What Happens in Deer Camp...
I know - that’s what they say about Vegas. To me, Vegas seems like a great place to get into a lot of trouble. I don’t like trouble, so I try to steer clear of all that. And to be extra safe, I’m also going to steer clear of using the real names of the perpetrators involved in this story. We’ll call them “Bill” and “Tom.” The other dude mentioned herein is Game Warden Arthur McCall. He’s the real deal.
It was a cold December night in 1982. Bill and Tom arrived at their deer camp on a Friday night ready to drink beer and shoot deer.
It was late when they got there, so they nixed hunting the next morning. Instead, they decided to whoop out a spotlight and get an early start on procuring some “camp meat”. For those not in the know, “camp meat” is a catch all for an untagged deer ostensibly killed to provide sustenance while at deer camp.
It was too cold to do much, so they settled on the first little yearling doe they saw. Tom dropped it with one shot.
They took it to camp and gutted and skinned it there. They were tired and cold and drunk when they were done, so instead of hanging the deer outside to freeze, they took it inside the cabin and hung it there. There was one queen-sized bed in the cabin, and they were in no shape to drag out blankets and cots and what nots. So, they climbed into the one bed and went to sleep.
Thus far that deer season, Arthur hadn’t made any significant poaching cases. Many of the other wardens in his district had, and they were starting to poke fun at him. Arthur didn’t like that.
3:00 a.m. Arthur was on routine patrol, and by “routine patrol,” I mean driving around the county at all hours of the night totally blacked out. He came to a gate alongside a county road about seven miles south of the small town of Charlotte.
There were fresh tracks going in. He parked his vehicle, climbed over the locked gate, and hoofed it on down the road. He hadn’t gone far when he came upon a small cabin with a truck parked outside. Arthur looked around some.
In a patch of weeds, he found a fresh deer hide with the head still attached. It wasn’t tagged.
Arthur picked it up by the head and held it up to his shoulder. He then walked over to the cabin door.
KNOCK- KNOCK. “State Game Warden!”
Tom bolted upright in bed and said, “There ain’t no game wardens around here!”
Arthur shot back, “There is now! Open the bleeping door!”
There was rustling inside. Were they getting a weapon? After what seemed to be too much time for a body to get out of bed and do as Arthur instructed, Tom opened the door. Arthur shoved the deer head towards him, “Who killed THIS?” Tom looked dumbfounded. Arthur stepped inside.
Bill was still in bed, but Arthur saw that he wasn’t alone; there was a hoof sticking out from under the sheets. Things were getting weird. Hoping to get ahead of the awkward situation, Tom fessed up to killing the deer.
Arthur didn’t need to hear Bill’s story. He figured there was no more ironclad case for possession of an illegally killed deer than being in bed with one, so he arrested Bill and Tom, both, and took them to jail.
Bill and Tom were no doubt embarrassed when they got to jail and the other inmates asked the inevitable, “What are you in for?”
After all, it wasn’t supposed to happen this way, because what happens in deer camp stays in deer camp, right? I guess that’s true enough… until the game warden shows up.
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