Resisting the urge to ask the public “who’s a good boy??” the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks announced earlier this week that one of their K9 conservation officers was instrumental in bringing down a couple of poachers in Miami county.
The phone call landed with both the Miami County Sheriff’s Office and KDWP as a landowner reported a couple of men shooting turkeys on his property from a vehicle. With both agencies responding to the call, they arrived on the scene to find the suspected vehicle parked along the side of the road unoccupied.
Utilizing the nose of his two-year-old K-9 partner Indy, game warden Mitch Falls let him do the groundwork. It wasn’t long before the dog flushed a couple of the suspects along with a couple of the turkeys they illegally shot using a .22-caliber rifle that was later recovered from the passenger seat of the car. The shooter was soon arrested for a slew of wildlife violations including killing turkeys with a rifle, hunting from the road, hunting from a vehicle, and killing animals on private property without permission.
Acting on a hunch, Falls let Indy back into the field one more time to give things a final sweep. In the event that any evidence was missing, he and KDWP wanted to know about it. As the scene began to clear, Indy emerged from the woods with a third suspect with his hands raised in surrender. Officers promptly arrested the third suspect, while Indy headed back into the woods where another hen turkey was discovered.
All in all, officers confiscated three .22 rifles, an air rifle and the three dead birds during the investigation. The suspects have yet to be identified, but given the amount of evidence recovered from the scene, will be facing harsh penalties.
Trained to sniff out both human scent and burnt gunpowder residue, K-9s like Indy are a vital piece of the enforcement puzzle for conservation officers. This is Indy’s second bust of the year after foiling another pair of turkey poachers by sniffing out an old .410 wad from a shot that was later determined to have killed the turkeys.
