Wildlife are natural resources utilised by many people around the world, both legally and illegally, for a wide range of purposes. This scoping review evaluates 82 studies nested in 75 manuscripts to provide an overview of the documented motivations and methodologies used, and to identify and analyse knowledge gaps in the motivations of illegal harvesters. Studies differ in what data is collected, often leaving out important contextual variables. We find 12 different motivations, frequently interlinked and multiple often play a role in the same harvesting incident. Motivations seemed to differ between taxa. Future research needs to move beyond a general description but recognise the complexity of the matter and allow for context-specific adjustments to facilitate a deeper understanding of these motivations.