Poachers??

[BossHog]

Yesterday, I was checking for scrapes on a treeline bordered by a standing corn field out in front on my house and found a gut pile. The location is about 50 yards from the road and about 50 yards from my house. It's my land so no one else even has permission to be on the land, not to mention hunt there. My question is do you think this is the results of a poacher or just someone dumping remains from somewhere else? Either way it seems strange that just the gut pile is there. Let me know your thoughts. Just thinking about a poacher taking an animal that close to my house, boils my blood. Also, we live in a berm style house so its very sound proof and we probably wouldn't have heard a shot at night. What do you think? By the way, if it was a poacher the sightline would have put them shooting directly towards my house.

 

[shadowpeople]

Well, you could always hope for the best and think that maybe somebody wounded the deer and tracked it there from an adjoining property. I couldn't tell ya. Did you see any blood trail? That would be the first thing I would look for because then you know it was wounded and if you trailed it backwards you could probably tell you where it was shot and where the hunter/poacher came from. Just my 2 cents.

 

[Daver]

Can't say for sure what happened, but if it was a classic poached deer I would imagine that they would take the animal whole, or head only, and field dress it somewhere else.

If I was out where I shouldn't be poaching deer I would minimize the time spent there as much as possible to avoid getting caught. But then again, maybe that type of thinking keeps me from being a poacher.

 

[Stump Shooter]

Did you go out to the road and look for a bunch of footprints, tire tracks and/or empty shell casings? I'm sort of with Daver. I would think if someone poached a deer, they might not spend the time gutting it out right there.

 

[River1]

This post made me think of a guy I used to work with. He had a funny story about his brother inlaw. Apparently the brother inlaw was ridiculously paranoid about people hunting on his property. So, this guy shoots a deer one season and decides to drop the gut pile off at his brother inlaws place in a spot he knows he walks through. Put him in a tail spin, still talks about it.

 

[TimberPig]

I tend to agree that your classic poacher isnt going to take the time to gut a deer in your front yard. My guess is that it ran there from elsewhere, died there, and was gutted. You should see drag marks at the least?

On the other hand, about 5 years ago I found a poached doe lying less than 100 yards from my house. The owner of the property it was on did not allow hunting, nor the one behind that. The deer had been quartered out, they cut all the quarters off right through the hide. Just the head and torso (ungutted) remaining. In that case I think it would have been faster for them to have just gutted the deer and taken the whole thing. That was a weird one and have never seen that before or since, so who knows??

 

[The Hood]

The Spottie's (Poachers) I know,, don't take time to cut nothing.
they spots,triggers and loads up burning rubber home, and then they cuts them in the garage where they feels safe enough to start bragging... hehe,,You know I have a picture of them with a ungutted 18 pointer...

This year I'm setting them up for visit while the guts are warm..........

Hood