The others? The Game and Fish people were notified, and may have been nabbed later, if only for another crime. Pretty sure they were selling the choice (nost marketable) cuts and in it for money, or trading them for something else. I figure they left easily better than 200 lbs of meat to rot which families I knew at the time would have boned out with a fillet knife and made into stew or soup or ground in a heartbeat, not to mention roasting the shoulder or the neck. Those were the days before the NAHC, and it wasfar easier to get a landowner to let you hunt their land gratis, if for no other reason than to mitigate crop damage. Of course, some venison sausage or backstrap from the deer you harvested made that relationship go even better, but then it was optional.
After the NAHC, everyone got the idea that their hunting rights were a marketable commodity and the chances of a 'good ol' boy' getting to hunt for free diminished considerably.
I’m glad they were caught and I hope the full force of the law came crashing down on them..... automobiles firearms/seized. That’s how things come out here...someone brags and the beans are spilled. When the locals know, the perps will be shunned and not able to hunt anywhere.