Two men were arraigned on felony misdemeanor wildlife charges Wednesday in Eastern Oregon for allegedly poaching a cow elk in the first use of a new Oregon State Police program using DNA testing on evidence in game cases, authorities said.

Aleksandr Katko, 52, of Gresham, and Vadim "Tito" Tioukh, 44, of Boring, each face charges of first-degree theft, first-degree criminal mischief, taking an elk without a valid tag, waste of wildlife and operating a vehicle in a Cooperative Road-Closure Area.

The pair were arraigned on the indictments Wednesday in Wallowa County Circuit Court.

The pair were the first to be indicted in a fish and wildlife crime based on evidence developed through a two-year pilot program among the OSP's Fish and Wildlife Division, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and a group of sportsmen's associations.

Evidence seized in OSP cases will be sent to the IDFG's wildlife forensics lab for testing.

The Foundation for North American Wild Sheep, the Oregon Hunters Association and several other groups raised $25,000 for the program. It will be evaluated to see whether it pays to continue, according to the OSP.

The program likely will be deemed more cost-effective than OSP building and certifying its own lab here to handle DNA analyses and have experts whose court testimony will be deemed credible in court.

Troopers also believe that would-be poachers might think twice before pulling the trigger if they knew they might become case fodder for "CSI-Backwoods."

"Our hope is that it will have some deterrent value," says OSP Lt. David Cleary says. "But that will be hard to measure."

Katko and Tioukh were indicted for a 2007 crime in Wallowa County in which an elk was killed and left to waste while another illegally killed elk was discovered nearby, the OSP said.

Troopers at the scene collected several 9mm shell casings and a DNA sample from the wasted elk, police said.

Katko and Tioukh were later developed as suspects and police seized a knife, rope and hatchet — all with blood on them — from one of the suspects' residences, police said.

DNA tests at the Idaho lab confirmed that the blood evidence taken at the scene was an identical match to the blood on the evidence, police said.

The case actually is the third state wildlife case to use DNA evidence analyzed from the Idaho lab. The first two were pro-bono cases done before the pilot program was launched.

One case linked a Klamath Falls man to a wasted Rocky Mountain elk, and another linked a bear hide found at a taxidermist to a gut pile near an illegal bait station, according to the OSP. Both cases were in the Prineville area, police said.

Cleary says troopers expect to ask for restitution for DNA testing upon sentencing in cases where the testing was used.

Flyfishers talk trout

Fly-fishing for the trout of the Klamath River Basin will be featured during Wednesday's meeting of the Rogue Flyfishers Association in Medford.

Klamath-based fly-fishing guide Marlon Rampy will present a show on the basin's system of lakes and spring-fed rivers that produce some of the largest rainbow trout in the lower 48 states.

The meeting will be held at the Red Lion Hotel, 200 N. Riverside Ave. The wet-fly hour begins at 6 p.m., and the buffet dinner, meeting, raffle and Rampy's multimedia program will run from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Guests are welcome.

For more information, telephone 541-858-5981 or visit the club's Web site at www.rogueflyfishers.org.

Outdoor adventures raffle

Residents in the Halfway area of northeast Oregon are raffling off a series of outdoor adventures to raise money aimed at keeping a rural health clinic there open.

The Pine Eagle Clinic, which serves about 2,000 people from Halfway to Oxbow and Hells Canyon, needs to raise about $150,000 to stay open through December while the clinic board works on a long-term solution to its version of the rural health crisis, clinic supporter Patricia Sowers says.

As part of that effort, they are holding a river-to-mountain Outdoor Adventure Raffle. Prizes include a horseback riding trip in the Eagle Cap Wilderness Area, fishing on Brownlee Reservoir, whitewater rafting, a llama pack trip, and other adventures in the Wallowa Mountains.

The various trips are all valued from $373 to $2,665, according to Sowers.

Tickets cost $5 each. The drawing is set for March 21.

To buy a ticket, send an e-mail to savetheclinic@yahoo.com, or telephone 541-742-4115.

For more information on the clinic and the raffle trips, visit www.savetheclinic.org.