Behind the Badge
Things Are Not Always as They Appear
District Game Warden Corey Erck
I have written in the past about the need for dog owners to be aware of the dangers of snares that may be deployed to catch coyotes.
This is the story of a case that I worked with a couple of other wardens a few years back and it all started with a pheasant hunter whose dog had gotten caught in one.
The pheasant hunter was out enjoying a piece of private land that was enrolled in the Game and Fish PLOTS program.
The pheasant hunter felt confident that there would be no snares on the property, however, as they hunted their way through some cattails the dog was caught in a snare.
The hunter told me quite the harrowing story of how he was able to chew through the cable with his Leatherman multi-tool.
Thankfully, he was able to get the dog out relatively unharmed.
This led him to give me a call.
It was not illegal to have the snare on the PLOTS land, but there were a couple of problems that we soon discovered.
First, the landowner had not given anyone permission to set the snare on his land and second the pheasant hunter was unable to locate an identification tag on the snare as required by law.
The next step in the investigation led Warden Pilot Jeff Sieger and I to go to the spot where the dog had been entangled.
In the cattails we were able to locate another snare.
We were again unable to locate an identification tag.
After much thought and discussion with other wardens and Warden Supervisor Mark Pollert it was decided that we would try and put a tracker in a dead coyote and place it into one of the snares.
Supervisor Pollert also supplied me with a cellular trail camera to deploy on the section-line leading to the corner of the PLOTS track to catch a photo of any vehicles coming in and out of the area.
It seemed like a solid plan; dare I say almost foolproof.
We were able get a dead coyote from the USDA Wildlife Services trapper that he had caught in a snare.
The dead coyote was outfitted with a tracker and placed into one of the illegal snares.
A few days passed and we didn’t get any photos of vehicles traveling the trail to our coyote.
Then one morning we had pictures of a pick-up truck going into the PLOTS area and then leaving a short time later.
I drove as quickly as possible to the area.
Unfortunately, I was unable to find the vehicle in the area when I got there, and a review of our trail camera photos did not give us the image of the license plate as we had hoped.
I went to the PLOTS land and checked on our coyote, and he was gone, thankfully we had the tracker in place.
While following the footprints of the person that had taken the coyote, we discovered another snare that we had not previously seen.
This time we were in luck the snare had a name tag attached.
I called the guy whose name was on the cable and asked him about them.
He told me over the phone that he indeed had placed them in the PLOTS land and was very open and honest with me.
When I asked him about removing the coyote the previous day, he said that it was not him that had removed the coyote as he had been in Fargo for the weekend.
So much for our foolproof plan, now where do we go with our investigation and who took our coyote?
With the assistance of both Warden Pilot Sieger and my neighboring Warden Jerad Bluem we continued to work the case as hard as we could.
Warden Sieger was able to use the department aircraft to determine that the coyote and tracker were in Bismarck, but zeroing in on the exact location or address was proving to be difficult.
Meanwhile Warden Bluem was using his computer skills to search the motor vehicle records for a vehicle that matched the one we had on the trail camera.
With a whole lot of persistence and little bit of luck Warden Bluem was able to find a vehicle that matched the one we were looking for; the owner grew up on a farm in the area we had been working and was now living in Bismarck.
Warden Sieger was able to drive by the man’s home in Bismarck and instantly knew that parked in the driveway was the vehicle we had pictures of on our trail camera.
Eventually, Warden Sieger and I were able to speak with the owner of the pick-up and he admitted that he and a friend had taken the dead coyote out of the snare.
In the end the owner of the snare was issued a citation and the two men who had taken the coyote were issued citations for tampering with snares that did not belong to them.
And yes, we did get our coyote back.
This was a challenging and fun case to work.
In the end it turned out in a way that none of us would have expected when we started out.