Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, October 19, 1993                   TAG: 9310190131
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: KAREN BARNES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD                                LENGTH: Short

BOTETOURT MEN GUILTY OF POACHING

James Stanley Hickman and Brian Walter Campbell, both of Buchanan, were sentenced by Bedford County General District Court Judge James Farmer to a suspended 30-day jail term and fined $100 for poaching ginseng and $250 for trespassing on posted private land.

The two men wandered onto private property off Virginia 640, near Suck Mountain, on June 30 and gathered two-thirds of a pound of ginseng. That amount would bring almost $160 on the ginseng market. The men were running almost two months ahead of the legal season.

Hickman, 46, and Campbell, 24, pleaded guilty to both charges.

Ginseng is a wild root known for its healing and supposed aphrodisiac powers. The plant flourishes in only a handful of mountainous areas around the world, including Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland.

Ginseng hunters may wander the woods on state-owned and private property beginning Aug. 15. National Forest lands open up a month later, but there is not a legal season for picking the roots along the Blue Ridge Parkway or other National Park lands. Hunters must have the permission of private landowners to wander on their property.