A trio of New Hampshire men have entered guilty pleas in federal court for their role in a massive cross-border poaching ring involving the illegal hunting and trapping of upwards of 41 bobcats.
Sitting in front of U.S. District Judge Joseph N. Laplante last week, Sherwood Dubrey Jr., 48, and Randy Inman, 49, pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the Lacey Act, while Dubrey’s father, Sherwood Dubrey Sr., 72, pleaded guilty to a single Lacey Act count.
According to prosecutors, Dubrey Jr. and Inman ran a clinic on the protected cats between 2018 and 2022 using bait piles on their own property and on state land. They then took the pelts to New York, where Dubrey Sr. obtained false CITES tags making the animals appear to have been killed there. Moving beyond New York, the enterprise took an international turn as the pelts were then shipped on toward a fur auction in Canada.
Text messages recovered in the investigation show the men knew the taking was illegal, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. In one message, Inman told Dubrey Jr. he had shot or choked out an illegally trapped bobcat. In another, Dubrey Jr. told his father he did not want New Hampshire to open a legal bobcat season, because that would, you know, create unnecessary “competition.” The two younger men also reportedly used rifles with scopes that recorded video and stills of the kills and sent those images to others which ended up in the hands of federal investigators.
“The people of New Hampshire have enacted hunting laws that conserve our resources and define our sense of fair play,” U.S. Attorney Erin Creegan said in a statement announcing the pleas. “Baiting and poaching dozens of bobcats for profit disregards that democratic consensus and the duty of sportsmanship shown by New Hampshire’s hunters. Crossing state or international lines will not protect poachers from accountability for their actions.”
For their actions, Dubrey Jr. and Inman are now staring down up to five years in prison and a potential of three years of supervised release. Dubrey Sr. is facing up to one year in prison and one year of supervised release, while court paperwork is also calling for restitution to the state of $500 for each illegally killed bobcat, making the total potential bill climb to over $20,000.
The federal case is the latest turn in Operation Night Cat, a New Hampshire Fish and Game investigation that some are calling one of the largest poaching cases in the state’s recent history. In total, the probe found five men, including Inman and Dubrey Jr., had killed animals out of season, at night, or over illegal bait. Inman alone was tied to at least 20 illegal kills, that included foxes, coyotes, and the protected bobcats.
Both men are former corrections officers at the New Hampshire State Prison for Men, where the same investigation turned up text messages alleging other misconduct inside the prison, including pill sales and an effort to cover up an assault on an inmate. Multiple agencies have since reviewed that material, but no additional criminal charges have resulted, at least for the time being.
Ron Arsenault, the Fish and Game conservation officer who has led Operation Night Cat since 2022, expressed his relief that the federal case was moving, but indicated that the fight was far from over.
“It just doesn’t feel like it’s done,” he said. “But I do see a light at the end of the tunnel.”
And for a man that has been pursuing the case for the better part of four years, he should expect some closure at sentencing, which is set for January 2027.
