Poaching again?

[MNDeerhunter]

I will try and set this up as best as I can, because I think it's going to be long winded.

I was invited to hunt the 3rd weekend of rifle season with a friend and his party in the north end of the Rum River State Forest. My plan was to hunt just Saturday morning, and that was it. My buddy left to hunt up there on Thursday night, so I was to meet my buddies brother and their uncle for breakfast @ 3:30 Saturday morning then head up there. His uncle and I got to swapping hunting stories over breakfast. I told him that I used to hunt the south end of the State Forest 10+ years ago, but left after buying land up north, but some of the guys that I hunted with were still hunting there to this day.

He asked if I had hunted that area back when "all the poaching was taking place?". I said that I wasn't sure what he was talking about, and he went onto to explain that around that time hunters were discovering deer that had been shot, not tagged, the rear quarters had been cut off, and the rest was left to rot.

Well to make a short story long, when I left to go home that Saturday afternoon, I went to stop by where my old buddies still hunted on the south end of the forest. That's where I discovered in one of the parking areas a doe that had been shot, and the rear quarters had been removed. I managed to take some pictures of the deer, but I don't know how much the DNR can do about it now? In fact the deer had to have been shot the weekend before since it was partially covered in snow, and I'm not sure if anyone even reported it?

Apparently either they are back poaching again up there, or someone is doing a copy cat crime.

Has anyone else run into these issues on public hunting areas this year?

[OrionsX0]

I don’t have a long story but this last weekend our hunting party found a very nice buck lying dead only 20 yds of the road that we walk in on. The only thing that I can think of is the person that shot it thought that they had shot a real monster and were disappointed with what they had shot

[bigbucks]

Where was it hit? Could it have run off & they thought they missed or simply lost the blood trail?

I found a deer in my woods a few years back, that had been shot during slug season by some neighbors. They'd shot at a deer in a standing cornfield & thought they hit her, but couldn't find blood & couldn't find the deer. This deer was hit kind of behind the jaw bone. It probably didn't bleed much externally & she could have gone quite aways, but it was obviously fatal. She was curled up in a bed like she'd layed down & died.

[CrappieJohn]

I once found what was left of a buck that had been caped out and the head missing but never even gutted. Wouldn't ya like to come across that (Contact US Regarding This Word) while he's doing surgery?

On the other note. One year I shot a beut of a buck with the bow from a high stand. The arrow hit clean in the kill zone running from one sode to the other. After a couple hours I got down to look for the guy and could find no arrow and absolutely no one drop of blood. I made a mental note of where he went after taking the hit and started to put together a plan. Being towards the top of a draw that ran thru a corn field I figured the deer would go downhill. I started walking the field from hi to low along the rows and was careful to look down each row when one was crossed.After an hour I found my prize, curled up like a fawn and dead. Out of the one shoulder was my arrow. It lodged in the ribs on the opposite side and never punched thru. Backtracking showed absolutley no blood loss whatever. I was darned lucky to find this one. Had I lost this deer, I don't think I would have felt any sicker than when I found the other that had been caped.

[OrionsX0]

It looked like it was a spine shot but there were a track leading up to it that was the sad part. The buck was a non typical and a pretty neat looking rack a main frame 10 on the left side and a long brow tine on the right with a short main beam with some tines coming off it. I thought it would have been a neat mount but that is just me, it was sad to see a nice buck shot for no reason.

[Mark Christianson]

Did you call TIP?

Maybe there is a rash of this stuff in the area, and that this would be good for them to know about??

Did you get the rack?