All logs or timbers suitable for manufacture into lumber, ties, poles, or other timber products, not bearing a legally recorded mark or marks, which shall be placed aboard a transport vehicle for land transportation or placed afloat on a waterway, or permitted to be afloat upon any of the public waters of this state, not confined in booms or rafts, and all such logs or timbers bearing a legally recorded mark or marks not claimed within one (1) year after being placed in transit or afloat shall be prize logs, and no evidence of any private ownership thereof shall be admissible in any proceeding. Prize logs shall be sold by or under the direction of the Idaho board of scaling practices, and the proceeds of such sale, after deducting the expense of the sale and transportation or other charges incurred in getting said logs to the sale site shall go into the state scaling fund. Such sale shall be at public auction after publication of notice of time and place thereof for not less than three (3) consecutive weeks in a newspaper of general circulation printed and published in the county in which the sale is to be held. It shall be the duty of every person having custody or possession of prize logs to deliver them to the Idaho board of scaling practices upon demand.