Denny said:
I always chuckle about the so called big Texas deer.We had a guy here that raised deer he stopped to get a spare wheel and tire at our shop years back with 12 very large racked whitetails inside his trailer all were headed to "TEXAS" for the "HUNTERS" to shoot.I wonder if they cut out the ear tags before or after the kill.
This past Monday night, a poacher or poachers killed and decapitated a tame white-tailed buck that lived in a small enclosure on Bear Creek Pioneers Park in western Harris County.
That only the head was taken shows the motive. The criminal wanted the antlers. And Mr. Buck, the naive deer in the pen, had an impressive set. High-sweeping main beams and abnormally long-brow tines made him a target.
Had the tame deer worn a pair of short, thin-spike antlers, it almost certainly would not have been a victim.
That someone would slaughter the deer simply to possess its antlers is telling.
Antler size always has been one of the characteristics hunters use to place personal value on a buck. But it was (and still is with most hunters) only a part of a tally that considers how the deer was hunted, the place it was hunted, the effort, skills and knowledge the hunter used pursuing it and, finally, getting the opportunity to make the animal his.
Today, sadly, antler dimensions (down to the eight-of-an-inch detail) too often are the only characteristic by which some gauge the value of a deer. How and why the deer was taken — the whole of the hunting experience — doesn't matter to some. From that attitude you get people who will cut into a tiny pen and decapitate a deer that had lost all natural wariness.
Ignorance spreads
The second incident is more complicated but, at its heart, reflects the same perverted valuing of deer.
Federal District Judge Richard Schell this past week sentenced Robert L. Eichenour of Bedias to 18 months in federal prison and a $50,000 fine and Brian Becker of Madelia, Minn., to 33 months in federal prison for felon violations of the Lacey Act, which makes the transporting of wildlife across state lines in violation of state laws a federal offense.
Both men had pleaded guilty to the charges earlier this year.
Eichenour, owner of Circle E Ranch in Grimes County, a fenced game-shooting business that charges clients fees based on the antler dimensions of the deer they take, and Becker, who has previous convictions for wildlife violations, were apprehended in an October 2006 undercover operation conducted by Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's special operations unit and agents of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The pair were caught illegally transporting 14 white-tailed bucks from Minnesota to Texas, where the deer were headed for the Circle E Ranch's operation.
The investigation determined the pair had, over a four-year period, smuggled deer valued at $300,000 into Texas.
While the shooting of deer inside an enclosure is legal in Texas, bringing deer into the state for any reason is illegal. And the reason is a contagious, invariably fatal affliction called Chronic Wasting Disease.
The hideous illness can be latent in animals for years, transmitted to other deer by contact or by contaminated soil.
CWD was first documented in Colorado in the 1970s in a compound that held captive deer and elk. It had spread to wild populations by the early 1980s.
Today, CWD has been documented in wild deer/elk populations in 11 states and two Canadian provinces and in captive deer (or deer farms) in 10 states and two provinces.
Minnesota is one of those states.
For the love of money
Transporting and releasing captive-farmed deer from an infected herd is seen as one of the main methods of the disease's expansion. And getting rid of it is impossible.
"CWD is forever," said Bryan Richards, Chronic Wasting Disease Project Leader at USGS National Wildlife Health Center. "Once it is established in a wild population, there has never been an instance of eradicating it."
Wisconsin is trying, having spent more $6 million a year in the effort — one that includes "depopulating" wild herds found to be carrying CWD.
The disease has not been documented in Texas, and the state wants to keep it that way. State law prohibits bringing any live deer into Texas.
But "night hauling" — smuggling captive-raised deer into the state for use in "drop-and-pop" shooting preserves — happens. There's too much money to be made. Never mind that any one of those deer could be carrying CWD.
"It's a crime of greed," said Shamoil Shipchandler, assistant U.S. Attorney who prosecuted the Eichenour/Becker cases. "Deer and deer hunting are a multibillion dollar industry in Texas, and it's all risked by this kind of conduct."
Listen to that
TPWD has made several cases over the past couple of years involving the smuggling of deer, including one near Goldthwaite this past month, said David Sinclair of TPWD's law enforcement division.
"There seems to be more going on that you might imagine," Sinclair said.
One problem has been Texas' lax laws on those caught smuggling deer. Under Texas law, illegally transporting live deer is a Class C misdemeanor.
But the federal Lacey Act can turn that misdemeanor and $500 fine into a federal felony case and potential prison time.
The sentencing of Eichenour and Becker to prison for deer smuggling is the first time Sinclair can recall deer smugglers being sent to jail.
"This ought to get somebody's attention," he said.
