A judge reserved his decision Thursday following the trial of two men on illegal hunting charges.
Wei Li and Xin Xiao are charged with illegal hunting and possession of a moose, as well as failure to retrieve edible portions of the animal. Li also faces charges of hunting while not being a resident of B.C and Canada.
Judge Chris Cleaveley reserved his decision following final arguments from Crown and defence.
The Crown alleges the two men shot and killed a moose in the Nicola Valley outside of hunting season in October two years ago, then abandoned the animal after being spotted with the kill by other hunters.
As part of the investigation, conservation officers traced to a Vancouver address a Ford pickup witnesses testified was backed up to the dead animal.
Inside the vehicle, they seized a rain jacket with blood stain linked by DNA evidence to the dead moose.
From the trial:
Conservation officers tracking suspected poachers thought to be responsible for shooting and abandoning a moose in the Nicola Valley traced a pickup to the driveway of a home in Vancouver’s high-end Southlands neighbourhood.
Ashley Page, a conservation officer based in the Lower Mainland, testified for the Crown Wednesday in the trial of two men accused of illegally killing a moose in the Nicola Valley two years ago.
Wei Li and Xin Xiao are each charged with illegal hunting and possession of a moose, as well as failure to retrieve edible portions of the animal. Li also faces a charge of hunting while not a resident of B.C and Canada.
Page told provincial court judge Chris Cleaveley she was dispatched to an address in Vancouver’s Southlands, near UBC, to find a pickup matching a description phoned in by two witnesses on Oct. 5, 2012.
She arrived at the address on Celtic Avenue to find a gated residence, where a maid answered via intercom from outside the gate.
“From the outside, I observed a pickup matching the description,” she said.
The Crown alleges that truck, still coated with mud, was hours earlier used by Li and Xiao off Dardanelles Lake Road in the Nicola Valley backcountry.
Prosecutor Evan Goulet began the trial Tuesday by outlining the events of Oct 5, 2013, when a pair of deer hunters came across a five-point bull moose dead at the side of a logging spur road.
Crown witness Kyle Carusi testified he was hunting deer off Dardanelles Lake Road with his father in the early morning.
Driving down a five- or six-kilometre logging road, the pair came across the dead moose.
Prior to that find, they waved at two men coming in the opposite direction in a Ford Raptor pickup — later traced to the Vancouver home.
Carusi said they checked the moose, including by driving a knife into the lifeless animal. He said it was cold to the touch and its blood was clotting.
Carusi added the moose had a noose around its neck and appeared to have been dragged to the roadside from the bush.
The two continued to drive down the spur road. On the return to the site where they first found the dead moose, the pair came across a pair the Crown said were Li and Xiao, their pickup backed up to the moose and a cable winch utilized in an attempt to get it inside the bed.
“Once we pulled up, it was like they stopped,” Carusi said, noting he had already taken photos of the moose and noted the truck’s plate.
“I said, ‘It’s a nice moose; nice job,’” Carusi recalled. “I said, ‘You shot this moose?’ He said, ‘Yeah’.”
The two men used an interpreter during the trial.
Defence lawyer Kevin Walker asked Carusi if he thought the men understood his question.
Carusi replied that he did not know if the pair spoke English.
Page told the court she seized the pickup registered to a woman from the Vancouver address.
Conservation officers also seized a trailer hooked up to the pickup.
Items confiscated included two rifles and a green rain jacket with what appeared to be a blood stain.
Goulet said the Crown will enter evidence that a DNA test matched that stain to the dead moose. The issues in the trial are expected to be identity as well as who shot the moose.
Another conservation officer testified Xiao, through an interpreter, told her the jacket was his and purchased in China, when goods were returned to him last year.
The defence argued that statement should not be admitted because the interpreter was not called and the Crown didn’t enter an audio record of the exchange.
The trial is scheduled to continue today.