On a winter Sunday late last year, Twin Falls residents William Huse and Jason Wilder dressed in camouflage and drove their matching blue all-terrain vehicles into the desert north of Interstate 84 and east of U.S. Highway 93.

At least one of the men carried a rifle.

A few hours later, officials at the Idaho Department of Fish and Game office in Jerome responded to the area where Huse and Wilder had been riding. Someone had reported finding a dead deer, shot two weeks after hunting season had closed, and spotted two suspicious men riding ATVs nearby. The officers asked anyone in the area who'd seen the men to call a state poaching hotline.

Later that day, Wilder and Huse were nabbed by conservation enforcement officers - once again aided by a tipster, who'd spotted the ATVs and called the number.

Both men confessed when confronted with the eyewitness testimony. They were sentenced earlier this week to pay combined fines of nearly $1,000. Huse lost his hunting license for a year.

"Without the public effort to get involved, we'd find very few of them," said Gary Hompland, a conservation officer who oversees a staff of 15 compliance officers in Fish and Game's Magic Valley office.

His team tracks down lawbreakers from folks fishing without a license to highly organized commercial poachers who sell trophy kills for thousands on the black market.

Hompland's team doesn't ever use the word "poach," which once meant a theft against the king. The kinds of infractions Hompland handles, he said, are crimes against the citizens of Idaho.

Recently, the agency has handled some high-profile cases - all of which led to arrests after the public tipped off officials.

Fish and Game officers arrested Douglas A. Faulkner, 50, on Feb. 4 at his home in Twin Falls after a bullet taken from a poached moose carcass in Power County was matched to his rifle by a ballistics expert.

Faulkner, who was scheduled to appear at a preliminary hearing Wednesday, was arrested after a hunter reported possible illegal hunting in the area and identified Faulkner as the culprit.

In November, Ronnie A. Gardner, 54, of Jerome, admitted helping Gary A. Lehnherr, 41, of McFarland, Wis., illegally shoot a record-breaking trophy mule deer in Lincoln County. Lehnherr took the antlers back to his Wisconsin home, but not before a local hunter helped officials identify the kill site. DNA from blood stains at the site was later matched to the antlers.

The men agreed to forfeit their hunting licenses for three years and pay thousands in fines.

The team is currently investigating a case in which a man flew into the area this fall, illegally shot a trophy-sized deer, and flew to Chicago later the same day, according to information gathered from area hunters.

That poacher appears to have gotten away. Many do. For every poacher reported by witnesses, others escape undetected.

Hompland's office issued more than 400 citations last year. Just 50 lawbreakers got away in cases in which the department identified a crime but never nabbed an offender.

The department credits its success rate in part to the Idaho Citizens Against Poaching telephone hotline, a 24-hour call line patterned on the New Mexico Operation Game Thief program.

In 20 years, Fish and Game has documented 5,582 calls to the CAP hotline, which generated 1,832 cases and 3,449 citations. Successful prosecution has resulted in fines and penalties totaling nearly $1.3 million.

To report a wildlife crime: (800) 632-5999.