West Lafayette man gets Indiana’s 1st lifetime hunting suspension, fined over $8,000
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WISH) — A West Lafayette man is the first person in Indiana to receive a lifetime hunting suspension, the Department of Natural Resources announced Monday.
Hanson Pusey, 25, was sentenced Thursday to a lifetime hunting suspension, home detention, probation, and payment of replacement fees. He owes over $8,000.
In the spring of 2020, conservation officers in hunting district three were told Pusey, whose hunting privileges had been suspended since March 2019, was still hunting turkeys illegally in Indiana and several other states. Hunting district three covers 10 counties in western Indiana.
Investigators found Pusey was poaching turkeys in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and in Indiana. They also found Pusey was helping family and friends poach turkeys.
Officers obtained a warrant to search Pusey’s house. Inside they found Pusey kept the spent shotgun hulls from turkeys he had harvested, identifying the states and dates he took them.
Officers found 83 spent casings dating back to 2012, including 14 within three months of his first suspension of hunting privileges in 2019. Four were listed by Pusey as being taken from Indiana.
Pusey was fined $4,125 and an eight-year hunting license suspension in Pennsylvania, $324 in Connecticut and received an indefinite hunting suspension, $700 in Massachusetts and received a license suspension during probation, $2,335 in Georgia, $278 in North Carolina, and $525 in Tennessee.
Pusey was charged again in February for hunting without permission and theft of a trail camera card in Warren County, Indiana.