CHICORA — Paul Homa Jr. is an outsdoorsman who has been collecting mounted trophies, skulls and hides since the fifth grade.

His Concord Township home, by all accounts, was filled with dead or mounted animals, including a ruby throated humming bird, a handful of mounted timber rattlesnakes and dozens of wildlife animal skulls and antlers.

The 51-year-old man says he doesn’t think his hobby is unusual, and he certainly doesn’t think it’s illegal.

“I never caught or killed anything out of season,” said Homa Tuesday in the Chicora courtroom of District Judge Lewis Stoughton as he faced various allegations filed by state police, the Pennsylvania Game Commission, and the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission.

The case against Homa, according to court records, began Aug. 8 after three Butler County sheriff’s deputies went to his Boydstown Road home looking for a suspected marijuana grower wanted on a warrant. Instead of finding the suspect, authorities allegedly found a pickup truck embedded with several marijuana plants.

Prompted by that find, state police searched his property and allegedly uncovered an outdoor marijuana grow-operation of 45 plants in varying sizes up to 5 feet tall, court documents said.

Inside the home, investigators reportedly found:

• 259 prescription pills, and other alleged drug paraphernalia

• Illegal wildlife parts and stuffed state-protected birds, including 18 turkey legs, 15 turkey beards, 57 sets of whitetail deer antlers, 16 half-sets of whitetail deer antlers, a life-sized mounted whitetail deer, two shoulder mount whitetail deer, a set of elk antlers, a set of mule deer antlers, six black bear skulls, one mounted great horned owl, a mounted screech owl, a coopers hawk, the humming bird and a red-winged black bird

• Six adult timber rattlesnakes and three neonates, or baby rattlers. All dead and mounted.

While much of the wildlife allegedly found in Homa’s house is legal to hunt and to own, court records indicate that he did not have proper licenses.

During court Tuesday, Homa gave up his right to a hearing on the charges related to the drugs and the animals.

He pleaded guilty to seven summary violations related to the snakes, six counts of illegally possessing the snakes and one count of illegal snake breeding.

The timber rattlesnake can be hunted and collected for recreation purposes in Pennsylvania. But hunters and collectors must get a permit from the fish and boat commission, which Homa did not have.

Homa said one of his friends from Bruin had been raising the venomous rattlers. Like his buddy, Homa said, he enjoyed “playing” with the potentially deadly snakes.

“It was like an adrenaline rush,” he said.

Homa said when the snakes died naturally, he took them to a taxidermist.

The displays were on-hand for the hearing. Some of Homa’s snakes were mounted on rocks. Others had been displayed in a wood and glass coffee table.

Because of his conviction, Homa’s snakes will become property of the fish and boat commission. Officials there will assign them to educational centers in the state.

Homa also must pay a $574 fine for the snake violations.

Homa did not comment on the drug allegations, but he said he emphatically denied the charges he still faces related to the animals.

“Lies,” he said, claiming that each of the animals that officials confiscated were killed by him when he had a proper license to do so. Or, in other cases, like the owls, Homa said the animals were given to him from friends and family who knew about his passion for collecting.

The hummingbird, he said, “died on my picnic table. I was going to take it to be mounted because it looked so cool.”

The charges related to the animals and the drugs now move to county court, where Home can enter a plea arrangement or have a trial.