ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 9, 1996 TAG: 9603110090
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Above
PRIZE-WINNING RACKS reportedly brought down by a blue-collar bowhunter may be imports.
When it came to big game, Charlie Nichols talked a big game.
And with a room full of antlered trophies to his credit, the Roanoke County bowhunter seemed to have the stuff to back up what he said.
Nichols has been celebrated in national hunting magazines and local newspapers as a "blue-collar hunter" because his shift in a Roanoke chemical company allows him only minutes to hunt most days, plus a half-day on Saturday.
Yet he managed to haul from the woods nine trophy-quality bucks that died by one of his arrows.
All in four years.
The numbers sounded almost too good to be true.
They were so incredible, people began to question them, including the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. This week, the results of the game department's two-month investigation of Nichols resulted in three indictments by a Botetourt grand jury.
The warrants charge that Nichols purchased trophy-size deer antlers from dealers in Indiana, Michigan and Montana, and altered big-game check cards in Virginia to match the antlers and pass them off as Virginia kills, a game department news release said.
On one occasion, the department said, Nichols bought a live deer from a legal deer farm in Michigan, killed it and checked it at a Virginia station as a legal kill.
Because Nichols has entered big-game contests around the state, charges are pending in several other localities, the game department said.
Among others, Nichols entered contests sponsored by Trebark Outfitters in Roanoke County, the Virginia Deer Hunters Association in Henrico County and the Western Virginia Sport and Travel Show in Augusta County, according to the game department. He won first place in the 1995 Western Regional Big Game Show in Rockingham County with two racks that game officials allege he bought in Montana. Nichols also entered the state's own big game contest in Williamsburg in 1995, where he also won awards.
If Nichols is found guilty, it will be for violating not only the law, but an unwritten honor code.
"All of hunting and fishing is based on the honor system, and anyone who wants to put on a good show can probably get away with it," said Gordon Whittington, editor of North American Whitetail magazine. "I mean, a guy and a deer come out of the woods, and only the guy and the deer know what happened - and the deer is in no position to say."
Nichols' integrity was questioned last year in connection with the publication of an article about him in North American Whitetail.
Whittington said a reader called in just prior to the August publication of "Secrets of a Real-World Bowhunter," saying Nichols had killed deer out of state and checked them in Virginia.
Whittington was ready to pull the story if the facts didn't check. He and the article's author, Botetourt resident Bruce Ingram, talked with other hunters and Nichols himself.
"When you kill a big deer, I figure someone would be happy for you, but they aren't," Nichols told The Roanoke Times in October. "I would say 80 percent of them are jealous."
Everything seemed to check out, so Whittington published the article.
"My impression is that he's a very good hunter," Whittington said. "A knowledgeable, serious hunter. There was no indication that he's faking it."
Nichols gave detailed accounts in the article of how he killed his deer, how he stalked them in the off-season, how he worked out regularly so he could run to his tree stand and make the most of the little hunting time he had.
Yet Whittington wasn't shocked to hear Nichols had been indicted.
"Not just because I've heard the rumors before. I've just been in the business a long time."
In the competitive world of trophy hunting, Whittington said, deception is bound to happen.
Whittington isn't too embarrassed about the possibility he was duped. "That's the x-factor in publishing stories about people's achievements when there aren't any witnesses."
But he doesn't have any sympathy for anyone who crosses the line of the law.
"I hope Charlie hasn't done anything wrong," he said. "But if he has, I hope he gets prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law like anyone else."
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