Gathering antlers has been a favorite pastime in the state, but the high dollars they fetch is now putting animals’ lives at risk

On a spring day in April last year, wildlife law enforcement officers in Wyoming made an alarming discovery. While patrolling national forest land in the state’s north-west, they came across an overflowing stack of 40 antlers piled among the trees and concealed with branches.

The antlers, they realised, were part of an illegal poaching cache. Collecting antlers has long been a favorite pastime in Wyoming, where the state’s bull elk spend most of the summer growing massive antlers before shedding them the following spring. There are, however, strict limits on when people are allowed to gather these antlers – which typically fetch high dollars to be used as decorations, dog chews or craft products – from public lands.

Antler gathering season on forest lands opens on 1 May every year and is closed year round on a nearby elk refuge, meaning this pile had clearly been covertly harvested and hidden.

After weeks of investigation, federal and state law enforcement officers discovered an Idaho man named Jonathan Lee Cox had illegally collected more than 1,000lbs of antlers from forest lands and the refuge worth a whopping $18,000. He pleaded guilty in March, was fined $6,000 in federal court, was banned from Wyoming public land and from hunting anywhere in the world for three years.