according to the article, these arent repeat offenders. it says that they were only charged with the two violations.
im not defending them, and it does sound like they are doing this on a pretty regular basis, but you might be amazed at the lengths the usfws will go to to sting guides. some of the charges ive seen are downright entrapment. the bullspit part is that they arent even paying a fine (except to the raptor program, which is bogus to me anyways) that will go to improve anything, theyre just reimbursing the government for the $'s they spent setting them up. if the federal government wants to get involved in investigating game law violations here, thats good, im glad they are, but dont screw us out of money for violations on the animals that this state has spent resources managing.
if they were smart, they wouldve talked them into hunting in kansas, and bringing the birds back into nebraska with a nebraska tag on them. then they could have gotten them on the lacy act, which would make it a real federal case.
as far as the punishment? i do think its quite stiff. if i had a friend here from out of state that wanted to shoot a turkey, id gladly let him fill one of my tags, once. its about the same. bottom line, what they did was illegal, and they did deserve a fine, but this is like a cop pulling you over, and then saying that on top of the ticket, your going to pay his wages, and gas for the time he took to pull you over.