In an earlier story I posted a story based on a press release from Kentucky Wildlife reporting that Pro Hunter Gregg Ritz was involved in game violations in Kentucky. As I promised I would look more into this story.
As many of you my question is what happened and who was involved? From what I understand the Staff at Game Trails Lodge were illegally killing does and in some cases using hunters information who had been at the lodge to tag the kills.
Their investigation turned up numerous instances of Game Trails employees, their friends and family chronically taking over-limits of deer, outside hunting season parameters, supplying false information to Kentucky Fish and Wildlife and using social security numbers of Game Trails clients without their permission to Telecheck their deer harvests.
The manager at the lodge William Dirk McTavish, Jr from a variety of news reports had knowledge of the illegal activity taken place and he was fined $15,000 Did Gregg Ritz know about these illegal acts? Unknown. We do know that Game Trails LLC plead guilty and was fined $35,000. Records show that Gregg Ritz is Game Trails LLC I want to point out that does not necessarily mean he had knowledge of these illegal acts. Unfortunately for Gregg at best it would appear that he put trust in someone that allowed illegal activities to take place on the land he had leased.
I hope Mr. Ritz will at some point respond to what has happened and tell his side of the story. I also understand that these being federal convictions that potentially Kentucky could also go after them as well that may prevent him from speaking out.
I am going to edit my first post by adding a ” ? ” to the title because I certainly do not want to imply that Gregg Ritz had full knowledge of these illegal activities.
I’ll continue to follow this story.
