please do not disturb anybody’s traps,'” he said.
“Trappers are out there trying to do the right thing and they are,” Clukey said. “They’re doing everything by the law, they’ve got landowner permission and people are stealing these traps and throwing them in the woods or taking them altogether.”
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