REGIONAL— How many ways can two people screw up?
That’s the question after two local conservation officers recently encountered a hunter and their partner who seemed to have broken about every law or regulation they could think of, and paid for it.
CO Shane Zavodnik, of Cook, along with two other conservation officers, was responding to a complaint that a party had taken a deer on private property, without permission.
After further investigation, the officers determined that the hunter retrieving the deer had shot the animal, a doe, without an antlerless permit. The hunter then failed to validate and attach the harvest tag and went on to register the deer as a buck, knowing that a doe wasn’t legal game without an antlerless tag.
While interviewing the hunter who had shot the doe, the hunter’s partner drove up in the pickup suspected of transporting the illegally shot deer. The officers discovered that the driver was operating the vehicle with a canceled driver’s license and had a noticeable smell of alcohol on his breath. He was later found to be operating under the influence.
The enforcement action included a DWI arrest, along with seizure of the rifle, the deer, and the pickup used in the incident.