# Please excuse me while I vent about wasteful "hunters"



## TheLachmans (Aug 28, 2016)

My son and I were hunting on public AEP land this past weekend and were heading back to the truck around dusk when we smelled rotting meat. Someone had dumped 3 deer (2 large doe's, and I'm assuming a buck because the head was cut off) in a culvert that was beside the road. The worst part about it was that all three deer had just the back straps removed and nothing else. The deer where not even skinned, just cut around the back straps. What is wrong with people! I told my son that this how all hunters get a bad name, and this is what causes landowners to stop allowing hunting (not to mention all of the trash that was thrown out at the pull off area). I can't even begin to wrap my head around the mindset of a "hunter" like this. I'm sure they did not want to use their tag, if they had one to start with. Anyhow, I will get off of my soapbox while continuing to shake my head at such idiocy. Thanks for listening.


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## CharlieKelly (Jun 18, 2019)

Well did you call the game warden?


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## Harry1959 (Mar 17, 2011)

Please don’t call people who poach and dump animals hunters.... big difference between hunting and poaching.....and as said, if you didn’t call the game warden, I hope you do. Wasting resources like that is soooo wrong.


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## pawcat (Oct 24, 2011)

Poaching will Never stop...its everywhere!


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## undertaker (Jan 20, 2013)

Hate seeing it . Waste of good meat. Diffently call the warden an bring it to their attention. It happens to often.


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## sherman51 (Apr 12, 2011)

harry1959 is right. no hunter would do things like that. poaching has been around since the white man poached on indian land. and it'll be around when were dead and gone. I just don't think they punish the few they catch harsh enough. to find one along the road and take its head is one thing. but what you describe is poaching in its worst form.
sherman


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## miked913 (Feb 29, 2008)

Should have just called the game warden, he and the Morgan Co. Sheriff stopped in at our camp on sat while I was butchering my buck. We got to talk a while introduce ourselves and he checked that I indeed tagged my deer correctly gave me a nice odnr zipper case to attach your tag to a deer and were on their way, very nice talking with them. 

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## mike oehme (Aug 17, 2014)

TheLachmans said:


> My son and I were hunting on public AEP land this past weekend and were heading back to the truck around dusk when we smelled rotting meat. Someone had dumped 3 deer (2 large doe's, and I'm assuming a buck because the head was cut off) in a culvert that was beside the road. The worst part about it was that all three deer had just the back straps removed and nothing else. The deer where not even skinned, just cut around the back straps. What is wrong with people! I told my son that this how all hunters get a bad name, and this is what causes landowners to stop allowing hunting (not to mention all of the trash that was thrown out at the pull off area). I can't even begin to wrap my head around the mindset of a "hunter" like this. I'm sure they did not want to use their tag, if they had one to start with. Anyhow, I will get off of my soapbox while continuing to shake my head at such idiocy. Thanks for listening.


Did you ever call the game warden?


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## Fish-N-Fool (Apr 12, 2004)

mike oehme said:


> Did you ever call the game warden?


Even if he did I doubt he received any response. Overwhelmed with calls the since Saturday prior to the opener. Plus imo they don't much care about such issues. I called and completed the online TIP for the same reason same spot 2 consecutive years. 5 deer (3 bucks) one season; 7 deer (3 bucks again) the next....never even a call back etc.

Tis a shame.....but I wouldn't even bother calling them ever again unless I had recurring issues on property I owned or hunted. I have enough experiences attempting to make reports over the years I have determined they don't care unless it involves a big money case. Hate to sound negative, but that is my personal experience.

Call and tell them somebody has been jacklighting fields and showed you 5 enormous bucks.....you will have a team contact you. Call about dumped deer, trespassing, and other "minor" violations and forget about it. They prioritize and these things slip by. Compare the # of officers in OH to some other states and you see why we do not protect our resources properly.


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## miked913 (Feb 29, 2008)

Fish-N-Fool said:


> Even if he did I doubt he received any response. Overwhelmed with calls the since Saturday prior to the opener. Plus imo they don't much care about such issues. I called and completed the online TIP for the same reason same spot 2 consecutive years. 5 deer (3 bucks) one season; 7 deer (3 bucks again) the next....never even a call back etc.
> 
> Tis a shame.....but I wouldn't even bother calling them ever again unless I had recurring issues on property I owned or hunted. I have enough experiences attempting to make reports over the years I have determined they don't care unless it involves a big money case. Hate to sound negative, but that is my personal experience.
> 
> Call and tell them somebody has been jacklighting fields and showed you 5 enormous bucks.....you will have a team contact you. Call about dumped deer, trespassing, and other "minor" violations and forget about it. They prioritize and these things slip by. Compare the # of officers in OH to some other states and you see why we do not protect our resources properly.


Very sorry you feel that way but that is 100% different from what I have experienced. When we first got our property which was previously a public hunting area controlled by the coal company we had the exact same thing happen, found a carcass in the ditch back straps missing, when they showed up low and behold the dumba$$ left his temporary tag on the deer, never did the permanent tag and was pinched on several charges. We have called on trespassers and other issues over the years, info on EHD etc, and always had not only a response but a positive one. Things like this are their job and they will do it, that's what they're there for. Sorry you got caught spotlighting.

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## snag (Dec 27, 2005)

I called last month of baiting on public land, called tip and the game wardens number on the regulations, talked to both people live no computer. He called me back when he was at the corn pile. Wish I knew if he got him in the act.


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## Fish-N-Fool (Apr 12, 2004)

miked913 - I've never been questioned, charged or fined for any wildlife violation. The point I was trying to make is they currently seem to jump if the case involves a big trophy buck now that there is revenue to be gained yet seem to ignore the common "minor" violations occurring.

To each his own...I have talked direct with Clint McCoy 2X (not about violations just deer). He was great to talk with and even kept my contact information and actually sent me follow up contact months later regarding a bee study the state was conducting at the time. I've talked with my local county warden many times...he's been here for a LONG time. He is always a nice enough guy. I've never had a problem in my local county. But, over the last 15 years I have seen issues that needed to be reported. I have attempted to report maybe 5 things in those 15 years; 3 of which were fishing related and pretty bad illegal stuff. 2 were hunting issues. I received a response exactly 1x on fishing issue. They called from the office in Xenia, we talked for 15 minutes. They knew of the guy...even knew what his dog looked like. They said I wasn't the only tip on him, but unless they saw him in the act and followed him to pay lakes etc. there was nothing to be done. The other 4 times nada.

I talked to my local warden about the deer dumped in Muskingum and he told me I was wasting my time. OH doesn't have a wanton waste law on anything other than migratory birds and waterfowl. You can shoot a deer, tag it and toss it out back....perfectly legal. He then told me they get tons of these calls and mostly ignore them - I ask WHY? He said well I just told you! Plus most of these calls are just where somebody butchered deer and tossed the scraps out.

Your guy ONLY got in trouble because he failed to tag his deer. You could get sighted for improper disposal, but there is no other violation. I don't like it, but that is the law in OH.

I'm pretty much done with the TIP line or calling the game warden. As I said if I saw something I knew would interest them (jack lighting shooting with rifle, etc), or it was my land I would make the extra effort to get them on the case. I see deer tossed in a pile on a township road, a guy fishing in the no fishing zone, somebody taking 30 crappie when the limit is posted as 20 - not wasting my time after my experiences. 

So for the original post....there likely was no crime and even if untagged no way for ODNR to investigate. The state doesn't value a typical deer enough to put the time and effort (= $$) into these issues. If you look at court documents OH currently values a whitetail deer of non trophy status at $500. That doesn't pay for 1 day of a game warden's time all in. 

Perhaps we should start a petition for OH lawmakers to place a wanton waste law on the books. I know most would be for it.


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## hailtothethief (Jan 18, 2017)

I love deer steaks. I’ll kill for it. Why leave a bunch a meat?


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## DeathFromAbove (Oct 21, 2008)

3 dead deer in a ditch ? Lets face it They have nothing to go on Its not like TV where theyll call out a CSI team and find one blond hair, get DNA, and make a bust You can understand why they wont waste the manpower on something like that The instance Miked913 described was a one in 100,000 shot Of course, most criminals are dumbasses


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## TheLachmans (Aug 28, 2016)

I didn't call the warden, I probably should have. I have called in the past for a different issue. I was fishing and came across a few deer carcasses that had been butchered and thrown out during archery season, not that big of a deal to me except they also threw out all of their trash with it. There was a large flattened cardboard box that they must have had the deer laying on in the car or truck, and it had their name and address on it! I did call that in, but even then I felt like I was kind of blown off. I asked them to let me know what came of it, and they never did. I agree that it is impossible to stop unless they are caught in the act, and that rarely happens. If I walked off and left my tag at home and shot a deer, I'm quite sure a squad would rappel out of the trees around me before the gunshot stopped echoing! Also, I used quotation marks when I referred to them as hunters, the forum won't let me type what I actually call them!


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## OrangeMilk (Oct 13, 2012)

A few years back they had a big bust where they got 4 or 5 guys for doing what you described, killing deer and just cutting out the back strap. They were poaching, mostly not in season.

Once they had a decent number of calls saying "hey I found a deer in the ditch with the straps cut out" they put two and two together and investigated, eventually making the bust and got them for 40ish deer.

I would have called it in, you never know, they could be already on the trail of someone, or this could be the nail that sets the hammer in motion for an investigation.


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## $diesel$ (Aug 3, 2018)

Anyone that ignorant deserves jail time in my opinion. Now if a man needs to feed his family and has no other way,.......go ahead and take them, but use the entire animal, i've no problem with that.
If your going to kill an animal for his prime cuts or his rack, your a knucklehead and deserve to go to jail.


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## Whaler (Nov 16, 2004)

You said it all when you said " what is wrong with people ? " The answer is that there really is something wrong with them.


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