SANDPOINT - A Priest River man was given a suspended jail sentence and fined $1,000 on Tuesday for poaching two white-tailed deer in 2009.

Judge Barbara Buchanan also suspended Albert H. Nichols Jr.'s hunting privileges for two years and ordered him to pay $1,200 in restitution, according to court documents.

Nichols, 41, told the court he harvested the deer in order to provide food for his family, saying he is unemployed during the winter and the state provides insufficient assistance.

Nichols was charged with unlawfully taking and possessing a white-tailed buck in November 2009. He was further accused of harvesting a uniquely-horned buck the following month, after the season ended.

The deer were harvested in the Priest River area.

Nichols was charged with two felony poaching counts, although the charges were reduced to misdemeanors in exchange for guilty pleas. He was to be sentenced last spring, although Judge Quentin Harden set the matter before another judge after frankly stating in court there should not be restrictions on hunting white-tail deer.

"They're like rats," Harden said during the May 18 hearing.

The charges against Nichols flowed from an undercover Idaho State Police investigation in which troopers posed as horn collectors. The second buck Nichols admitted shooting had a rack with a double main beam and forked tine brow, the police report said.

The first buck was valued at $400 and the second was valued at $2,000.

Buchanan imposed concurrent, suspended 30-day jail sentences and ordered him to perform 40 hours of community service. He was also placed on probation for two years.