Sacramento Man Pleads Guilty To Commercially Poaching 60 Bobcats, Foxes

SACRAMENTO (CBS/AP) -- A man who illegally set some 50 traps for bobcats and foxes over a 900-square mile area across Northern California has pleaded guilty to various criminal charges.

California Department of Fish and Wildlife officials say Tracy Lee Shultz from Courtland in Sacramento County was fined $5,000.

Shultz was also stripped of 60 poached bobcat and fox pelts worth almost $15,000 on the commercial market.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported Thursday that the 57-year-old had sent the traps in Lassen and Modoc Counties.

Trapping bobcats for pelts is legal in California during a season that starts on Nov. 24 each year. But trappers must be able to check traps daily and remove captured animals -- something officials said was impossible for Shultz to do given that he had so many traps spread over so much land.