HARRISBURG – Pennsylvania Game Commission Executive Director Carl G. Roe today announced that Matt Hough, of Johnstown, Cambria County, has been appointed as the new deputy executive director for field operations. Hough, who presently serves as the agency’s Southwest Region Director, will fill the vacancy created by the recent retirement of Michael W. Schmit.

WEST UNION, Ohio -- "I've only been an Ohio Wildlife Officer for six years," said Chris Gilkey, "but this case has been my most important so far, and may well to turn out to be the biggest of my entire career."

The case Gilkey was referring to is the one that he and State Wildlife Officer Chris Rice recently completed. The investigation resulted in Johnny B. Clay, age 37 of Minford , Ohio , pleading guilty to four charges stemming from the poaching of a trophy white-tailed deer in the early fall of 2009. But this was not just any deer -- it was the largest "typical" whitetail buck killed in North America in 2009.
As a result of the officers' investigation, Clay pleaded guilty to four charges: taking a deer in the closed season, hunting without permission of the landowner, having no hunting license, and having no deer permit.

HARRISBURG – The Pennsylvania Game Commission’s 28th Class of Wildlife Conservation Officer (WCO) Cadets recently took up residence at the agency’s Ross Leffler School of Conservation, which adjoins the headquarters building along Elmerton Avenue in Harrisburg.

The class, comprising 23 men and one woman, will undergo 49 weeks of training, including field duty with veteran officers, before graduation in March of 2011, which will mark the 75th Anniversary of the agency’s graduation of its first class of WCOs.

“The 24 individuals who made it into the 28th Class were chosen from a field of more than 900 applications,” said Carl G. Roe, Game Commission executive director.  “They now will be challenged to successfully complete the 49 weeks of intensive training.  Those who pass will join a proud team of Wildlife Conservation Officers, and be entrusted by the public to protect and conserve Pennsylvania’s wildlife resources and habitats and enforce the state’s hunting and trapping laws.”

WEST MEMPHIS, Ark. (AP) — Two men armed with AK-47s ambushed and killed two officers who had stopped them on an Arkansas interstate, then died in a shootout with police who had tracked them to a Walmart parking lot, authorities say.

Sgt. Brandon Paudert, 39, and Bill Evans, 38, were killed Thursday while “running drug interdiction” on Interstate 40 in east Arkansas, West Memphis Police Inspector Bert Shelton said. The local sheriff and a deputy were shot and injured in the subsequent shootout, authorities said.

The events started when Evans stopped a minivan with Ohio plates, with Paudert arriving moments later as backup, Assistant Police Chief Mike Allen said. Two men got out of the van with the assault rifles and opened fire on the officers, Shelton said.