This is Operation Nightcat. I'm Nate Hedgy.

It was a cloudy spring day in 2023, and Fish and Game Warden Ron Arsenault had been summoned to an office building near the New Hampshire State Capitol and Concord.

He walked into a conference room and sat down at this big roundtable.

Can you tell me about that big meeting?

Yeah, well, I can tell you, there was a lot of people there.

A lot of different alphabets, you know.

It was like four or five federal agencies involved.

Looking around, Ron saw special agents from the FBI, the IRS, the U.S. Postal Service,

attorneys from New Hampshire's Department of Justice,

and investigators from the state's public integrity unit, corruption busters.

And it was just a meeting of how we had started this case and what we were at and all the other stuff

the other guys were finding at the search warrants. You know, it was just spiraling out and spiderweb in every different direction.

It was crazy.

This alphabet soup of law enforcement agencies had assembled because of all the potential crimes

that Ron had uncovered during Operation Nightcat.

First off, there was the illegal poaching.

Gray fox, bobcat, gray fox, bobcat, red fox, red fox.

Evidence that a group of men were hunting at night, hunting out of season, baiting animals.

It's like they're playing Grand Theft Auto behind their house, except with animals.

Mostly violations and misdemeanors.

But the dead bobcats, a protected species in New Hampshire, were being registered in other states where hunting them is allowed.

And that would be a federal crime.

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