Pennsylvania Game News - July 2010 - 14

the deer. When he got there, he saw the guy in camouflage clothing with the ATV and a woman next to a pickup truck; they had just loaded the deer into the truck. John walked right up to them and took their picture and photos of the deer in the truck. A slam-dunk case? That’s what Jeff and I were thinking. “I don’t know who they are,” was John’s reply to my prior question. “Okay, what’s the plate number of the truck?” I asked.

Having integrity is easy; keeping it is the hard part. Just one mishap and all your integrity is lost. The question is, can you get it back?
John paused, his eyes staring back at me with a blank look. “I didn’t have any paper, so I didn’t write it down.” It was a response nobody wanted to hear. Not all was lost, though. John thought at least one of the photos might reveal the plate number. Mrs. Doright volunteered to go to the onehour photo lab and have the film developed. In the meantime, Jeff and I would look for where the truck and ATV had entered and exited the area. We knew time was critical because once a deer is processed, gathering evidence becomes difficult. We figured the suspect lived close to the kill site, so Jeff and I went directly to the landowner’s residence, but no one was home. We then circled the area and, although we found several possible locations, we could not locate the spot where the suspect had exited. With each passing minute, an uneasy feeling that the case was heading south crept in. Reaching John, he told us his wife had just gotten home, so we immediately went to his house.
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John met us in his driveway, photos in hand, but he had a disappointed look on his face. Expecting the worst, Jeff and I checked each photo until we came to a perfectly framed shot of the rear of the truck. We could see two people along the side of the vehicle, and there was a license plate in the photo, but the photo was so fuzzy, grainy and dark, we couldn’t even make out the large letters across the tailgate. The suspects’ faces were too blurry to identify them, or even tell the other person was a woman, but the photo of the buck came out okay. Feeling this case was slipping through our fingers, we decided to try one more thing. A friend of mine owns a photography studio, so we went to have the negatives scanned, in hopes that with a computer we could decipher the license plate number. While the technician did his best, he could provide only enough detail for us to make out “FORD” on the tailgate. Pondering our next move, Jeff and I decided to go have lunch at a nearby pizza shop. I ordered my usual calzone and Jeff ordered a 5-course meal, which took him a long time to eat. Jeff was ahead of me as we left the busy restaurant, and while holding the door, he said that two people sitting at a nearby table were the ones we were looking for. With a deliberate purpose to my step but no idea what I was going to say, I walked back through the restaurant and up to the people at the table. They stared at me. I looked at the man, well groomed and neatly dressed in casual clothes. “We need to talk,” is all I said. He looked down at the table, glanced at the women sitting with him, then back at me, “Okay.” As we left I was thinking that this must be the guy, because why would he be walking outside with me. “Did you shoot a buck this morning?” I asked with conviction. “Yes, but some guy thinks I used a gun
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Pennsylvania Game News - July 2010

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