Poacher caught after bragging about deer kill to game warden on dating app
What are the chances of a poacher matching with a game warden without even realising it?
A braggadocious poacher who was looking for love found herself with a hefty fine instead when it turned out the man she was talking to on a dating app was a game warden.
Cannon Harrison, a warden with the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, could not quite believe it when the woman he was chatting to on Bumble started boasting about killing a deer.
The potential suitor, not knowing Cannon’s job, told him that she was in high spirits because she had just shot a “bigo buck”.
“Honestly, the first thing I thought was that it was someone who was messing with me because they knew who I was,” he told The Washington Post.
“It seemed too good to be true.”
Keeping his wits about him, Cannon got the woman to admit how and where she had killed the deer, as well as sending him pictures.
Images posted on the Oklahoma Game Wardens Facebook page show that the head of the buck had been removed.
From the conversation he was able to work out that she did not kill the deer with a bow, something which may have been legal, and that she used a practice known as spotlighting, which is shining a light in the deer’s eyes to startle it.
This is also illegal in the state.
Armed with the woman’s first name, a photo and a rough location, he was then able to track her down via social media, enabling wardens to descend on the property soon after.
The woman pleaded guilty to “hunting deer out of season and possessing game that was taken illegally”, according to the Post, and she and an accomplice were fined a total of 2,400 US dollars (£1,880) for the incident.
