Alabama Man Charged for Poaching and Shooting the Witness🕴️

Well, if you’re still with us, that means you’ve made it to the middle of yet another week.

With that in mind, let’s all take a minute to grab a coffee or whiskey (no judgement) and get another mid-week dispatch out the door.

Here's what's worth reading about so far this week:

• It’s a hit - Alabama poacher fires shots at witnesses 🕴️

• Big Ten rankings - It’s like college ball but for deer 🦌

• Fake news - School locked down for false mountain lion sighting 🐈

• Poachers nabbed - Pair of Indiana poachers nailed on more charges than we can count 🚨

• Taxidermy & CWD - New program confirms first case in Indiana 🤮

  Thanks for following along. Don't forget to tell your friends.

IT’S A HIT
ALABAMA MAN CHARGED FOR TELLING HIS SON TO POACH A GOOSE AND LATER SHOOTING THE WITNESS

Taking a page out of the book of Gotti, an Alabama man is now facing felony assault charges after shooting a witness to a wildlife crime. The hit incident took place just east of Tuscaloosa at the end of last month, after the accused and his son were riding around in search of geese.

Jacob Wayne Battle, 42, and his son, the driver of the vehicle, came upon a lone Canada Goose in the middle of the field.  According to court documents, Battle urged the driver to use a rifle to dispatch the goose - a federally protected species.

As the pair were partaking in the illegal killing, two people inside a nearby home heard the gunshots and were quick to investigate. As they stepped outside of their home, they witnessed a young man running from the field where a slain goose lay with a high-powered rifle in his hands. Deciding to investigate what all the commotion was about, the two residents confronted Battle and his companion. While one argued with Battle, the other stepped behind the vehicle to get a good look at the truck’s tag number…

🏈 Big Ten power rankings…for deer - Minnesota’s largest newspaper has gone ahead and created a power ranking system we can all get behind. Mirroring the popular college athletic conference, the paper has compiled their Big Ten Deer Hunting Rankings across the 11 states represented in the conference. The paper utilized six metrics to come up with their rankings including total harvest, harvest per 100 hunters, hunters per 1,000 people, hunter success rate, public hunting opportunities and trophy bucks killed.

Overall, the paper’s home state landed in the middle, tying with rival Iowa. Michigan took top honors followed closely by Ohio and Wisconsin. While the SEC remains the king of college football (Go 🐊), the Big Ten is no slouch in the deer woods.

🐈 Mountain lion or Garfield? - Turns out it was the latter as a Washington State elementary school sounded the alarm bells and went into a full blown lockdown. After reports of a mountain lion hanging around the school yard, Groff Elementary took every precaution necessary (this is the PNW, after all) and locked down students, prioritizing student safety. It was later learned that the mountain lion that had been spotted earlier was nothing other than a rather large house cat munching on a dead rat. 

After learning that Garfield had been spotted, the school promptly lifted the lockdown and left students and faculty with something to laugh about later on.

🚨 Poachers nabbed - A pair of Indiana men have been arrested on a slew of misdemeanor poaching charges. Those charges include illegal taking of deer, hunting with the aid of a motorized conveyance, hunting without landowner consent, hunting without a license, providing false information to a deer check station, placing surveillance cameras on private property, hunting deer by aid of bait, and hindering conservation officers.

The two men, aged 46 and 34, surrendered themselves after an anonymous tip came into the state’s “Turn in a Poacher” hotline. They are likely both facing a touch of jail time and a whole bunch of fines.

🤮 Chronic wasting detected for first time - With more news out of Indiana, the state’s DNR announced last week that the first instance of chronic wasting disease had been detected in a free-roaming deer. While you might be thinking “April is quite late to be getting CWD results back from last season, no?!?!”, you’d be right. Most testing from hunter-harvested deer is available quite quickly, this one particular (and important) sample, however, was taken as part of the state’s taxidermist incentive program. Piloted last year, the program pays $10 to all taxidermists that submit a set of lymph nodes for CWD testing. 

With all of Indiana’s surrounding states already infected by the debilitating disease, it was only a matter of time before it penetrated the borders of the Hoosier State like an unstoppable rebel force.

VIDEO // ^{_{SOME THINGS JUST HAVE TO BE SEEN}}

😼 Bobcat takes care of biz: Watch as a bobcat takes down an adult mule deer on trail camera.

🤸 The Boss of Banff: The grizzly, aptly known as ‘The Boss’, majestically strolls through a snowy day.