Caught with 5 deer before daylight a mile and a half from my Sister and Husband's house. Neighbors heard the shooting and called it in. A father and son from Iowa as I
hear it. That's likely to change. Season opened at daylight.

Good Deal they got nabbed

I hope your husband, and your sister are ok.

Brilliant.
Job security for the guys in green.
Every game warden……strike that, many game wardens, should write a book. The title of a chapter in every one of them would be, “When People Lose Their Mind During Deer Season “.

I never understood why people that shoot deer illegally do so during gun seasion. I guess like most criminals thay are not very bright or they wouldn't be doing it to begin with. But people shooting from a road for example during seasion there is likely to be someone in a tree going to see then doing it. It's like thay want to get caught. The opossum cops are out looking for them ect. They would be much less likely to get caught after seasion is out a few weeks and the woods is empty and wardens have moved on to checking water foul hunters.

What a great Role Model that dad is- said no one ever.

Glad they got caught, hope the penalty leaves a scar

Thanks

How soon before daylight? I let some ducks go one minute before shooting hours. Would one minute really make me a poacher? I don't think so, but the law is the law that some beurocrat made up so I follow it. I'd like to hear the whole story.

I had a friend from the UP that swears he didnt know you could hunt deer during the day untill he was 17.

I think he loses the pick up also.

Good for them. Hopefully it costs them big.

There's hardly a deer season opener that I don't hear the first shots ring out before legal shooting hours. Ours is half an hour before sunrise. The shooting time statewide is based on sunrise in Augusta, Maine.

Y’all got some real good eyes up there. There’s some mornings even 30min before sunrise I couldn’t tell you if it’s a buck or a doe. It was the same with ducks, all I could tell you is it was a duck, lol.

well the poachers use lights

Y’all ain’t got thermals?

maybe, just maybe, the person calling it in was lying. does not like hunting. especially from furiners. didn't say anything about le hearing the shots and knowing who shot them.

I have a friend who is fairly by the book. He said his phone showed shooting light and shot a gadwall on the water. Apparently, the game warden using his watch disagreed. Wrote him a ticket for 1 minute before shooting light.

That's why I don't mess around. Follow the rules to the "T".

Isn't that the Truth

That’s funny!

If I called in every time that I heard shooting they would quit answering my calls. I’m good with do the crime, do the time but why call in just because you heard someone shoot? Must be more to the story.

I guess they feel safer with the season open, possession before the sun comes up when most game wardens are out & about is not smart. First week of rifle season, some guys got caught about to dump deer parts in plastic bags along a rual road, They had five different deer, all doe's & durning rifle, no doe's aloud during rifle season. They tried to claim they were taken during muzzle season, but all still had tags unfilled for muzzle.

Details will becoming soonly.

Glad they nabbed him. Too much of that crap goes on.

Shooting times are the same here but in the woods or down in the draws you cant see anything till past shooting time starts. In the fields "daylight" comes a bit quicker.

Well I bet the guy in the article has a different definition of shooting light and his plugs in or uses battery's.

Don't shoot the kings deer. Sorry, I may be out of line, but I don't see any big horns in that pic. If someone was shooting deer for food around her I expect the locals would give them a thank you. I know not every place is the same, but we are overrun with deer and the leasers only shoot "that trophy buck". SMDH Someone needs to be killing the overburden that destroy crops and spread disease or even the big trophy deer will eventually be gone.

As a game warden for 27 years, I tried to find a "needy family" that wanted the meat from seized deer and other game. Never found one. Found several folks that wanted game ....mostly after it was processed, but never a truly needy family. I even discreetly made a concerned effort to do so....so I could maintain a very private list for my officers to work from. I utilized all known available local outlets....sheriff's offices, DFACs, Senior Citizen's Center, etc.....

Yep. Today folks just sign up for food stamps.

Swamp wolf, I do understand the lack of folks willing to help themselves. The local wardens used to have people on a list like you talked about, but those folks was usually older folks that would work up the deer themselves. As those folks have died off over the years I don't know that the list has gotten any new names added. I used to have a few widow women around town that I would take fish and game meat to, but sadly they are gone now too. Like Danny mentioned it is to easy to get free stuff and no one wants to put any effort into helping themselves now days.
All I was getting at is, in this area we are now overrun with deer to the point they are a problem. These trophy hunters that have tied up the land refuse to help the problem by shooting does or allowing anyone else to do so either. The few pieces of ground that are not under lease have hunters stacked on top of one another. Those particular farmers would not likely say a word if a hunter took a few extra does. I can remember when folks hunted deer to put food in the freezer, but the demographic has changed to horn hunting and there just isn't enough people hunting for food to manage the deer herd properly around here. I know with this excess population we have had several runs of disease come through the past few years and it dose wipe out the population for a short time, but it is short term and only hurts the trophy hunters as the older bucks seem to be the first to go. I don't know what it will take to get things straitened back out, but I am certain it will include killing of lots of does to manage the population. Teaching the younger people how to process there own meat and encouraging the use of game meat as a great opportunity to overcome grocery store prices would seem to be a solution, but folks have gotten to dang lazy and food stamps are to easily acquired for this to likely work.

Sorry, I had no intention of hijacking the op, just hit a nerve. I had to change my farming practices on this small piece of ground a few years back because of the huge deer population.
Now I am off to work so I can do my part to pay for all them food stamps.

I used to process deer for "hunters for hungry". I picked up quite a few deer from our local game wardens. When I had a freezer full we had churches and food banks come pick it up and distribute it. Had to quit when Obama signed a law that said my house could be inspected anytime the FDA felt like it because now I'm considered a meat packing plant. I still see a lot of those folks. They ask me about the meat. I tell them and they still vote Democrat. Can't figure it out. It's like biting the hand that feeds ya.

We can usually find enough folks to take our deer. Some request a certain processor and will call in to tell them what they want. Some want the whole deer intact and process it themselves.
We have 3 processors in our county that all take excess deer as they have a waiting list as well. The processors can get rid of those deer, but it’s the out of state hunters that don’t pick their deer up when ready which causes our processors to shut down at various times because they’re full.

Maybe they were sick and tired of poachers and did the right thing by calling in.
Knowing who shot them? , the guys in possession shot them I'm betting.

If you aint first your last.

I keep hearing about all these places that are over run with deer and the poor farmers plight that the trophy hunter s won't take doe.

1 where are they at I have 2 boys that will gladly shoot doe. 2. It's hard to have sympathy for them if they are taking money for them to lease the ground and not letting people like me with kids hunt and take care of their problems. Wine about the deer, take money from people that won't cull the deer, won't let people that will cull the deer do so. Cry me a river.

They really need to write the leases so the hunters have to earn a buck. Or at least write the leases for short term hunting priviledges so they can get locals to hunt after they go home.

Providence, I do not feel a bit sorry for the guys that lease out their ground to the hunters either. Fact is there are little guys like me that are surrounded by these leased grounds. We are the ones that are hurt the most by the overpopulation. I refuse to lease my ground as it is one of the few places around that a young person can still ask permission and hunt or fish. All I ask is they leave no trash or ruts behind. So in simple words I am not getting a dime from the hunters, but I get to suffer the consequences of being surrounded by leased ground and the lack of management that go along with it. The area I am in is eastern KS. I don't expect with gas prices it is doable, but I have yet to turn away a young person that asks permission and respects my no trash no ruts rule.

That makes more since now you expanded it. Looks like about 8.5 hr drive and your gun season come in late. I'm using my last 3 vacation days starting tomorrow. I need to get educated on the non resident youth license needed. I really enjoy taking the kids to new areas. I had I known they could be helpful I would have planed accordingly.

Andrew, sad but true.

Most places that lease the leaser must have insurance. To let just anyone on your property can open you up to lawsuits. Even the place we work/hunt/trap/fish we have to sign a waiver and I’m an employee. Used to you could just about hunt anywhere. When lawsuits started, that ended. Heck, they tried to sue a plantation owner because some yankee from Atlanta hit a deer on the highway. They looked out a saw green fields and said they were food plots for deer and if he hadn’t planted them then the deer wouldn’t have crossed the road. Of course they didn’t win and his lawyers made them regret filing, but that the kind of junk landowners have to deal with. And this landowner makes his employees kill between 80-120 a year.
Unless you’re “known” you’re not getting permission or even leasing. When we’re in killing mode, we’ll take the rifles and kill 5-10 a sit. It’s not hunting at that point, it’s just management.

if you get sued for letting someone hunt its time to shoot a lawyer

Our regulations book used to have a waver/ hunting permission slip on it to use to put Lang owners at ease. I have not looked in one of the printed book in a few years to know if they are still there never used one.

Here an owner can open his land up to the public. In that program, he is safe from being sued. If a land owner receives money to let people hunt, the land owner needs insurance

Most states already have laws protecting landowners from liability for recreational activities they allow on their land. Every so often people try to scare landowners about the liability thing if they signed a permission slip.

You should live here in eastern Virginia. Those hunt clubs here have no problem turning their dogs lose on your property and killing deer when they run off your property. But hey, it's all ethical right?

Thank you Andrew. You're a good man.

I have a good story about wardens thinking they were making a huge bust but it was a dead end. No energy now though.

Mando, KS has a walk in hunting program where we can open our land up to hunters also. This program sounds great and all, but it takes away the landowners ability to tell a slob to leave. I had looked into it myself, but after seeing what some of the folks utilizing the program are like I decided to not participate. The 80 acres bordering my back line is enrolled in the program and lets just say I have seen some down right slobs on that property. I like to have the ability to tell folks to leave and never come back if they break the no trash no rut rule, get into arguments with another hunter, flip me off for checking traps on my own place, or any other activity that I find unsafe or offensive.

Poachers are cheap. They don't shell out for suppressors and thermals. If they did, they'd be a lot harder to catch.

If they did buy that stuff, it would definitely get confiscated if they got caught.

A few years ago Nebr G&P saw an unusual number of stands from their airplane on my BILs farm. Thought sure they had found an illegal operation. It's a mile from KS so they were certain they were hunting in KS too. 2nd day of season they raided the place, including suits from the office in Lincoln hoping for a photo op, NE wardens and KS wardens. BIL and my Sister had leased the place to hunters from NY and they had put up a.buttload of stands. The only violation they found was a 17 yr old boy sitting 198 yds from a pile of spilled corn so they wrote his Mom a ticket as the boy told them he wanted to be a warden for a career. If you have a game violation on your record you can't be a warden. So after that hullabaloo a warden drove back 70 miles to present the 50 dollar ticket to the County Attorney. My Sister worked for the attorney and she said " oh, I heard you visited one of our farms yesterday ".

I would have no qualms about someone popping a deer illegally if they seriously needed the meat and didn’t have other resources to get food.
But this is stealing , plain as day, not stealing from the state ( which I always think as absurd) but stealing from the sportsmen/women who have spent countless thousands of dollars on permits, tags, habitat restoration, etc.
This person wasn’t starving, and probably had an illegal market for the meat.

Public trust doctrine. Wildlife is owned by the public, held in trust by the State.

But the public nor the government want to take liability when one of their deer are in the road and get hit by a car. My wifes aunt was killed hitting a deer on a motorcycle. But if it were my cow, horse ,or.... that was in the road I would be liable.

Wonder if the government claimed the ground house that wiped out my 1/4 acre pumpkin patch or the coons that got my sweet corn and chickens? If so we need to talk.

I remember when that happened. I heard the stand was over 200 yards from a feeder but the feeder threw the bait to 198 yards from stand. Is that how it went down Gary?