Interagency Eye in the Sky
One afternoon last rifle deer season I received a phone call from Mack Alford Correctional Center at Stringtown asking if the "refuge;" as a lot of the locals call Atoka Wildlife Management Area, was open for rifle season? I replied in the negative, as I wondered why the prison would be asking for this information. The caller stated that one of the prison guards working a tower on the perimeter of the prison property was watching four individuals on the "refuge" property, dressed in blaze orange clothing. Keep in mind the prison is across U.S. 69 highway from the WMA. This road is a divided four-lane highway with a large amount of trees bordering the WMA property. I wondered how the guard could see anything on the WMA property. He said the suspected hunters were heading south from Bluestem Lake. I told the caller I would check on his report but never actually expected to find a whole lot when I arrived.
When I arrived at the reported location I found an older model, large, brown car parked, with no one around. After waiting for approximately one hour, four boys showed up, all wearing the described blaze orange clothing. Three of the boys were carrying high-powered rifles. The fourth was just along for the trip. While waiting for the hunters to show up, I had noticed a streak of blood on the trunk lid of the car. I questioned the boys and they immediately told me they were deer hunting on the closed "refuge" because there were too many hunters on the Atoka Lake property where they were camped. I asked them about the blood on the trunk lid and requested they open the trunk for me to look inside. The driver opened the trunk and a large amount of deer hair and blood was inside the trunk. I asked where they killed the deer and they said near their camp on Atoka Lake property. I looked at licenses and tags and it appeared that no one had tagged the deer (by validating the back of their deer license). I kept quiet about the possible violations until they directed me to their camp site. I then asked where the deer was after not finding it in one of their many ice chests. One of the boys admitted that he shot the deer and directed me to the carcass which had been dragged off into the woods behind the camp.
Upon examining the carcass, I determined that very little meat had been taken off the carcass and, the rest had been left to ruin in the warm afternoon weather. When I asked why they didn't take more of the meat, the shooter stated that he didn't know how to butcher a deer. When I asked why he hadn't tagged or checked the deer in, he admitted that he didn't want to end his hunt on such a small buck the first day of season. And besides, the only other deer the boy had seen were does and his Dad didn't want him killing does. I confiscated the carcass and wrote the boys citations for hunting in a closed area on Atoka WMA, and possession of an illegal deer. Before I left their camp, I asked the boy who had no gun where his gun was? He said his Dad didn't trust the boys that he was with, so he wouldn't let him take a gun, although he got to go along without a gun. I left thinking about the good help I had received from the prison guard in the tower, my interagency eye in the sky.