ROAD HUNTER NABBED IN WEST BAY WMA

By Sr. Agent Joey James

In late December of 2002, several agents were working on a complaint in West Bay Wildlife Management Area. The nature of the complaint was rthat people were driving around in their vehicles looking for deer on the open roads instead of still hunting. In the past, in trying to uncover this problem, people have gone so far as to accidently discharge their weapons in their vehicles while tring to unload them before the LWF agent approaches to inspect. While some people were being caught with loaded weapons on the WMA roads, the problem was not going away, as most violators wer able to unload their weapons before the agent could check them. The agents of District 5A came up with a solution to this problem and had great success. We placed deer decoys well over 100 yards from the open roads, and the following is an example of one of the twenty-something cases made in doing so.

On this December morning we observed a dark colored Ford Ranger travelling dowmn one of the roads where the decoys were set. It looked as though thre pickup would pass through as most did, but this one stopped. The driver began looking at the decoys witha pair of binoculars. At this point we thought he had made them out, but he backed up and pulled on to a side road and opened his door. He then stepped out of his truck and aimed a rifle at the decoys and shot. After he shot, we called the agents standing by to make the stop. In the few seconds it took for the agent to arrive on the scene, the subject closed his door, put his rifle on his shoulder and began walking up the road. He then started walking into the woods and removed his hunter’s orange and dissappeared. When the agent arrived on the scene there was no violator.

At this point we gathered up and began looking for this guy. After a few hours we called off the search. Unluckily for this subject, we had his pick up truck, and with that his name and address. Even wors, the closest town or telephone was about six miles away. We gave him every opportunity to come out of the woods, then we towed thre vehicle.

Later on that night the Sherriff’s office called Lt. Savoie and told him that the subject who shot the decoy was trying to contact him. Lt. Savoie met the subject at the wrecker yard to release the truck and issue citations for hunting from a moving vehicle, hunting from an open road in a WMA, and also for flight from an officer. Lt. Savoie said that the subject told him he hid because he knew that the shot a fake deer and was scared of the consequences. The consequences were inevitable and there would have been one less charge if he would have just stayed with his vehicle. We later found out that this was a subject with a long list of wildlife violations among other things and his motive for hiding from us was because it wasn’t his first time to have to face the judge for such acts. Agents involved were Scott Fontenot, David Liles, Keith Aucoin, Steven Vidrine, Joey James, Clyde Willis, Chris Cormier, and Jesse Savoie.