If there was ever a video that showcased why a hunt might be legal but not ethical, it’s this one from a country cemetery in the Northeast. On Sunday the New Hampshire Fish and Game law enforcement division took to Facebook asking for the public’s help identifying a camo-clad man who was videoed wrestling a flopping wild turkey behind a gravestone and dragging it into the woods.
While the gunshot itself wasn’t filmed by bystanders, the aftermath was recorded by a turkey hunter who heard it and stepped out of the woods to investigate, Lieutenant Adam Cheney of NHFG law enforcement tells Outdoor Life.
The hunter began recording when he saw what looked like a poacher who had mortally wounded a wild turkey on the grounds of the 5-acre cemetery. In the 10-second clip, you can see a man in head-to-toe camo, including a face mask, crawling after a violently flopping turkey, feathers flying as he tries to get a grip on it. When he finally gets hold of its legs, the man scuttles backward, trying to keep a low profile behind the headstones.
There was also a pedestrian walking her dog along the road, says Cheney, although the woman appeared not to notice what was going on.
The cemetery is adjacent to the Freewill Baptist Church on Clough Hill Road, outside of Loudon. Although the law isn’t listed in state game regulations, discharging a gun is illegal in New Hampshire cemeteries since they are considered public gathering places. The properties surrounding the cemetery are private, according to onX Hunt, but it’s legal to hunt private property that isn’t posted in New Hampshire (this is common in the Northeast). According to the initial request for information, the man in the video “was dropped off by a late-model, black full-sized pickup.”
“Ethically? It’s road hunting and it’s something we try to deter people from doing because it leads to instances like this,” says Cheney. “They see a turkey or a deer and they get zoomed right in and they don’t think what they’re doing, and it ends up being this when it really shouldn’t be.”
While law enforcement initially stated in the Facebook post that the man had poached the turkey in the cemetery, that no longer seems to be the case. Preliminary investigations have revealed that the man may have shot the turkey outside the cemetery boundary and then retrieved it on the property, Cheney tells Outdoor Life.
“It does look like it was legally taken, but ethically it’s something hunters should keep driving by and leave it alone,” says Cheney, noting that because the investigation remains open he cannot share too many details. Cheney has additional interviews to conduct Monday and, in the meantime, K-9 units have been investigating the incident site to corroborate these claims.
After officials posted the video to Facebook, Cheney says the volume of tips to their agency and social pressure on the man in the video were enough that he came forward to law enforcement.
“It’s just a shame. But I am glad the video got out there, that certainly helped us because it put a lot of pressure on the person who shot [the turkey] because it kind of scared him because he started getting a lot of threats … He came right to us because he was getting inundated with calls and threats and ‘what the hell did you do’ type stuff.
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Cheney says law enforcement plans to issue a statement Tuesday. Even if there was no crime committed, he urges hunters to be mindful of how their behavior appears to non-hunters and to help report anything that looks questionable.
“Anybody who sees something like that going on, especially with the accessibility of phones nowadays, if you can get any kind of video of the person or especially the vehicle or the license plate is very important. But anything like helps, definitely. I’m very thankful for the quick response from lots of people making phone calls and trying to help out.”
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