Behind the Badge - The Decoy
The Decoy
District Game Warden Zane Manhart
After being a game warden for a while, I have realized there are certain reports I get at nearly the same time every year.
Most years during the deer gun season I have someone say they observed someone using artificial light to hunt deer.
Like a lot of the reports that I receive I have very little information to work with.
No vehicle description and no suspect information, just a general area where the incident took place and sometimes a time of day.
Quite often, the time that is given is not long after legal shooting light.
It can be difficult to coordinate everything just right to catch the suspects that shine wildlife illegally.
One of the best ways to catch these violators is by using a decoy.
Using decoys to catch violators can be somewhat dangerous, so we follow a fairly in-depth policy to ensure the safety of the public and game wardens.
During the deer gun season of 2023, game warden Zach Schuchard, Dunn County deputy Phil Wolf, and I set up a pair of deer decoys along the roadway in an area open to public hunting.
We set the decoys up after legal shooting hours had ended, focusing on those violators that use artificial lights to shine deer in an area previously reported.
Warden Schuchard and Deputy Wolf were concealed in some bushes where they could see the decoys and any violator who may stop on the road.
I was parked farther down the road so that I could stop any violators that they observed.
We hadn’t been in place long when Warden Schuchard notified me over the radio that a pickup had stopped and the driver had turned the truck so the headlights were illuminating the deer decoys.
Warden Schuchard then notified me that the driver had honked the horn at the deer but drove away after the deer didn’t move.
When the vehicle passed my location, I followed it.
By the time I caught up with it the pickup it was turned sideways in the road shining the headlights on actual live deer.
As I approached, the vehicle turned and traveled farther up the road.
I turned on my emergency lights and the vehicle pulled over and stopped.
While walking up to the pickup I noticed that there was a large amount of blood in the truck bed.
I explained to the driver why I had stopped him and while speaking with him I saw a bolt action rifle in the passenger seat.
I asked the driver to open the bolt on the rifle and when he did a loaded cartridge was ejected from the chamber.
At this point it was apparent that I had a question for this suspect.
The question that I wanted an answer to was what had the blood in the truck bed come from.
When I asked the hunter about the blood, he told me that he had transported a deer for a friend a couple of days prior.
I asked him for the friend’s name, and he readily provided a name and told me the friend lived in Dickinson.
When I looked the name up in the online license system, I found that the person was not licensed and didn’t have any deer tags.
I contacted the person by phone and while speaking with him I found that he hadn’t been hunting and hadn’t shot a deer.
It turns out that he hadn’t seen the suspect I was dealing with since high school, but he did tell me “If he’s out there he’s probably poaching.” I confronted the suspect with the information that I had found, and he then tried to tell me that it was a different friend.
I was losing my patience with the guess a random name game and asked him to be straight with me.
Eventually he told me that he had killed a mule deer doe a couple of days ago near the area where we were that night.
He didn’t have a mule deer tag but had an antlerless whitetail tag.
The deer was at his brother-in-law’s house in Dickinson.
Game Warden supervisor Dan Hoenke went to that house and seized the deer.
The deer was not tagged.
Warden Schuchard and I seized the hunter’s deer tag and rifle.
He was cited for possessing a loaded firearm in a motor vehicle, shining wildlife, failure to tag big game, killing the wrong species of deer, and providing false information to law enforcement.
The Dunn County State’s Attorney’s Office did a great job handling this case and the suspect plead guilty to all the charges.
He was ordered to pay $850 in court fees and fines and $500 in restitution for the deer.
He was also ordered to pay a donation of $800 to the Report All Poachers program to get his rifle back and his hunting privileges were suspended for two years.
I have found, as a game warden, that there are times that cases can be solved with very little information.
This was one of those times.
There are other times that we can’t solve these cases.
Using decoys is one way that we can increase our odds of successfully solving cases.