Spring 2024
By Susan Lindsley
Today’s poachers are not heroes fighting a corrupt king. They are simply wildlife thieves, mostly after antlers and bragging rights. I remember the early days of deer hunting in Georgia, when poachers rode standing in the bed of a pickup or sat on the hood of a car, firearm at the ready, and picked off any deer that happened to show up in the headlights: buck, doe or fawn.
One of the largest operations in Georgia was not for antlers, but for money. The culprits had a refrigerated truck parked in the woods, with a generator to keep it cool; their skinner stood by. Shooters brought in whatever deer they could slaughter, and the skinner needed only minutes to process the animal: Skin it, dump the offal in a carry-off container, and hang the carcass in the cooler. When the cooler was about to give out of space, the meat was transferred to a truck owned by a well-known meat packing company and the driver delivered the venison to various restaurants.
My first and weirdest encounter with a poacher was in the early 1960s. Mother and I stopped beside a car parked on what is now Georgia Highway 212. A man was crawling through our fence. We called him over and asked who he was and why was he going onto the land.
His reply, “I’m going deer hunting. Nobody owns this land.”
Turned out, he was a physician, but had no concept of property ownership or property rights or hunting laws. We encouraged him to depart.
Another encounter was with a group of men parked beside our land on a backcountry road. They stated they were going to deer hunt there as they had the year before. They refused to leave. So I told mom to go find Jack, the local ranger, and I remained there with the German shepherd.
The dog growled constantly. Of course, I didn’t discourage her growling.
One of the men lit a cigarette and commented it would be sad if he accidently dropped his cigarette in the woods.
I replied, “Yes, arson charges against you would be sad. We got your tag number.”
About that moment, up drove Jack. Rangers seem to appear out of nowhere when you need one. When he finished his lecture, the poachers departed the county.
A Texan who is labeled the most proficient poacher in that state’s history is, unfortunately, profiting from recounting his misbehaviors in a book, as if he is a hero. I see nothing heroic in a poacher.
A poacher is simply a thief. He steals from the nearby landowner who might depend on venison to supplement his own food supply or to provide income from hunt clubs to help defray the rising property taxes. He also steals from the deer herds, for he deprives the herd of the genes that a superior buck would supply downline to the herd.
The 10-pointer poached from the author’s yard. Photo by Susan Lindsley.
A big 10-point buck was killed by a poacher in my yard on the second day of bow season in 2023. The rut had not begun. His genes died with him. He carried the widest and most perfectly balanced rack I have ever seen on my property.
A member of the Georgia Outdoor Writers Association, Susan Lindsley of Decatur has authored numerous books about deer and wildlife, as well as novels, short fiction and nonfiction. For more details visit her website. She can be reached at yesterplace@earthlink.net.