St. Landry D.A. Contributes To DWF
By Sergeant Travis Huval

There was a certain area in St Landry Parish where we sometimes received complaints of people shining spotlights on a stretch of road. However, every time we set up around that area there was no traffic, and those rare occasions when we did see a vehicle, deer were rarely seen on the side of the road. On a couple of nights we did have several people looking real hard but again there wasn’t a deer to be found. The problem was we knew deer were there and the poachers also knew deer were there but you could never see one when we needed to. This hunting season we were able to solve this problem of no deer in certain areas with the help of St. Landry District Attorney Earl Taylor.

In August of 2003 Captain Lastie Cormier contacted us and told us to go to the District Attorney’s office to pick up a package. When we arrived we were delighted to find a brand new remote control operated deer decoy purchased for us by District Attorney Earl Taylor. Mr. Taylor and his office set up a program where minor cases are diverted, and a portion of the fees from this diversion program are used to buy equipment for agents to use in the field. Talk about giving back to us, we were now set for hunting season.

One of the cases with the decoy occurred in January of 2004. Sergeant Travis Huval and Senior Agent Brad Guidroz had just received new complaints of people shining spotlights on the same stretch of road mentioned earlier. These were the first good complaints in this area we had received all year, except this time we had a decoy to set up. On the night we went to the area we only had the decoy out for about thirty minutes when our first vehicle passed without incident. Two more vehicles came through area and the first passed without slowing down. We thought the second vehicle would never stop and shoot because it was only about fifty yards behind the first.

Much to our surprise the vehicle did stop and a spotlight immediately shined the decoy and then went out. Then we heard something that makes every game wardens blood pressure rise - a blast from a high powered rifle. Senior Agent Brad Guidroz, Senior Agent Channing Duvall, and Agent Donnie Bozeman stopped the vehicle and after taking care of some paperwork returned to the area to find our decoy had come away without a scratch.

We had used the decoy to successfully catch an unethical hunter who admitted to shining this area after he noticed a nice buck there earlier in the week.  We recently found out that District Attorney Earl Taylor was at it again and had again used a portion of the diversion program to generously donate sixteen hundred dollars to Operation Game Thief. From the agents of Region Six and the Enforcement Division of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries we would like to thank Mr. Taylor for the generous donations to our cause. We appreciate everything he has done for us and for his interest in the Enforcement Division and for helping protect our natural resources.