A team of game wardens made one of the biggest busts of the Texas waterfowl season late last month when they encountered four individuals with three times the daily bag limit of ducks near the Brazos River northwest of Waco. The violators were fined several thousands dollars for their crimes, according to a Facebook post from local law enforcement, and wardens seized all of their illegally-taken ducks.
The group of four shot a total of 54 ducks according to Jim Daniels, a Texas game warden based in Hamilton County. "I’ve been a game warden for 17 years," he told KWTX, "and this is definitely one of the top migratory game bird cases I’ve filed in my career."
Daniels and other Texas wildlife officials were launching a patrol boat on a slough of the Brazos when they heard the heavy gunfire that ultimately led to their bust. After checking the licenses of several legal hunters in the area, they used GPS to pinpoint a few properties where the illegal shots could be coming from.
"Near the entrance to one of the possible locations, they encountered a man in camouflage exiting an equipment shed," the Facebook post reads. "He appeared evasive and was urgently texting someone. After a brief conversation, the man directed the wardens to a nearby duck blind, where three nervous hunters were packing up their gear and offered conflicting details about their group size."
They told the wardens they were part of a larger party of eight hunters, but they couldn't come up with names for the others who'd allegedly left the blind. "As one warden interviewed the hunters, the other went to inspect a pile of ducks on the opposite bank," the post continues. "As he was checking the ducks, the warden discovered a fourth individual behind the dam, dressed in camouflage with a stringer of ducks he was attempting to hide. The hunter lacked a valid hunting license and had crossed two fences to conceal the 16 birds. When confronted, the group falsely claimed he was retrieving a lost bird."
The wardens retrieved some 250 shotgun shells while searching the area around the blind. The shells that hadn't been emptied contained illegal lead shot reportedly leftover from dove season. Officials issued a combined $7,000 in civil fines and restitution for charges that ranged from 'hunting without a valid license' to 'using lead shot to hunt waterfowl'. After confiscating the ducks, the wardens cleaned them and donated the meat to a nearby food bank.
In Texas, legal hunters can shoot 6 ducks per day during waterfowl season. Only five birds in the daily bag limit can be mallards, according to Texas Parks and Wildlife. "One of the fellers said he'd been all over Louisiana on mallard holes and up through Missouri [finding] no ducks," Daniels told KWTX in a video-taped interview. "He said: 'Right here in Texas, we found more ducks than we've seen all year. They kept coming, and we just couldn't stop shooting.'"
