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Sharing deer stories

Being ready for the unexpected is a trait nature photographers must prepare for. One never knows what potential image awaits the sharp eye, a good camera, good technique and good luck. Sometimes it all comes together and a great image results. Today’s image of a nice buck whitetail was not planned in any sense of the word. It just happened and I was ready to capture a moment in time of two deer deep in a soybean field. It is a pleasure to be able to share the photo with the readers of this column.

Good luck is nice and I’ll take it when it offers an opportunity. However, the reality of many of this scribe’s outdoors adventures while toting a camera over my shoulder results in zero images, or blurred shots, or wrong light, wrong angle, wrong something. Still I keep trying to capture images that are good enough to save, good enough to publish and good enough to help tell a story. I make a lot of images that never will meet the public’s eye. Why? Because they did not pass my quality test when critical examinations take place at my computer.

Anything even remotely close to out-of-focus gets the axe. Over exposure or other fumblings on my part can easily result in missed opportunities. To counteract mistakes that are way too easy to make, I will often prepare the camera settings ahead of time so that shutter speed, f-stop and proper exposure are very close to correct before I even stick the lens out my vehicle window. Then it is time to shoot many frames quickly, adjust composition, and wait for the critter to do something other than show me its white tail leaving the scene. Wildlife photography is filled with frustrating hours of time spent in contrast to a few precious seconds when one must be ready to shoot. Wild critters do not often pose to please people. So one must be ready, be quick, be accurate, and lucky.

Today’s deer image is one of about 50 shots I took. Several are good, one is great, and a few more are so-so and I elected to keep them on file just for my own study. The delete button gets a heavy workout in photography editing or else one ends up with hundreds or thousands of space taker-uppers that will never see the published page. And when I review my many photo files over the years, I have deleted entire files periodically after the newness of that bygone day have faded. Over time, using critical analysis of my own work helps inspire me to constantly work toward improving my work. For me the hardest person to please is myself. And when one has photo files containing tens of thousands to pick from, the task can be daunting. Still it must be done.

These deer cooperated just long enough. A full-grown adult buck deer’s back will be about 40 inches off the ground. The soybeans in this field are overtopping him by a few inches, leaving only his neck and head poking above the foliage. The little buck is almost completely hidden by the growing crop. If these deer had simply laid down, they would have been 100 percent invisible. Going unnoticed is one thing a deer likes to do. It helps them survive.

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CONSERVATION OFFICERS in Iowa had a long investigation and multi-state cooperation with other game wardens to put all the pieces of a large puzzle together. They solved the case and got convictions in court. Hurray for their hard work, citizen cooperation, other hunters calling the TIP line (Turn-In-Poachers), and other little snippets of facts that painted the picture of illegal deer takings. Illegal actions of the caliber you will read about next tell of the things poachers of wildlife are willing to do and actions they specifically take to avoid detection by game wardens.

Case number one: A jury in Taylor County recently found 61-year-old Michael K. Kahlert guilty of illegal deer hunting in this southern Iowa county. Kahlert is from Branson West, Mo. His actions in Iowa included fraudulently obtaining resident hunting, deer and turkey licenses … six counts; three counts of not having valid non-resident hunting and deer licenses; one count of taking/hunting deer out of season; one count of illegal taking of an antlered whitetail deer; and two counts of illegal tanking of antlerless whitetail deer.

He was sentenced on June 18 of this year and was ordered to forfeit the antlers and pay more than $11,400 in fines, court costs, and liquidating damages. Kahlert has been suspended from hunting or obtaining any licenses for three years. And since Iowa is a member of the Wildlife Violator Compact, an agreement with at least 34 other states, Kahlert’s Iowa convictions are shared with all the other states where he will also be prohibited from hunting due to his suspension in Iowa.

The Iowa conservation officer who actively investigated this case is Andrea Bevington. This case, and others similar to it are part of on-going fraud cases by non-residents who want to claim to be Iowa resident by submitting false information. Iowa residency laws were upgraded in 2009 to help conservation law enforcement deal with cheaters who come across our border from other states to hunt deer or turkey. It was a growing problem then. The problem is not going away. However conservation officers are working hard to counteract the mischief of poachers. Taking a trophy deer illegally robs Iowa citizens or properly licensed non-residents the chance to legally and ethically hunt for and perhaps take a nice deer.

Case number two: Robert J. Wilkins, 53, of Semmes, Ala., was sentenced on July 17 to four years probation for his role in guiding illegal deer hunts in Iowa. Conditions of his probation require 6 months of home confinement and he must pay $12,000 in restitution to the Iowa DNR plus an additional $100 special assessment to the Crime Victims Fund.

According to United States Attorney Nicholas A. Klinefeldt, beginning in 2010, Wilkins guided out-of-state hunters, who did not have Iowa hunting licenses or tags, during illegal whitetail buck deer hunts on land in rural Lucas County. Wilkins arranged for the hunts, provided hunting equipment, collected guide fees, provided instructions to hunters for avoiding detection by game wardens and law enforcement, helped process illegally taken deer, and transported the meat, capes and antlers of illegally taken deer from Iowa to Alabama.

This investigation was conducted by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Iowa DNR, and the Alabama Game and Fish Division. Prosecution was by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa.

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Every spring, callers to conservation departments tell of a person finding an “abandoned” fawn deer. Of course the abandoned label is loosely flung about when in truth the person who uses that term is most often 100 percent wrong. So now with a fawn deer in their possession (illegally of course), they want to know what to feed it, or how to rehabilitate it, or a host of other questions for which they think humans have answers for.

The assumption of being abandoned stems from misinformation, or lack of education about what is really taking place. Nature has this case solved long before humans interfered. What humans needed to do was nothing. Mother deer knows where her fawn or fawns are. She will take care of the business of raising them. What needs to happen is for people to be hands off, watch from distance at best, and let the doe deer do her thing when she feels the times are right.

Here is a real case observation of a mother deer and her fawn. The observer was filming deer coming out of the forest into a food plot. A single fawn would walk out of heavy cover and nibble around casually in the grasses, then walk back into the brush and disappear. From over one-half mile away, a doe walked to the plot and perhaps due to its calling, the fawn scampered out to suckle for all of about two minutes. Then the doe left, walked the half-mile back to where she had come from while the fawn stayed close to the forest edge where it entered the safety of heavy cover. Some type of communication between doe and fawn told the fawn to stay put, it was not to follow its mother. This proves that the female deer knew exactly where its baby was at all times even across long distances.

Here is another fact about deer. Fawns two months old or more are capable of surviving on their own if the doe deer dies in a car collision. It happens. It is another case of hands off for the humans who think they should interfere.

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“A true conservationist is a person who knows the world is not given by his fathers but borrowed from his children.”

– John James Audubon

Garry Brandenburg is a graduate of Iowa State University with BS degree in Fish & Wildlife Biology. He is the retired director of the Marshall County Conservation Board. Contact him at P.O. Box 96, Albion, Iowa 50005

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