On Tuesday afternoon, I got a radio call that a tree fell down over the five-mile-hike trail. Then, Thursday night, CIT outpost was cut short when chainsawing was heard in the northwest part of out property (used only for hiking and occasional outpost camping) for about two hours around midnight. We went up on Friday afternoon to see where the tree had fallen and start clearing the trail. It turned out, though, that the tree was actually cut down (sometime before Tuesday) and had been stripped of some bark and cut into seemingly random pieces. A trail had been beaten down from the tree to the logging road just on the other side of the property line.
After a little research, I found that maple theft is a pretty common problem in the Olympic Forest and surrounding area. Methamphetamine users have found that cutting down maple trees and selling certain parts of them for use in musical instruments. They are usually not caught and are able to get a fair amount of money for small pieces of wood. There's a pretty lengthy Seattle Weekly article from April that details this: http://www.seattleweekly.com/home/946487-129/wood-maple-says-timber-sisson-county.
So, the plot thickens on Saturday. Four of us decided to go on a short hike to explore the area at the Northwest corner of the property. As we walked up the trail, though, we heard chainsaws. Suspecting that their operators were likely either armed, on drugs, or both, we stayed pretty far away. When we were about 50 feet away, we saw three people just running over the crest of a hill. We walked back down the hill and went around a different way to try to get at least a description of a vehicle. Sure enough, right where I had seen the path beaten towards our trail there was a truck parked off the road. We got into a position that we could see the truck but were well away and hidden.
I called the Camp Director to let him know that the thieves were back and he called the sheriff. We knew which road they likely came in on, so he parked off the highway to try and get a license plate. We kept watching and called back when we heard the truck leave. From that point, the timing was perfect. The sheriff had just pulled in when the truck matching the description turned off the logging road and onto the highway. The sheriff knew exactly who it was from the description of the truck. Apparently they had been trying to catch him for a while, but hadn't been able to catch him in the act. He tried to get away, but turned down a dead-end road and was quickly put in handcuffs and taken to jail. He and one other man, as well as a woman (their lookout) were caught and are now without a truck, wood, and chainsaws. This is this particular person's fourth or fifth time going to jail for the same crime over a 20-year period. Hopefully this time, with multiple witnesses and his being caught red-handed, they can throw a heavier book at him.
Crimes like this are frustrating because it's so hard to catch anyone. We were all just tickled at the fact that the timing worked out so perfectly and that everything was in place for them to be caught quickly and without incident. It's too bad that this 100+ year old tree had to die, but it's great that we could initiate the call that got the sheriff to catch their long-time target. 
