This past week's latest poaching incident hits close to home, but sadly is only the latest in a troubling string of highly visible illegal activities - both on land and water.

Oregon State Police fish and wildlife troopers out of St. Helens were tipped off about two bull elk, shot and left to waste last Saturday in a remote area not far from Vernonia and Pittsburg. They were in velvet and clearly headed to branch-antler status.

Troopers are looking for information to help track down the shooters (they're NOT hunters; nor are the bevy of beer-drinking sage rat shooters back in April, one of whom ended up taking a .22 bullet from the Portland police chief).

To aid the investigation, the Oregon Hunters Association and its Columbia County Chapter are offering a $1,000 reward. Call the State Police tip line (Turn In Poachers) at

800-452-7888, and ask for Sgt. Joe Warwick in St. Helens.

An even-more visible poaching is under investigation just off Interstate 84 at milepost 118. There, a week after the indiscriminate killing of two roadside bighorn sheep rams from a herd seen nearly every day by thousands of passersby, a third ram was found dead and left to waste. State troopers said there's no indication the two incidents were connected and had already made arrests in the first killing.

That reward, most of it raised by multiple Hunters Association chapters, has climbed to $15,550. That's one of (perhaps the) highest rewards ever offered in the TIP program, which annually pays out more than $13,000, according to a Hunters Association news release.

Sturgeon poaching: Fish and Wildlife troopers from the St. Helens office also recently concluded a few months' worth of cracking down on illegal sturgeon retention in the Willamette zone. Sturgeon fishing is almost completely catch and release in Oregon, especially in the lower Willamette and Columbia rivers.

From Gladstone to Sauvie Island's Gilbert River, troopers pinched several anglers for keeping sturgeon. They included one tracked down from a video of the catch he posted on Facebook. Some hid them in bushes; one pair of men put their catch in a riverside pond then came back later and another was discovered by a fish checker at Bayport Marina.

And yes, covert surveillance was used, including night-vision equipment.

Bucket biology: Multiple Oregon-based bass clubs and the Bass Anglers

Sportsman Society (BASS) are offering up to a $3,000 reward (also through the Oregon TIP program) to anyone providing information about illegal fish introduction in the state.

Bucket biology, as it's called, is perhaps the leading challenge facing fish biologists these days.

The most glaring example - but far from the only one - is Diamond Lake, poisoned a decade ago to rid it of illegally introduced tui chubs.

Today, golden shiners are back in the lake (albeit not as prolific) and a tui chub turned up last fall. So, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is planting sterile tiger trout, a hybrid between brook and brown trout that prowls shallow waters where chubs and shiners spawn.

Biologist Greg Huchko said the potential benefits of keeping the lake chub/shiner free outweigh tiger trouts' predation on planted rainbow trout fingerlings. However, "the potential impacts on the fingerling trout ... is a risk we will be evaluating closely," he said.

Diamond Lake isn't the only Oregon water getting tiger trout, Huchko said. They're also planted in Jackson County's Fish Lake to control tui chubs and fathead minnows and in Baker County's Phillips Reservoir (which also got sterile tiger muskies) to control yellow perch. All three unwanted fish also are believed to have been illegally introduced.

Oregon waterfowl festival:

Optimism - despite drought conditions in Alaska and western Canada - will carry duck and goose hunters into next weekend's

Saturday and Sunday at the Columbia County Fairgrounds in St. Helens.

Calling contests, vendors' booths, seminars, boats, decoys and a wide array of attractions are on tap from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday.

Admission is $12 for the festival, an additional $20 for the Saturday banquet, auction and film.

In memoriam: Jack Ward Thomas, former chief of the U.S. Forest Service, a key figure in elk research and co-writer of the Spotted Owl Plan, has died of cancer in Missoula, Mont., at the age of 81.

Thomas, as the

chief research wildlife biologist and program leader at the Forestry and Range Sciences Laboratory in LaGrande,

was a sparkplug for much of the Starkey Experimental Forest's vital research in elk behavior.