DANGER: WEEDWHACKERS

Marijuana growers are firing guns and setting booby traps to stop
poachers from pilfering their crops, police say.

The extreme measures are being taken to protect increasingly
sophisticated and lucrative pot crops, said Det.-Insp. Morris Elbers,
OPP drug team co-ordinator.

Plants are worth about $1,000 each.

No cops have been injured so far, but one pot-raider was paralyzed
after he was shot last summer near Killaloe, east of Algonquin Park,
Elbers said.

Closer to Toronto, a Coboconk-Minden crop thief escaped injury in one
of two other shooting incidents.

Most amateur pot plots hidden among rows of corn or in creek bottoms
have vanished since cops began a combined air-and-ground search
program 11 years ago, Elbers said.

"Today the growers are much more sophisticated ... fertilizing their
plants first in greenhouses and hydroponic operations, then
transplanting," he said.

Many growers have also planted farther away from populated areas, he
said. "Some sites can only be reached by canoe, others are growing at
the end of a long lane."