Today, a detective story — how a Maryland police officer determined that a deer hunter had killed a 20-point buck in violation of state law. Let this be a public service message to any other hunter thinking of doing the same.
This happened last November, during the archery-hunting season. A 25-year-old fellow in camo killed a trophy buck in a bean field in Frederick County. The jubilant young man reported his kill to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, and WFMD-AM posted a story about it on the radio station’s website under the headline: “20 Point Buck Shot and Killed in Frederick County.”
But “shot” suggests that a firearm was used. That would have been illegal during the fall archery, or bow, season. In Maryland, the bow seasons, in total, last much longer than the seasons designated for hunting with a gun. You’re only supposed to hunt with a gun during gun seasons.
Note: Some of the regulations in Maryland, developed over many decades, can vary from county to county, and they get pretty complicated. Example: “Deer harvested with archery equipment during the antlerless-only second split of the early Muzzleloader Season in Region B must count toward the Archery Season bag limit.”
But most hunters speak that language and follow the rules that pertain to the type of hunting they do and where they do it. And the general rules are clear on bow season versus firearms season.
The young, triumphant hunter said he used a bow to slay his trophy.
“Wow!” was the general response when photographs of the lad with the slain buck appeared on social media.
But not everyone believed the story. Someone called the Maryland Natural Resources Police to suggest that a gun had been used to take the buck. A dispatcher with the NRP passed the tip along to Officer Charles Faith on patrol in Frederick County.
There wasn’t much to go on.
“An individual believed that the deer had been poached,” Faith says. “There was no witness affirmation, just something he’d heard that he believed to be true. … We get a lot of different reports and do our part to investigate to determine whether there’s any truth behind them.”
Faith went to social media, where photographs of the young man and his trophy buck had been posted. He then decided to interview the hunter at his home in Walkersville, north of Frederick.
“He was willing to talk with us,” Faith says. “We told him that we were hearing that the deer had been killed illegally, and he was willing to tell us how he ended up killing the deer with a crossbow.”
The hunter denied that his trophy was illegal.
But Faith was suspicious.
He and another NRP officer went to the farm where the buck had been killed. They saw the deer stand the hunter had used to keep watch for the buck on the day of the kill and the spot where the deer had fallen. Faith and his colleague sensed something amiss.
“The tree stand was approximately 200 yards away from where [the hunter] had found the deer,” Faith says. “Being a hunter my whole life and growing up around hunting, I know that, when you shoot a deer with a crossbow, and the deer runs for that long of a distance, it’s going to leave a blood trail. … The blood that was at the farm did not line up with that story that he was telling us.”
There was no blood trail.
“The only indication that we could find of blood,” says Faith, “was in the area where the deer had fallen.”
So his suspicions intensified — and more so when Faith asked the young man what he’d done with the buck’s carcass after removing the antlered head. The officer heard three different stories about the carcass, the last being that it had been burned.
The investigation might have ended there had it not been for a tipster who called to say where the carcass might be found — in a thicket off a road that leads through the farmland where the buck had been killed.
“I was actually off that day and I switched my schedule to come to work,” Faith says. “An investigator for our agency and I went to the area and we were able to locate a carcass that was missing its head. … The carcass that we located had a small-size diameter hole on one side, and on the opposite side a larger diameter hole. That’s normally seen when a deer is shot with a rifle. The bullet goes in and has a mushroom effect as it enters the cavity of the body and exits at a much larger size.”
A DNA test of the buck’s head and the carcass proved it was the same deer.
Not only had this particular delinquent poached the buck, but he had wasted the venison in an apparent attempt to hide evidence.
On Sept. 19, he pleaded guilty to state charges. Frederick County Circuit Court Judge Richard Sandy ordered him to pay a $1,000 fine, work 80 hours of community service and pay into a state wildlife protection fund the neat sum of $5,000. Under state law, the amount of restitution for poaching a buck is determined by the size of the antlers and can range as high as $10,000. The bigger they are, the heavier the fine. Good.
