How to Catch a Wily Poacher in a Sting: A Thermal Robotic Deer

I don't know, I'm not there, not my world.

But I would think the goal is to reduce the number of poachers. Poaching being a mind set, a criminal behavior, regardless of that actual animal they're harvesting. If someone is willing to poach deer, perhaps it's a gateway to poaching something more vulnerable. Learning how to avoid the game wardens, building an "underground" community.

Similarly, if the deer are that plentiful (and they no doubt are, there are all sorts of stories about deer populations expanding), then it would seem good policy to encourage hunting. Lower the fees, increase the bag limit, do some outreach with safety training, etc. "No out of state fees to come hunt in Minnesota!" The goal to get poachers out of the fold and into legal hunting.

And, of course, there's "dual use" concepts, as deer can be considered pests in some scenarios (which fall under different guidelines than game animals). That can always blur the lines. So, maybe not everyone running around at night with thermal imagers is, actually, a poacher. Perhaps they're doing pest control. But that's someone who shouldn't mind encounters with game enforcement.

I am not familiar with poaching issues in the USA, but in Canada, one isn't allowed to hunt too close to roads; doing otherwise is poaching. It seems reasonable to not discharge firearms next to public roads, so stopping poachers who do so is a great use case here.

usually these kind of stings are not about poaching in the classic sense, its about basic safety, like not shooting; on; along; or across a road, so they set it up somewhere in that zone considered "along" the road, and wait for someone to start setting up for a shot.

Echoing my own comment below, it's important, given the pointlesness of fighting poaching while deer are everywhere, to note that in the US, agencies like DNR (some states have different names for them) have extraordinary police powers that allow them to enter property if they suspect a violation. In similar situations, police officers would be required to get a warrant from a judge, but the DNR can just go in. So, often they use the pretense of poaching to go see what someone is up to on their own land. They even have the right to install hidden cameras on private property without telling the landowner to try to detect violations.

FWIW, not saying it's right (as a hunter I wouldn't ever do this myself), but most of the biologists that build the population models, inc. the ones that they use to set the amount of hunting licenses or tags sold, build a certain amount of poaching into their models.

It's a particularly hard problem to solve - the hobby is usually spread through traditional means (you do it if your parents did it), and going all the way back in certain communities this was the main way to get meat, even before it became regulated. It's difficult to stop something that not only puts food on the table for your family, but has been done that way for generations.

This was one of the main contributors to the decline of the turkey population in the lower 48. In the early 1900's, a lot of folks thought turkey's were extinct because of over hunting and poaching, and the National Wild Turkey Foundation took efforts to restore the population for hunting.

If you live in the right area, hunters will give you as much venison as you can freeze. No poaching required.

>the dnr has been nore and more effective

What is "dnr"? I tried googling, but I just get "do not resuscitate".