Hunting Archery Duck Deer

ROSSIE: DEC continues to hit its mark when targeting deer poachers

DAVID ROSSIE / WILDLIFE WATCH

Some of my most memorable deer hunting moments have been spent not hunting deer, but watching Environmental Conservation Officers hunting deer hunters who were hunting fake deer.

Each year the DEC officers set out robotic deer, which appear disarmingly real from a distance, and which can be manipulated electronically in hopes of nabbing hunters who allow their desire to shoot a deer overwhelm their common sense.

Sometimes the fake deer are set up on state land and sometimes on posted land, but that appears to be of little concern to someone willing to break the law by shooting from inside a vehicle , as many of the law-breakers do. Getting out of the vehicle doesn’t make it legal either, if the hunter fires across the road at his target.

The ECOs, working in pairs or teams, set up the bogus deer where they can monitor it and approaching traffic from concealment. The object, of course, is to crack down on illegal road hunters and discourage the practice, although considering the number of arrests each year the sting operation does not appear to be a great deterrent. And that’s hard to understand, given that the fine for getting caught taking an illegal pot shot at a fake deer would buy plenty of beef or chicken.

The most comical sting I have witnessed turned out to be legal. The team I was with had set up the deer about 50 yards into a field along a back road near Smithville Flats. For a long time there was no action. Motorists would drive by, slow down and look at the decoy and then drive on. They were either non-hunters, or too clever to fall for the trap.

Then along came a man chugging up the road on a tractor. He spotted the decoy and pulled the tractor off the road and into the field where the decoy was standing. He hopped off the tractor, yanked open his jacket, drew a pistol and began blazing away at the decoy, which rocked under the impact of the slugs but didn’t go down.

Before he could reload, the ECOs swept down and disarmed him. But as it turned out, he had not broken any laws. He was off the road, had a valid pistol permit and a big game hunting license. All he suffered was a bit of chagrin when he learned that he’d been shooting at a plastic deer.

One road hunter who did get caught breaking the law probably deserves points for degree of difficulty. ECO Ric Warner and his partner, Andy McCormick, were working a decoy in the Town of Maine one evening last week during the late archery and muzzle loader season when a truck drove past the decoy, slowed and then moved on .

It was already past sundown and legal shooting time, Ric said, and they figured that was that. But the truck returned a few minutes later when it was a few minutes darker. The driver emerged from the truck, took aim at the deer with a range finder and shot the decoy. With an arrow.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Ric said. “The decoy was 50 yards away and he hit it. He didn’t hit it well, but he hit it.”

It was, Ric said, the first time he’d ever encountered a poacher using a bow. The fine, however, whatever it comes to, will be the same as for using a gun, he said.

Rossie is Associate Editor of the Press & Sun-Bulletin. His Wildlife Watch appears Sundays