Dot your I's, cross your T's

by Larry Dablemont

Lightnin' Ridge —

Deer season is just ahead of us, and I have noticed deer are moving well, a situation which allows for good hunting. But the pressure of such huge numbers of hunters will change deer habits quickly. After the first weekend, those places where hunter numbers are heavy will see whitetails change their habits quickly, and they will move at night. Hunting pressure makes nocturnal creatures out of deer, though they actually are inclined that way by nature. It is the breeding season that makes bucks so susceptible, as they are far less wary and inclined to do stupid things.

Most of us have seen bucks trailing a doe, and coming right on as the doe is killed by a hunter, oblivious to the roar of a rifle.

There are things to remember if you are a deer hunter. Safety, of course. Every outdoor writer in the country will expound on that each year, even if he knows nothing else to write. But let me caution you not to make any technical mistakes, like separating the two parts of your tag, failing to sign it, etc. Most violations on opening weekend are technical. In this day and time, I have noticed that few agents actually get out in the woods and look for real violators. There will be a small percentage of citations written for clear violations, most will be something where a hunter had no intention of violating the law, but committed some technical violation. It is the way of things nowadays, and I see no end to it.

Several years ago I took my daughter deer hunting on public land at Truman Lake, and we spent the night on my covered pontoon boat, hunting adjacent timber the next morning. My daughter killed a small buck that morning, and as the day warmed she left her jacket in the pontoon boat camper. Using a smaller boat, we motored to the launching ramp only a short distance from where we were hunting, so we could use her cell phone to call in the deer she had taken.

The ramp was at an old community known as Fairfield, Mo., on the Pomme de Terre arm of Truman. I saw a Missouri Department of Conservation pickup there above the ramp with the motor running, an agent inside keeping warm. He got out and came down to look at my daughter's deer, properly tagged, and asked for the rest of her permit. She dug into her pocket and then remembered it was in the jacket she left in the pontoon boat. The agent couldn't have been happier. He dug out his citation book to begin writing her a ticket, saying she had to have both parts of the tag.

I pointed to our boat and told him I would be glad to go and get her jacket, so he could see both halves, but he wouldn't hear of it. He intended to write her a citation on the technicality. I pulled out my camera to take a photo, and he noticed then, on the tag, that her name was the same as mine. I told him that I intended to write about what he was doing, and he put the book back in his pocket. Christy and I motored over to the pontoon boat, retrieved her jacket and brought the other half of her tag back, and he didn't even look at it. That agent sat in that pickup the entire day, and never left it except to look at deer being brought in, hoping to find technicalities of some sort.

Anyone who had intentionally violated the law saw his pickup and just veered away in their boats, to come back when they were legal. A few weeks later at that same ramp, during the doe season when bucks were not legal, a hunter brought in a doe, put it in his pickup and put his rifle in a case behind his seat. He then brought forth a bow, and headed back out on the lake.An hour or so later he brought in a big buck, tagged with his archery tag. The entire rib cage area had been removed. No one could prove that he had shot the buck with a rifle, but he had, and he didn't mind that I knew it.


He was legal in every way, and there were no technicalities he had violated. It is the way of things today... real violators can't be caught at roadblocks or boat ramps, or along some county road, you have to be out in the woods to find them. And if you work from your pickup, you have to write citations on technicalities, something where the I's weren't dotted and the T's weren't crossed.

The bad thing is, if Christy and I would have gone to court to prove her innocence that day, it would have likely cost her several hundred dollars to do so. The fine would have been far less. She was a young teacher at the time, and didn't have the money to pay a couple of hundred dollars just because she left the other portion of her tag in a camper only a few hundred yards away. We have good agents in Missouri too, and I know there are many who would have just allowed her to go retrieve her tag. But more and more, those agents are becoming a minority.

Most hunters have to just pay the fine because they can't afford to miss a day of work and pay the cost of a lawyer. Some MDC agents know that, and use it. They will often threaten someone with the statement that if they take their case to court, additional charges will be brought against them.

If an agent turns in 20 citations they have written, no one in Jefferson City's main office knows the particulars; they just accept that the agent is doing his job. No one ever questions what he does, and there is no procedure for having an agent's actions brought to the attention of higher authority. We need a situation in our state where, if people are targeted over technical violations, or wrongly accused and found innocent, the MDC must pay their court costs. That would stop much of what is happening today.

That day at Fairfield launching ramp, an agent's job consisted of sitting in his warm pickup, waiting for a technicality of some sort. He was there all day and never left the pickup except to walk to the ramp! Christy only avoided a citation because he figured out that some light was about to be shined on what he was doing through my newspaper columns. And by and large, in the news media of the state, there is a hesitation to criticize the MDC, their employees or what they do. This season, be sure there are no technicalities which can bring you a citation, because if you are innocent, you have little recourse which most of us can afford. The real violators, of course, know just how to do what they do at little or no risk.

Remember, too, that if you hunt in a zone where you cannot legally kill a buck without four points on one antler, that if you are honestly fooled and mistakenly shoot a deer with only three points, you should not leave the buck there to be wasted. In an interview with the MDC enforcement chief last year, he told me that if honest mistakes are made, a hunter should notify an agent, or call it in, and in doing so he will not be cited.

Too many times, a large set of antlers will only have three points on one side, and it appears they have four. If you kill a buck where this was the situation, call an MDC agent and ask if you can bring it in, utilize the meat yourself or have it given to someone. If any agent causes you trouble over this, the enforcement chief for the MDC should be notified, and I will report it in this column.

My website is www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com. The e-mail address is lightninridge@windstream.net and the mailing address is Box 22, Bolivar, MO. 65613.



lakenewsonline.com