COLUMBUS – A father and son have been sentenced for illegally shipping white-tailed deer from Ohio to a hunting preserve in Florida.
Federal prosecutors in Columbus say Donald Wainwright Sr., 49, of Live Oak, Fla., was sentenced last week to 21 months in prison and fined $125,000. He had pleaded guilty to charges including wildlife trafficking and conspiracy.
His son, Donald Wainwright Jr., 29, was sentenced to four months of house arrest and three years of probation on related convictions.
Court documents said Wainwright Sr. was the owner of hunting preserves near Bellefontaine and in north Florida. Prosecutors say he illegally shipped deer to Florida from Ohio, and attempted to ship deer to Georgia from Ohio.
The herds involved were not certified to be free from diseases such as chronic wasting disease, tuberculosis and brucellosis as required by federal Law. As a result, authorities say deer herds in Florida were potentially exposed to the diseases.
Wainwright was intercepted on I-71 southbound, about 50 miles from the Ohio River, on his way to Georgia, when Ohio wildlife officers noticed deer noses and antlers inside a cargo trailer and pulled over a truck driven by Wainwright Sr.’s employees, according to a release from the office of U.S. Attorney Carter Stewart.
“Trophy-sized white-tailed deer can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece if the animals come from herds that have been certified by government agricultural officials to be free from disease,” Stewart said.
Stewart’s office says Wainwright Sr. placed federal identification tags from a certified deer that had previously died into the ear of uncertified deer they were selling, then sold breeding services and semen from the deer to breeders around the country.
The Wainwrights also sold illegal white-tailed deer hunts at Valley View Whitetails in Logan County, where clients from around the country paid from $1,000 to $50,000 to kill deer inside a high fence preserve, though Wainwright did not have a hunting preserve license. The customers then took the bucks back to their home states, including: Florida, Michigan, Alabama and Virginia, Stewart said.
Wainwright Sr. pleaded guilty on Feb. 27 to 12 charges related to violating the Lacey Act, which makes it illegal to import, export, transport, sell or purchase wildlife, fish or plants that were taken, possessed, transported or sold in violation of a state, federal or foreign law.
Passed in 1900, the Lacey Act was the first federal law protecting wildlife.