Len Lisenbee's Outdoor World

    Len Lisenbee is the Outdoor Columnist for the Canadaigua Daily Messenger, Shooting Editor of the former New York Sportsman, retired Special Agent with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and book author of "TALES FROM THE MARSH AND OTHER DRIVEL" a unique look with fact and a little fiction of his years as a federal game warden.
 
 
 

THE HUMOROUS SIDE OF SOME REALLY DUMB OUTDOOR CROOKS

During my 27 years in Federal Wildlife Law Enforcement I came into close contact with quite a number of really dumb outdoor crooks. These guys were real losers in every sense of that word. Also, for the past twenty years or so I have written a weekly outdoor column in the Canandaigua (NY) Daily Messenger. One of my most requested topics has been my reporting on some of these dummies. The following are some of those columns, reprinted here for your enjoyment. Let me know with an e-mail if you enjoyed any of them. Oh, and any names used have been changed to prevent further embarrassment of the guilty.

In the "If you are going to bait deer you had better not fool around" category, here is a funny tale from southern New York. It seems that is exactly what one Nimrod did. He brushed up a nice blind in a very remote area. Then, he scattered a large quantity of corn and apples all around it. Unfortunately for him, he did not first obtain permission from the landowner before conducting his illicit activities. The landowner, who liked to take daily walks around his property, found the blind and the bait. He called the local conservation officer.

The officer responded on opening day of the deer season, but no one was in or around the blind. He came back a few days later to see if anyone was there, and before he had reached the blind he heard voices and lots of giggling coming from it. Since there was no one in sight he peaked over the edge of the blind's wall. That's when he observed a hunter and his girlfriend, both under a blanket, engaged in an activity more closely associated with indoor sports. That hunter not only paid fines for possession of a loaded firearm and a compound bow in a baited area, he didn't even get to finish what he and she were doing when the officer first arrived. (Sorry, but I can't get more descriptive than that in this family-orientated format.)

* * *

Another hunter who had put out copious amounts of corn, oats, stale sweet rolls and various other edible items around his tree stand probably should have stayed home on opening day of the deer season. His tree stand was on state park property where no hunting is allowed. It was right next to one of the most well-used trails in the park. In fact some of the sweet rolls and corn kernels landed on that well-used trail. And, he put his tree stand up two weeks before opening day.

What are the odds of somebody not seeing that setup? Well, the park police officers stationed in that park had so many people walking into their office to report the illegal blind that they actually put up a sign on the front door advising everyone who could read that they knew about the tree stand and the baited area. And a half hour after the sound of gunfire began to echo off surrounding hills on opening day, four park police officers and a game warden converged on the illegal blind. The guy sitting up high in that tree saw them coming from all around, and knew he was surrounded. He paid his fines, too.

* * *

There's nothing as strong as the bond of loyalty between a father and his son, right? Well, not quite. It seems a young man was questioned at 9:30 a.m. about a deer he was in possession of that was adorned with an improperly filled-out tag. This man stated his father had actually shot the deer very early that morning, and had left a note directing the son to where it still lay in the woods and requesting that he fill out the tags and transport it for processing. The reason for this request was that the father had to get to work. The son was more than happy to do this little job for dear old dad.

However, the young man did not have a consignment note from his father permitting him to possess and transport the deer, and the tag was so insufficiently filled out that two tickets were issued, one for each of these violations. But the officer was not satisfied, so he continued to ask the lad more questions. When did he receive the note? It was on his door at 7:15 a.m. that morning. Legal hunting began at 7:09 a.m. on that date, so there was precious little time for daddy to write a note and deliver it, especially after first gutting out the animal.

The warden set up an interview with the father, making sure the son would be there also. Then he submitted the deer carcass to a "temperature" test and quickly determined that it was killed sometime between 5:30 a.m. and 7:15 a.m. When the interview rolled around the warden told the senior man that, according to the internal temperature, the deer had actually been shot at around 5:30 a.m. Daddy, seeing his story go up in smoke, blurted out that he had shot the deer at 5:45 a.m. When the officer advised him about the legal shooting time, he "spilled the beans", to quote that Warden.

He advised the game cop the deer was actually shot by his son in the headlights of daddy's truck, and he had used daddy's doe tag on it because he didn't have one of his own. The son then admitted to committing the dirty deed. Daddy got two tickets, and junior got five. And they are both going to get their hunting licenses revoked. Not bad for a morning's work, eh. Two dummies for the price of one.

* * *

Game wardens often set up "road blocks" to check all the hunters coming out of a particular area. And that was what a group of officers were doing when a pick-up truck waiting in line to be checked suddenly drove to the right, into a ditch, and then along the berm of the ditch until it had passed the warden's location. Then it was back on the road and into an attempted get-a-way at rather high speeds. But the guys in that truck should have known they could not out run a Motorola radio. They were caught a mile or so down the road by a state trooper, and their three untagged deer cost them a ton of money.

* * *

Another dynamic duo ran from the wardens after they were observed spotlighting a hay field for deer. They made their getaway, and were in the clear. That's when they drove to the owner of the vehicle's home and parked their van behind the house in an attempt to hide it. The house was less than half a mile from where they had almost been caught, and on the same road! The wardens, figuring it was a local, began looking at vehicles parked beside, or behind, houses along that road. When they spotted a bumper of a vehicle sticking out from behind a house, they just naturally had to get a better look. There were two illegal deer still inside that van.

* * *

If you are going to poach a seven-point buck on December 23, would you hang it in a tree beside your house in full view of all vehicles traveling a busy county road? Well, that's exactly what one dummy did. But he tagged the deer with a friend's unused tag from the hunting season that closed two weeks earlier. He dated the tag December 7. Hey, that makes it legal, doesn't it? Oh, did I mention there was an untagged four-point buck hanging in the same tree?

A passing warden observed the deer and stopped to chat with the home owner. This yahoo admitted to shooting the smaller untagged buck, but the idiot denied any knowledge of the larger buck. So the officer issued him two tickets for the smaller illegal buck, and began to track down the guy whose name was on the larger buck's tag. He found him without any difficulty, and that guy denied any knowledge of either deer. He did state that the yahoo and a friend of his had come to his home and requested any unused tags he might have. Since the season was over and they couldn't be used, he gave them to the guy. And that guy proceeded to use them.

The warden re-interviewed the yahoo, and he fessed up to killing the big buck three days earlier in the afternoon. He also confessed to shooting it from his vehicle while sitting on a county road. And, he ratted on the two guys who were with him. The warden, still not completely satisfied he had the entire story, re-interviewed one of the two guys in the vehicle when the buck was shot. That guy finally told the warden the buck had been taken at 10:00 p.m. with the aid of the vehicle's headlights.

Yahoo number one got a total of seven tickets. The other two got four apiece. A total of almost $5,000 was collected by the local court from that trio, and all of them got a little jail time to boot. The entire investigation was wrapped up like a Christmas package in less than four hours. It was truly a Merry Christmas for that grinch of a game warden.

* * *

A conservation officer in a mid-western state was patrolling one evening when he felt the call of nature. So, since he was not too far from a state fish hatchery he decided to drop by and find relief in the warmth of one of their restrooms. He parked his plainly marked patrol vehicle in front, leaving the headlights on and the motor running. After all, he would only be inside for a couple of minutes.

He was on his way out when he heard another vehicle approaching on the gravel road at what sounded like a rather high speed. As he stood in the open doorway of the hatchery building silhouetted by the room lights on behind him, he observed a car enter the parking area and drive directly around to the rear where the fish holding tanks were located. So naturally he had to walk around to see just what was going on.

When he got there he found four men already hard at work. Three had fishing poles with crudely tied flies, and they were catching a fish on every "cast." The fourth had a small landing net, and he was busy scooping fish and putting them into a burlap gunny sack. And they were all laughing and having a pretty good time, too.

To say he made the pinch of the day would be an understatement. Using the light from their vehicle he laid all four individuals out prone on the ground. He kept them there, too, at least until one of his co-workers arrived to assist in hauling all of those yahoos off to the local justice of the peace. And since the judge was an avid anglers, those good ol' boys had a lot of problems to sort out.

* * *

Another pair of would-be anglers set out one evening on a smelting trip. One of them took his girlfriend along. Anyway, half-way to the smelting stream and sometime past the fourth or fifth beer (each), they decided to take a detour to a fish hatchery one of them knew about.

They got to the hatchery and, using their smelt nets, dipped around fifty Atlantic salmon. Then, after a few more beers, they headed for home. One of the two men was very tired after all that activity, and he fell asleep in the back seat with the fish. His girlfriend, sitting in the front seat with his best friend, got a little bit frisky. She and the driver began fooling around as he drove on. That activity and the beer were probably responsible for causing him to run an oncoming car off the road. That car happened to be a well-marked county sheriffs deputy.

The officer wasted little time in stopping the vehicle. He got the driver and lady out, and he found the fish in the sacks. He also found the other man in the back seat, and finally managed to wake him up and get him out of the car. And the only trouble that officer and a game warden who responded to assist witnessed was one man trying to beat up the other for fooling around with his girlfriend.

* * *

Lt. Dale Balmer, assigned to the DEC's Region 8 office in Avon, was awakened one night around 3:00 a.m. He couldn't figure out what had caused him to wake up. Then, a few minutes later, a car drove by his house and a spotlight held by the passenger illuminated a deer standing in the side yard. The officer then understood that it was probably the spotlight, flashing through a window, that had caused him to get up.

Anyway, the car drove on, but soon came back. This time a single shot was fired, and the deer in the spotlight dropped in its tracks. The car rapidly drove on, and Dale began to get dressed. But he was in no hurry.

He was fully dressed and waiting for them when they returned a short while later. They went to get the deer, and he got them. Boy, were they ever embarrassed when they found out who lived in that house.

* * *

Three hapless men went out to poach a deer one night. They were in the mood for a venison roast, and couldn't care less that the season didn't open for another month. Anyway, they spotted a big buck with a six-point rack, and one of them shot it in the head to avoid damaging any of the meat. Then all three men grabbed the deer, carried it to the vehicle, and put it securely in the trunk.

A conservation officer and state trooper had been having coffee at a remote meeting place when they heard the single shot. Both knew what it probably meant, so they headed in the direction the shot had come from. The trooper spotted a car traveling at a high rate of speed and made the traffic stop. The warden soon responded to his location, and arrived just as the third man was getting out of the car.

The two officers were talking to the three men when the funny noises in the trunk began. There was some 'thunking' and a few muffled bangs. The trooper told the driver to open the trunk, and the driver resisted that order by stating that the officer had no right to search the car without probable cause. After all, he knew his rights.

There was some more 'thunking' from the trunk, and the conservation officer ordered the man to open it. He again refused. So that officer, being a resourceful man, went back to his vehicle and returned shortly, an old fashioned tire iron in hand. He informed the driver that, if he didn't open the trunk with a key, the officer would open it using a more direct method.

The driver, apparently wishing to avoid damage to his car, fished out a set of keys and proceeded to open the trunk. He had lifted the lid about two inches when it suddenly sprung violently upwards. And the next thing he knew he had a very mad six-point buck by the antlers and was actively engaged in a push and shove contest with the animal. And, the deer was definitely winning.

The deer drove him backwards, off the roadway, and into a shallow ditch. It then proceeded to rake, prod and puncture his body for several very long seconds. Then it broke off its attack and leaped into the nearby woods, being instantly lost to sight. Soon all that remained were four amazed people left standing on the roadway and one lying in a ditch.

The guy who got antlered wasn't hurt all that bad. He and his two cronies spend the night in jail. A little later they spend twenty-nine more nights in jail after paying some pretty serious fines. And the two officers are still shaking their heads over that case.

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Did you know? That in 1900 there were less than 500,000 whitetail deer living in the U.S. Market hunting had reduced their numbers everywhere they were found. However, today there is an estimated whitetail deer population of 26,000,000. At least one sub-species can be found in every one of the lower 48 states.

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MORE REALLY DUMB OUTDOOR CROOKS

This new group of wan-a-bee bad guys is truly a pitiful lot, with each one apparently intent on trying to be just a little bit dumber than the next. But I prefer to look at it in another light. Without all this terminal stupidity to liven up the jobs, the lives of all of our game protectors would be pretty dull indeed.

Like the guy who, apparently on the spur of the moment, decided to go deer hunting. He drove his pickup truck down a farm lane past several "Posted" signs and parked - right in the middle of the lane. Well, a short time later the farmer who lived at the end of that lane-way wanted to get out, but found his driveway blocked. He got out of his vehicle just in time to meet the trespassing hunter returning from his hunt. But rather than stop and talk with the farmer this yahoo brushes by him, walks to his truck, gets in, and drives off without so much as a by-your-leave. Not too smart so far.

Our bad guy apparently didn't understand that, under that sort of circumstance, a landowner might just jot down the vehicle's license plate number. And it is also a good idea that, if you are going to violate the law, you don't have your telephone number written on the side of your truck. But this guy did, and the farmer wrote that down, too.

The conservation officers found him in short order. They also found an illegal doe he had killed sometime during his illegal hunt. And a routine background check of police records also indicated this turkey was a convicted felon, and the farmer had seen him in possession of a rifle. That meant his goose was really cooked.

* * *

Three snowmobilers were caught by an ECO inside a restricted area of Fort Drum in upstate New York. They had been making donuts and driving recklessly over an isolated flat field. Later, after the officer had issued them some rather expensive tickets, he asked why they had chosen that particular restricted area. Their answer - it was very private with no one else around. Maybe that was because it was an artillery impact zone. There were literally tons of unexploded artillery shells lying all over the place just a few inches under the snow these lucky dummies were driving their sleds on.

* * *

A conservation officer in South Carolina came across three guys in a "conversion" van while they were illegally night hunting deer. As he watched the vehicle two of the occupants jumped out and opened fire on a small herd of deer, killing three of them and wounding several others. The officer turned on his emergency lights, made the traffic stop in short order, and apprehended all three poachers without incident.

The officer noticed that all three of these yahoos appeared to be rather "mellow", and suspected they might have either been smoking pot or drinking liquor just prior to his apprehending them. He asked them where their "juice" was, and one told him to grab one of the cooler jugs in the back seat. He did, and discovered it was half full of moonshine whiskey.

Pretending to enjoy his sip of that joy juice he asked where he could purchase "some of that good stuff" for an upcoming party. One of the three said he would give the officer two gallons if he would forget about the poaching incident. The officer readily agreed to that offer, and the poachers told him to follow them to their farm.

When they arrived at a nearby farm the three poachers all headed for a barn with the officer just a few steps behind. One of the outlaws opened a carefully concealed trap door in the barn's floor and went down some steps. A few seconds later he reemerged carrying two one-gallon jugs of clear liquid. The officer "tested" both jugs, stated his approval, got back into his vehicle, and quickly left the farm and the three poachers (who were, by now, very drunk indeed).

You can almost guess what happened next. Yep, the officer contacted the local office of the state alcohol control investigators and told them his story. They in turn got a search warrant with his help. And less than three hours after he had departed from the farm, he and a whole bunch of state alcohol agents returned there.

They found the still and a large quantity of "product" down in the hidden room under the barn. They also found all three poachers passed out in the nearby farmhouse, apparently from imbibing too much Old Stump Blower. Those three yahoos got tickets for poaching. They got arrested for moonshining. They were charged with attempted bribery of a law enforcement officer. They also got rather severe headaches from their illegal brew. And the game protector turned over his jug of moonshine to the alcohol agents as evidence.

* * *

Do you like Chinese food? Then perhaps you might want to avoid eating a meal in that part of New York City known as Chinatown. Conservation officers working there had reason to visit one of the meat markets on a Monday. They found 10 live western diamondback rattlesnakes, 36 live diamondback terrapins, and over 90 live largemouth bass. All were very illegal. I only wonder what dish the rattlesnakes would be used in?

When an officer returned the following Thursday with suitable containers that would allow him to actually remove those illegal critters, he got another surprise. He found 10 more diamondback terrapins, four large soft-shell turtles, and around 700 pounds of live bullfrogs. Once again all of these critters were illegal. Apparently the shop owner didn't learn any lessons from the first official visit.

* * *

Here is some advice for anglers looking for an easier way to catch fish. Don't use illegal gill nets if it is daylight and you might be seen by a game warden from a nearby highway. But that is exactly what two idiots did on the Susquehanna River near Binghamton. They were walking through relatively shallow water with the net stretched between them.

A conservation officer driving by observed them for nearly an hour, all the while sitting in his well-marked state vehicle in their plain view. Heck, he was on a well-traveled public roadway less than 50 yards from where they were "fishing." When they waded back to shore where their truck was parked, he was already there. He arrested them and seized the one fish they had managed to catch during their (confessed) four hours of net fishing. Boy, talk about a pair of real losers.

* * *

Two American guys that went fishing in Canada over our Labor Day weekend probably should have stayed home. They drove 300 miles north to a rural lake, set up their camper on private property, and proceeded to catch as many fish as they possibly could. And their luck was very good - or bad - depending on your point of view.

In just two days they had over two hundred yellow pike (walleyes) filleted out and in the coolers. And they had shot several grouse, too. And some ducks. And a Canada goose. That's when the local game warden happened along. His house was just down the road a few miles from their camp, and that particular road was the only way for him to get out to civilization.

As he exited his vehicle to inquire as to what they were doing on private property, he was greeted with a happy, "what the hell do you want" from one of these two mental midgets. He was only going to ask them to move their camper to a legal area up to that point, but now his professional curiosity was twitching. So he asked to see their fishing licenses. And that's when their world came crashing down.

They didn't have any. No hunting licenses, either. He found all of the illegal fish and game in the coolers. He also found their illegal guns. And their marijuana and pipes. He arrested them both right there on the spot. One of those dummies decided to protest his actions by taking a swing at the officer. Unfortunately for that guy the warden was well trained in the martial arts. Ouch!

* * *

But as bad as those losers were, there are better examples to review. Like the two drunks who were fishing the banks of a well known pool on the Salmon River in New York State. They were yelling obscenities at all nearby persons, and tossing their empty beer cans wherever they happened to drain them. The law was notified.

Well, two NY Department of Environmental Conservation officers responded and tried to calm them down, but to no avail. So both individuals were placed under arrest. But while the officers were arresting one individual the other took off into the woods. His flight to freedom was short lived, and he soon found himself waste deep in one of the thickest, smelliest swamps to be found anywhere in the state. He reversed his course right into the waiting arms of the two officers.

Later, in court, they were found guilty on all charges. One of the individuals, who happened to have an outstanding warrant for violations committed during the previous season on the Salmon River, was also found guilty on those charges. And, when one of the subjects suggested that the judge looked like Elvis Presley, both of them were hauled off to the Oswego County Jail with little hope of release anytime soon.

* * *

A dodo from a southern state was caught poaching a deer in a state park. Unfortunately for him, that state park was also the location of the regional office of the state fish and game commission's law enforcement contingent. The officers were having a meeting when he fired his rifle. And a few minutes after shooting his rifle he had more than 20 game wardens offering to assist him with dragging his illegal doe out to his vehicle.

Well, to say he was quickly arrested might just be an understatement of some note. And if he had kept his mouth shut everything else that happened to him might have been avoided. But he, standing there in handcuffs, had the nerve to tell the supervisor of two dozen game wardens that he was now going to kill every blank-ity-blank deer in the county. You might agree that was not necessarily a smart thing to say under the circumstances?

The next day he left his house with two rifles, got into his truck, and headed out to (apparently) poach a lot of deer. He found a small herd of five does and two bucks just down the road, stopped his vehicle, and proceeded to open fire. And that's when game wardens came out of every nook and cranny for two hundred yards in every direction.

The small herd of "deer" were decoys used to apprehend would-be deer poachers. But that was the first time the supervisor had authorized all of the decoys in his region to be joined together in one covert operation. Boy, was it effective on that guy. And during the next couple of weeks the officers used multiple decoys to catch him twice more. He is now in jail, and he will probably be released around two weeks after the dummy who said the judge looked like Elvis Presley gets out.

* * *

This next tale came to me inside a Christmas card from one of my old Fed partners. It seems a game warden who lives near my old pard in a western state had put out his collection of "decoys" consisting of a mounted elk, a mule deer, and a tom turkey, as lawn ornaments around his well-lighted nativity scene. It made for a picturesque scene, according to almost everyone who passed by.

But one guy driving by the warden's house to see if he was home and asleep (at 2:00 a.m.) had a different idea. Apparently he spotted the elk and deer, thought they were live animals that had wandered into the yard, and proceeded to open fire. The mounted deer fell over, and he jumped out of his car and went rushing over the lawn with knife in hand. He was just about to grab it when the warden, who had been awakened from a peaceful sleep by the gunfire, racked his shotgun's action and ordered him to drop the knife.

Boy, did that guy feel foolish! Apparently he had lost all sense of reason when he spotted the "animals". He totally forgot that they were standing in the front yard of his sworn enemy. His mistake will probably cost him many months in the county jail.

* * *

What I consider to be the best tale of a dumb outdoor outlaw was an incident that occurred down south. It seems an overweight squirrel hunter there decided not to end his hunt once he had reached his six-squirrel limit. So he shot three more squirrels before heading back to his pick-up truck. But when he reached the edge of the woods at a farm field and could see his vehicle, he also noticed that a game warden had pulled up behind.

Well, this moron decided to stuff the three extra squirrels inside his drawers before walking on down to his truck. And everything appeared to be legal as the officer checked his license and game. In fact, the hunter was heading towards the truck to leave when the trouble began. And boy, did it ever accelerate fast once it got started.

One of the squirrels inside that guy's briefs wasn't dead. Apparently the jostling in that cramped carrying place during the walk revived it. And it finally decided it wanted out of that dark and dank place, which started all the trouble.

The officer tried to describe exactly what he observed on that fateful morning, but it was definitely difficult. The big hunter suddenly jumped about three feet straight up, and screamed. Then he fell down on the pavement, and screamed. Then he rolled around all over the place, and screamed some more. The warden said he even did an impressive knee walk right across the roadway, screaming and hollering with every "step." And in-between those steps, too.

Well, the officer didn't really know what was going on, mainly because the overweight hunter was incapable of talking about his current troubles. It wasn't until a squirrel came scampering out one of a pants leg that the warden finally understood what was happening. And later, at a local hospital, it was apparent that the squirrel had been actively chewing and scratching on anything and everything inside those briefs as it attempted to make good its escape. According to the examining doctor, there wasn't one square inch of skin covered by underwear that wasn't chewed up pretty badly.

And yes, the hunter got a ticket for taking two additional squirrels. They had been retrieved in rather sad condition by the doctor during the examination. The third item of evidence was last seen heading for a distant tree line at full speed. I wonder if it was running on three legs and holding its nose with the fourth?

And besides, I thought everyone knew that Elvis is alive and well, and delivering newspapers in Bangor, Maine.

Len

These are true stories, one and all. I have many more, so if you enjoyed them, just let me know with an e-mail.

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Did you know? That in 1900 there were only 41,000 elk living in all of the U.S.? Conservation efforts and solid wildlife management have combined to increase that number to the 1.3 million that are living here today.

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