One of two men who admitted to stuffing fish with lead weights and fish fillets last year in an attempt to win thousands of dollars in a walleye fishing tournament on Lake Erie, in Ohio, faces new charges in Pennsylvania.
Chase Cominsky, 36, of Hermitage, was charged last week by the Pennsylvania Game Commission with eight wildlife crimes in Mercer County, all involving white-tailed deer.
The Sharon Herald reported that game commission northwest region rangers received allegations that Cominsky took several antlered white-tailed deer either after legal hunting hours or during the closed season and without a license valid between 2013 and 2021. During this period, Cominsky’s hunting privileges in Pennsylvania were reduced. suspended. The charges relate to illegal killing or possession of game animals and illegal acts relating to permitting, marking and reporting big game captures.
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A preliminary hearing is scheduled for November 14.
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The newspaper also reported that authorities found five antlered white-tailed deer heads in the living room of Cominsky’s residence that had been mounted between 2013 and 2021. Three had been illegally tagged with another person’s name, they said. authorities said.
Cominsky and Jacob Runyan of Ashtabula, Ohio, were sentenced in May in Ohio to 10-day jail terms after pleading guilty in March in Cuyahoga County to cheating and illegal possession of wildlife. Cominsky also agreed to forfeit his bass boat worth $100,000. Both men were fined and also accepted a three-year suspension of their fishing licenses.
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Allegations of cheating surfaced in September 2022 when Jason Fischer, director of the Lake Erie Walleye Trail tournament, began to suspect that the fish they were turning in were significantly heavier than the typical walleye. A crowd of people at Cleveland’s Gordon Park watched Fischer cut open the freshwater fish and find walleye weights and fillets stuffed inside.
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Nov. 14 on the charges in Pennsylvania. The lawyer who represented Cominsky in the walleye tournament case told The (Toledo) Blade that he would not represent him in the Pennsylvania case; A message seeking comment was left Saturday with an attorney representing Cominsky in another case in Pennsylvania.