okay so here is the story,
some of you know i am from south Fl.(NOT MY CHOICE) At the end of last month i got my only opportunity to hunt this last season. it has been really tough this year. so i arrived with three days left of the season. i arrived at he property to find a 130 inch 10 pt dead in my pond. he had been liver/back of lung shot. i suspect him to be a road shot deer due to the spot where he was found. the next day i hunted the home property with anticipation of hunting my tree farm about a mile away.i have been getting pics all season of a Big 9pt.on the property. he was using it as his core area. about 10:30am i loaded up my grandmother to get her a buiscuit from the store and take her over to see her other property. she is old and doesn't get around well. My cell phone was dead so i left it on charge at the house. as i arrived at the property i found a newer model white chevy 1500 with a fourwheeler trailer parked on my property across from trailers on the other side of the street. the first thing i noticed was that 9 pt dead on the trailer. i stopped. approached the 2 men. one was about a 25 year old black man in camo. the other was a 40 year old white man also in camo. i questioned them about the deer. they claimed the deer was killed 9 miles away on a property the white man had permission to hunt. BOTH men were VERY VERY nervous. I was trying my best to maintain my cool as i know i have a terrible temper. the only thing that kept me from pulling my 9mm and ordering those 2 men on the ground was my grandmother. she was sitting in the truck watching all of this. in my effort to keep my temper under control i didnt get the license plate. i left the 2 men to find evidence of the poaching. i found my shooting house open, as if someone had been hunting out of it, and tracks all over the tree farm. i later approached the neighbors about all of this. one man had told me "them boys is no good, they shoot em at night and on other peoples property." HE refused to give their names. it is obvious that they are friends. this all occured Sunday 29th. If you know who these boys are i'm looking for their names. please pm me.
this is him. he's a solid 145

Tell the game warden, point him in the right direction. That is all you can do.

On a side note, had you pulled that weapon out, on those guys, you would have spent 2 years in a Florida prison at a minimum.

the sherriff and the Game warden have been notified. the sherriff said i was within my rights to have held them for questioning until a deputy arrived, but without my phone i could not have made any calls at that time.

Chances are they will get it mounted. Check with the local taxidermist, there is 4or5 in the Troy area. Also check at Cabin By The Lake and Troy Sport shop and see if the have seen or heard of it. They probably will have to brag about 145" buck. That's assuming they were locals.

thanks jeff. i've spoken to the taxidermists. i will give Thomas a call at troy sports too...

If there is one thing I have learned from this website it is that you should always have one of these for those situations.































Sorry to hear about the poachers.

The sheriff told you wrong or did not have a clear understanding of the situation. You could have gotten in big trouble as there is not overwhelming evidence that they were not telling the truth about the deer.

Your good sense overrode your anger. That is a good thing.

Always better to allow the local law enforcement personnel handle issues such as this so that emotions do not become involved. However, if I am reading the original post correctly, the truck, 4 wheeler, dead deer and 2 hunters were parked and standing on his property at his gate. I may be off base and someone like Troy can correct me if I am but that is trespassing and you are within your rights to detain such individuals by whatever means are necessary while waiting for the law to arrive.

I hate to hear about that. I live in the Goshen area but I'm not familiar with whom you are talking about. You may know this already but in this area there are a lot of outlaws. I have caught trespassers on my place several times. Night hunting is common, and corn is really common. There are poeple that will see a good buck crossing the road at night and just decide to hunt there the next day regardless of whos place it is.

I would venture to say that two strange men with rifles on my property consitute legal grounds for me to take preventative measures to secure my safe return home that evening. In other words, they would have been looking at the business end of whatever I happened to be carrying that day until the local law enforcement showed up.

You are never within your rights to hold anyone against their will unless you are an LEO. Good job restraining yourself. sorry about the incident I hope you catch them. Sounds like they are locals...shouldn't be hard to find. Proving anything might be another story. Good luck.

I believe you went wrong on that with never. I'll let others elaborate.

There may be rare exceptions that I am not aware of but...for the most part NEVER is a good place to start. I know you can't hold a suspected thief or...poacher. Doesn't mean you will always get in trouble, either but holding someone against their will can really turn out to bite you if someone wants to press charges.

If he wanted to hold them all he had to do was keep his car parked. It's his property, they can't make him move it.

Yes that is true, but he wouldn't be detaining them, only refusing to move his car. They could still walk away...if he tried to restrain them against their will he could be charged with violating their rights.

A citizen can, in theory, perform a citizens arrest and detain someone but no lawyer would ever advise a client to do so. It is very dangerous.

...anyway I don't want to derail his original post. I'll ask our law-folk to weigh in on another thread.

I hope you catch them.

Jawbone is a LEO, might want to take his advice!

If you catch them in the act of committing a crime, you can hold them. In this situation, you didn't catch them in the act of committing a crime so you would have been the one that got into trouble. They were just pulled off the road. That is hardly trespassing. They could have claimed they got turned around and needed to stop and pee or 100 other things that would be completely plausible.

However, BP, you are wrong, there are plenty of situations where is is perfectly acceptable to hold someone at gun point and wait for the police.

Never = Bullschit. Period.

everyone says i did the right thing..... i just wish i wasn't the imbicile who let them go. There is way more to the story and i know i cant "prove" that they poached the deer. im just looking for the names so that i can pass them along to the GW. I was told by the neighbors that they ARE road hunters and that this is common for them. It pisses me off because this 9 pt was the biggest deer we've ever gotten on camera. we have worked many YEARS to produce a deer of this caliber. passing small deer, planting plots, improving habitat, coordinating with neighbors, etc. etc.........
It is my hope that the 2 POACHERS get the deer mounted and everytime they look at his rack it brings them great shame.

My apologies. Let me back up just a tad. I missed it where they were on his property when he confronted them. That gives him more lattitude, but not that much since there were other trailers directly across the road that they could have been visiting. Anytime you hold someone against their will, especially with a gun, you are on very precarious ground unless you catch them red-handed committing a crime where someones life is at risk.

Anyways, he did well. That was the safest route to take. The only thing I can fault him for is not getting the tag.