White-tailed deer are a popular game species in Texas and elsewhere throughout the US. Though most deer are taken legally, where there is temptation there will be people that do things illegally. So was the case in north-central Texas, where whitetail are quite numerous… and apparently the poachers are quite dumb/blatant. This illegal hunting story takes place in Comanche County.
Texas Parks & Wildlife Department — A Comanche County game warden had come home for lunch and parked his truck in the driveway when a knock came at the front door. His wife answered the door to find a young man asking if she knew where he could hunt hogs. She said she didn’t know and sent him on his way. The warden got to the door just as the man was getting into his white truck to leave. He felt there was something off about the encounter, so he moved his patrol truck behind his house and set up where he could watch the oat field just across the highway.
At dusk, he saw a white truck driving slowly on the highway and stop at the edge of the oat food plot. He then saw the man get out, remove a rifle form the backseat, sneak up to the fence and fire four shots into a herd of deer. Another car was coming down the road and spooked the man, so he ran back to his truck and made a U-turn just as the warden arrived to the scene.
The warden proceeded to handcuff, search and read Miranda rights to the man before asking him, “What were you thinking?” The young man said, “I didn’t think you would be home.” The warden then searched the field but did not find a deer or any blood. The man said he had just bought the .243 rifle and had not bothered to sight-in the scope.
The man was charged with deer hunting from a Texas public road and hunting in a closed area. His new rifle was seized.