Wildlife officials in Pennsylvania are still seeking information about a tagged buck that was stolen from a hunter in the Tuscarora State Forest on Dec. 5. The deer, which officials are calling a “lifetime” buck, had been shot, tagged, and then stashed near a pipeline on the public forest that Friday. When the hunter returned later with his group to retrieve the buck, it was gone.
Oddly enough, however, a number of outspoken social-media users have blamed the hunter for the theft, leading one official to come to the hunter’s defense.
The hunter whose buck was stolen described the 9-pointer to officials as a “small bodied mountain deer,” and he estimated its score in the 150- to 160-inch range. The hunter described the rack as “very dark almost black,” and said one of its G4’s had broken off completely — details that officials hope will make it easier to identify.
“Evidence at the scene suggests an individual entered the pipeline from the area of View Trail off of Wolf Road, dragged the deer to a parking spot along Wolf Road where the deer was loaded and removed,” state forest officials wrote in a Facebook post on Dec. 9. They said “the deer did not appear to be visible from the road,” as the hunters had stashed it at the base of a large tree approximately 200 yards from the nearest roadway.
Even with these facts, however, several commenters who claim to be sportsmen have blamed the hunter for the loss of his buck, saying they never would have left a buck of that caliber in the woods unattended. Some questioned the veracity of the evidence shared in the post, including the buck’s size, as well as the intelligence and ethics of the group of hunters. Two common critiques were that the hunters shouldn’t have kept hunting after tagging and-field dressing the 9-pointer, and that any hunter in their right mind would have at least photographed the buck.
All this social-media banter led State Forest Ranger Steven Shaffer to speak out Friday and clarify some of the misinformation being spread online. Speaking with CBS-21 News, Shaffer said the hunters were Amish and do not have cell phones or cars. This explains the lack of photographs, and why they stayed out hunting after stashing the 9-pointer in the woods.
“They normally would pay a driver to drive them to the location, so, somebody would drive them in a pickup truck, drop them off, and they usually spend the day hunting,” Shaffer told the news outlet. “The person that they have hired to transport them will come in, pick them up, and then they will load the animals at the end of the day and take them back home.”
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Shaffer added that since they’d killed and tagged the buck legally, there was nothing wrong with leaving it there temporarily. It’s also legal in Pennsylvania for hunters to harvest multiple deer in the same day, as long as they have the proper tags.
“They didn’t do anything wrong in this case,” Shaffer said. “They’re actually a victim of this crime and we’re trying to solve it for them.”
Officials are now asking local hunters to check their trail cameras for any suspicious photographs, and to report any information they might have about the theft.
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