SPOTTED FAWN

 By Sr. Agent David Liles

When a stranger just walks up to you and lays a good complaint in your lap, sometimes it's hard to tell whether he's telling the truth or not. Well, I'm like any other agent in that good or bad complaint, I'm going to check it out. This turned out to be a pretty good one.

The man told me that he knew of a fellow who had stolen a fawn deer from the wild and sold it to his uncle. The uncle lived somewhere near Oakdale in Region 5, and the nephew who had taken the fawn lived in Pitkin in Region 3. The complainant knew very little about the uncle, but gave us an address of the nephew. The next morning Sr. Agent Joey James, Sr. Agent Eric Droddy of Region 3, and I began our investigation with what little information we had. We all decided that the route to follow would be to find out who this uncle was and talk to him first, because he allegedly possessed the evidence. Well, we tried everything in the book to figure out who this guy was and where he lived, but to no avail. By this point, we had nothing to lose as we were at a dead end, so we decided to pay the nephew a visit and see if he would tell us what we wanted to hear. WRONG! He had never seen any fawn or had anything to do with a fawn. He did happen to mention to us that we might have him confused with his uncle. AH HA!! He said his uncle was starting a deer pen and had put the word out that he was looking for some deer for it. We kindly asked him who his uncle was and if he could tell us where he lived. Before we left to pay his uncle a visit, we made it clear that if he was lying about the fawn we would be coming back, but if not, "good day" and he would never see us again.

Come to find out, he lied to us about his uncle's last name and only gave very vague and hard to follow directions to his house. When we got close to where we thought his uncle lived, I decided to knock on a neighbor's door and try to get an exact location. When I asked the neighbor if they had ever heard of this fellow, the neighbor said yes, the description fits, but we had the wrong last name. We now had an exact location on the uncle.

Upon arriving, we walked up to a small outdoor pen that had not one, but two, spotted fawns in it. The guy we were looking for was not home at the time, but arrived home shortly thereafter. Good thing because we were worried that a simple phone call would turn the tables on this whole thing. When he arrived, he told us that he had been inspected by the Department of Agriculture to receive an alternative livestock license a week prior. He said they had authorized him to begin purchasing deer. We explained to him that we had reason to believe that at least one of the fawns came from his nephew in Pitkin. Not knowing about events earlier that day, he explained that yes, he had bought the doe fawn from the guy we had just left for $80. The other was bought from a licensed game breeder. The legal purchase was later confirmed. He was more than willing to write us a statement as to these facts. At this point, Major Brian Spillman assisted us in contacting the Department of Agriculture personnel. They confirmed to Major Spillman that the uncle had a pending license and was authorized to purchase alternative livestock from licensed breeders. Since the uncle was cooperative, we seized the doe fawn and wrote him for being in possession of a fawn. Our concern now was with Mr. Nephew who provided us with false information.

We figured he was in Canada by now knowing that we were coming back if he had been lying, but it was just the opposite. When we arrived back to his house, he was sitting on his front steps waiting for us. His first words were," I knew y'all would be back." He then told us everything from finding the fawn to selling it to his uncle for $80. We wrote the nephew citations for taking and possessing a fawn and for selling deer. Because the fawn did not pass the criteria for the recent alert of the chronic wasting disease, it had to be euthanized. So with that, our lying nephew was charged for the civil restitution and he had to pay the incineration cost from the Calcasieu Animal Control. It just blows my mind how people will lie to us knowing that we're not going to stop until we find the truth. Thanks go to Major Spillman for helping us out.