Longtime bowfisherman Stephen Banaszak already had the Texas record for the heaviest silver carp ever arrowed in the state. He can now add Oklahoma to his list. In mid-August, Banaszak arrowed a 31.3-pound silver carp in the Red River. The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation made the state record official on Aug. 31.“My first official OKLAHOMA state record!” Banaszak wrote in a Facebook post. “It’s been a lot of work and was hard earned but I’m glad to be doing my part to battle these invasive species!”
Banaszak with another silver carp; hunting for carp from an elevated stand on the bow. via Facebook
Little is known about Banaszak’s hunt for the record carp, but a photo on his Facebook profile reveals at least one of his secrets. It shows one of his bowfishing buddies sitting atop an 8-foot ladder that’s set up in the bow of his aluminum skiff. A little sketchy, perhaps, which Banaszak notes in the comments section. But, just like a tree stand, the added height gives a clear advantage when shooting carp in the shallows.
The ladder would also come in extra handy on the Red River, where Banaszak arrowed the new state record. As its name implies, the river takes on a muddy, reddish hue because of the red clay soil that it flows through.
In recent years, the Red has also become a haven for silver carp, which are an invasive species from Asia. Because these large filter feeders outcompete native fish and eat native mussels, they “have the potential to cause enormous damage” to the ecosystem, according to the ODWC. The carp are also prolific breeders. They’re considered a menace in the larger Mississippi and Ohio River Basins where they’re already well established.
For these reasons, ODWC wants the fish removed and encourages the state’s bowfishermen to do their part in harvesting them. (Because silver carp feed on plankton, they’re almost impossible to catch with a rod and reel.) The state’s fishing records program is just an added incentive for archers to catch and kill as many silver carp as possible.
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“Establishing state records for invasive species is an attempt to encourage anglers to fish for them and REMOVE them,” ODWC wrote in a Facebook post celebrating Banaszak’s new record. “It is EXTREMELY important that these invaders are not released back into the water so they are not allowed to expand their range.”
The agency’s post also warned anglers that juvenile silver carp look a lot like gizzard shad, which are commonly used as bait when fishing for bass and other game fish. As an added precaution to prevent the spread of silver carp, ODWC prohibits the movement of bait from one waterbody to another.
The Biden administration announced Wednesday its largest habitat protection move yet: the cancellation of seven remaining oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s Coastal Plain and a proposal to ban oil and gas exploration on more than 13 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The leases in ANWR, which have been suspended since June 2021, were leftover from the Trump administration’s move to open the 1.5-million-acre Coastal Plain region to fossil-fuel extraction. At the time, the decision shocked conservationists, excited Alaskan residents who rely on the oil and gas industry (the largest in the state), and left those who appreciate both feeling conflicted. (More from OL staff writer and Alaska resident Tyler Freel on those complexities here.)This announcement comes as President Biden approaches what may be his final year in office. The list of U.S. presidents who made sweeping changes to public lands and waters at the end of their presidency starts with Theodore Roosevelt, who established 47 national forests in fewer than six weeks in 1908 and 26 native bird and wildlife habitat reservations in the final week of his term in 1909. Fast forward to the Obama administration, which established and expanded protections in Bears’ Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante, and Northeast Canyons and Seamounts national monuments in its final hour. While President Trump signed large pieces of conservation legislation into law like the Great American Outdoors Act, his administration largely rolled back protections for public lands. Trump downsized Obama’s monument designations when he took office, and President Biden returned them to their originally-designated size when he arrived at the White House (with multiple climate and environment advisors from the Obama administration in tow). Now, after a term already sprinkled with public lands protections and designations, Biden’s move in Alaska could mark the beginning of a grand finale.
Some leaders in the sporting and conservation community say it will be hard to top this week’s protection of the ANWR and NPRA. Backcountry Hunters and Anglers’ government relations director Kaden McArthur applauds the decision. He also points to the Biden administration’s record since taking office as proof that he’s already accomplished a lot for conservation.
“This administration has been very proactive,” McArthur tells Outdoor Life. “I think the vast majority of its activity in conserving our natural resources and public lands and waters has been continuous throughout the administration. There’s not a significant need to make a buzzer beater move.”
Some of the wins McArthur points out include the recent Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni National Monument designation near the Grand Canyon in Arizona, the 20-year ban on mineral and geothermal leasing in 225,504 acres of the watershed that feeds the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in January, and the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument designation in southern Nevada in November. Conservation groups like BHA usually prefer to see federal land protected through legislative action rather than executive action, since acts of Congress “have greater buy-in from a broader section of the community and can address more specifics than a monument campaign itself can,” McArthur says. “Monuments are a phenomenal tool but not always as prescriptive as legislative designations can be.”
But Congressional battles are also harder-fought, and McArthur says this might explain why the occasional term-end flood of monument designations occurs: When Congress can’t get it done, the President can. If the Biden administration were to tackle more designations, McArthur and BHA have some ideas of what might be on its list.
He also sees an opportunity for federal protections in the Ruby Mountains in northern Nevada, an area he calls a “sportsman’s paradise.”
“We want to see just shy of 350,000 acres of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest withdrawn from oil and gas leasing,” McArthur says. “That region is a critical migratory corridor for mule deer and sage grouse habitat. The administration can not [withdraw that area from oil and gas leasing] permanently, but they can initiate a 20-year withdrawal, very similar to actions taken in the [Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness].”
BHA doesn’t have any sense of timing on these potential moves or even if they will happen at all, McArthur adds. But other conservation leaders also cross their fingers that more habitat protections are on the horizon.
Chris Wood, president and CEO of Trout Unlimited, is enthusiastic about the move, which stands to benefit fish populations. For example, the Coastal Plain of ANWR provides crucial habitat for migrating king salmon and arctic grayling. Wood hopes that the goodwill created among conservationists for protecting ANWR and NPRA will encourage Biden to “rinse and repeat.”
“We have been trying to get a segregation and withdrawal from mineral entry on public lands around the Smith River in Montana, and a similar withdrawal around the Pecos River [in New Mexico and Texas],” he says. “We’ve also been looking at expansions of refuges in Wyoming.”
Read Next: Trout Unlimited Calls on Biden Administration to Save Snake River Salmon and Steelhead
Wood doesn’t necessarily see the ANWR and NPRA protections as a political move. Instead, he sees the Biden administration grasping a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to conserve a massive swath of wilderness. Wood worked on the 2001 Roadless Rule with the U.S. Forest Service, which protected 58.5 million acres of National Forest lands. He considers protecting the ANWR and NPRA the biggest move of its kind since 2001.
“It’s rare that you see the opportunity to protect 13 million acres of land in one fell swoop,” Wood says. “These big conservation initiatives don’t come around very often. I hope it’s a sign of more to come.”
Other groups and entities condemn the move. The state-owned Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority held the seven remaining leases that Biden canceled. They announced a promise to fight the action on Wednesday, classifying the administration’s decision as “unlawful” and “campaign trail rhetoric.” AIDEA also foreshadows more widespread land protection from the Biden administration before his term ends, which they decry.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge takes up a large chunk of the northeastern corner of Alaska. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
“Unfortunately, Alaskans can expect more negative campaign decisions shutting down opportunities for jobs and resource development in Alaska,” the AIDEA Office of Communications and External Affairs writes. “[This] development in Alaska … would benefit the nation with domestic supplies of resources and ensure trillions of dollars appropriated for the ‘green’ economy do not go to foreign countries with little to no environmental standards.”
About the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
The 19.64-million-acre ANWR covers the northeastern corner of Alaska and is the biggest wildlife refuge in America. President Eisenhower established the 9 million acre Arctic National Wildlife Range in 1960 before it was redesignated as a part of a larger refuge in 1980 by the Carter administration. The area remained pristine wilderness until President Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017, opening the Coastal Plain region to oil and gas exploration.
A whistleblower lawsuit filed in Tennessee this month includes some stunning accusations regarding the state’s handling of chronic wasting disease. The lawsuit accuses the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency of over-reporting the number of CWD cases in the state, and then manipulating its data and changing protocols to cover up its mistakes.The lawsuit hinges on deer biologist James Kelly’s allegation that he was wrongly fired after he found discrepancies in TWRA’s CWD data and learned that the agency had subsequently and intentionally misled the public regarding the prevalence of the disease. He claims that his investigation revealed that the agency failed to follow the best scientific practices when testing for CWD, which led to an inflation of CWD prevalence in several counties. He also claims the TWRA changed its own testing regulations in order to hide these mistakes from the public, rather than owning up to them.
If the plaintiff’s allegations are true, it’s possible CWD-positive deer or deer parts could have been legally transported to counties that were actually CWD-free.
Kelly was terminated from the agency in 2022. Kelly and his attorney William Caldwell filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court on Sept. 1. It names the TWRA and TWRA’s executive director Jason Maxedon as defendants. TennesseeLookout.com broke the story of the lawsuit yesterday.
“During his employment with the TWRA, [Kelly] reported and was asked by his supervisors to investigate discrepancies in diagnostic lab results. Mr. Kelly’s investigation revealed to the TWRA that these discrepancies were in fact erroneously reported to the public as new detections of CWD,” Caldwell writes in the lawsuit. (Caldwell did not respond to requests for comment.) “The TWRA had the opportunity to explain and correct the errors. However, it chose not to. Its decision violated its Rules and Regulations and deliberately defrauded the public.”
Kelly’s suit alleges that, after voicing his concerns to the Tennessee Fish and Wildlife Commission and refusing to stay silent on the matter, he was interrogated by law enforcement in his own home. Kelly says he was fired in October 2022 after he “refused to participate in and and refused to remain silent about TWRA activities” related to CWD testing.
Discrepancies in the Data
Kelly’s tenure with the TWRA began in 2016, according to both the lawsuit and his LinkedIn profile. As the agency’s deer management program leader, he helped develop the state’s first risk-based CWD surveillance plan. Although the state had been looking for the disease since 2002, it would increase its surveillance in late 2016 due to positive CWD tests in neighboring Arkansas. In December 2018, Tennessee recorded its first-ever cases of CWD in 10 hunter-harvested whitetail deer from Hardeman and Fayette counties in the southwest corner of the state.
After recording the 10 positive cases, the TWRA immediately established a CWD management unit that encompassed Hardeman, Fayette, and 10 other surrounding counties. The agency extended the state’s deer season in that unit to bring in more samples and set up mandatory check stations that resulted in an estimated 3,100 samples over the course of the 2018 season. TWRA officials recorded a total of 186 CWD-positive deer—all but one of which came from Fayette or Hardeman counties.
TWRA runs mandatory CWD sampling stations around the management zone. Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency
At that time, the lawsuit points out, the TWRA’s 2018 Emergency Response Plan called for two separate lab tests to confirm whether a sample was positive for CWD. If the first test came back positive, then the sample was screened using a second type of testing the USDA calls the “gold standard” of CWD tests. This test is more accurate and more costly.
According to the lawsuit, Kelly’s investigation revealed that in 2020 the agency had begun to stray from the two-test procedure after heeding the advice of TWRA wildlife veterinarian Dr. Dan Grove. And in 2021, the agency began sending off test results to a lab in Mississippi as well as the C.E. Kord Animal Health Diagnostic Lab in Tennessee. This is when many of the data discrepancies that Kelly noticed were recorded, he claims.
The closer Kelly looked, the lawsuit alleges, the more he saw that the agency’s lab testing protocols seemed inconsistent. Some counties had been deemed “CWD-positive” after the first test came back positive but before the follow-up test was performed. This meant the agency was labeling counties CWD-positive before those results could be confirmed.
In 2021 the number of CWD-positive cases in Tennessee had risen sharply. Kelly “suspected an error … too many counties were being added and way too fast,” according to the lawsuit. After Kelly shared his suspicions with TWRA, officials sent four positive samples for additional (and more reliable) testing. CWD was not detected in any of those four samples, according to the lawsuit. As a result, TWRA did not declare those counties in question as CWD-positive.
“In other words,” the suit alleges, “the TWRA had clear unequivocal evidence that it had falsely reported counties as confirmed positive for CWD.”
In March 2022, the lawsuit says, Kelly met with his supervisors and TWRA’s acting executive director Bobby Wilson. He hoped the results of his investigation would lead the agency to publicly announce the discrepancies in its data and redraw the state’s CWD map accordingly.
This never happened. And according to the lawsuit, Kelly was shot in a hunting accident on April 23, 2022. Wilson announced his retirement during Kelly’s recovery and Maxedon was appointed as the new executive director of TWRA. The agency also drafted a new testing protocol for CWD without consulting Kelly.
“Rather than respond to the discrepancies in CWD testing results by following its rules and protocols,” the lawsuit claims, “the TWRA changed the rules and protocols to avoid having to admit mistakes.”
Kelly alleges that in August 2022, he advised against adopting this new protocol but was told to drop the issue. In September, he wrote a memo to the Tennessee Fish and Wildlife Commission detailing his concerns and was immediately placed on discretionary leave with pay. Law enforcement officers also visited Kelly in his home, where he says they interrogated him and seized his phone and laptop. Over the following month, his lawsuit claims, TWRA did not investigate Kelly’s allegations. And on Oct. 17, Kelly received a termination letter from new executive director Maxedon.
Implications for CWD Management in Tennessee
Data from the 2023 Tennessee deer season showed 634 CWD-positive deer across 12 counties. (Much like in 2018, the majority of these positive results came from Hardeman and Fayette counties; only 52, or about 8 percent of positive tests, originated in other Tennessee counties.) There are currently 16 counties in Tennessee classified as “CWD-positive,” and 22 counties in the western third of the state are part of a larger CWD management zone. Regulations prohibit the transportation of certain deer parts between CWD management and non-management counties.
But if Kelly’s allegations hold any water, then these numbers might be inflated. Ironically, that could also increase the likelihood that hunters have brought CWD into counties where it didn’t previously exist. Since Tennessee allows free transfer of CWD-positive carcasses between CWD-positive counties—in fact, it requires those carcasses be disposed of in positive counties only—there’s a chance prions have traveled into counties that weren’t truly CWD-positive to begin with.
A map showing the current CWD Management zone in Tennessee. TWRA
These larger effects also rippled beyond the state’s border. When TWRA declared Henry County as CWD-positive in September 2021, it triggered the Kentucky Department of Wildlife Resources to launch its own Emergency Response Plan against CWD. This happened even though the state has yet to record a CWD-positive case within its borders. (Of the seven states that border Kentucky, six are currently known to harbor CWD. The one exceptions is Indiana.)
“Based on the information provided by the TWRA, Kentucky Fish and Wildlife immediately activated its CWD Response Plan,” KDFW spokesperson Kevin Kelly tells Outdoor Life. “The plan for how to deal with a CWD detection in Kentucky or close to its border has been in place since 2002 and is updated periodically…Two years into the agency’s response, testing of thousands of tissue samples collected from deer in a five-county area of western Kentucky have not returned a positive detection of CWD.”
What This Means for Hunters
Kelly’s lawsuit is full of currently-unverified claims, however he doesn’t question the existence or severity of CWD as a problematic, contagious disease. Rather, he argues that TWRA mishandled both the testing process and interpreting and communicating the results. This might sow doubt among hunters in how agencies across the board handle CWD. But of the 44 state agencies that test for the disease, 32 of them use a second test to confirm results, National Deer Association chief communications director Lindsay Thomas, Jr. says. Testing strategies are constantly evolving to become more accurate, and they’ve come a long way already.
CWD testing methods have grown more sophisticated and reliable, and they continue to improve. John Patriquin / Portland Press Herald via Getty Images
“Not only do we have confidence in the methods and management techniques they’re using, but the tests they’re using have been studied up one side and down the other for a number of years, and continue to be studied,” he tells Outdoor Life. “When I was at the [International Chronic Wasting Disease] Symposium in June, a lot of posters and presentations were delving into how to improve upon these methods. These systems are reliable and they’re getting more reliable all the time.”
It’s taken decades for agencies nationwide to build working relationships with hunters in their state in terms of CWD data collection, testing, information dissemination, and regulatory action. If these allegations trouble you, Thomas has a message for you: keep engaging on the issue.
“Hunters have a role to play here. When hunters and agencies see each other as opponents rather than allies, that doesn’t go well,” Thomas says. “I wouldn’t say we so much encourage hunters to ‘have faith’ or ‘put their trust’ in agencies. Rather, we say get plugged into your agency. Listen to them. Go to public hearings, sign up for their emails, follow them on social media. Get to know your local agency biologist—whether you’re in a CWD zone, whether you’re near one, whether you might hunt in one, or whether you’re as far from CWD as some of us are fortunate enough to be.”
Kelly could not be reached for comment. The TWRA has not filed a legal response, court documents show, and a hearing date for the lawsuit has not yet been scheduled.
Five fishermen, including a pair of local California men known for appearing on the reality TV series, “The Bachelorette,” are lucky to be alive after their boat sank Monday off San Diego. The anglers were rescued after nearly 4 hours in the water by local tuna fishermen who happened to locate the shipwrecked men.Aaron Schwartzman, a firefighter, and Brayden Bowers, a travel nurse, reportedly met while filming the 20th season of “The Bachelorette,” and they are both listed as contestants on the ninth season of “Bachelor in Paradise,” which is scheduled to air later this month. Schwartzman decided to take Bowers and three of their buddies out on the “boat of his dreams” that he had recently purchased, according to an interview aired by San Diego’s KSWB-TV Fox-5. The five of them were fishing more than a dozen miles off the coast of Southern California when their fishing trip suddenly turned into a survival situation.“My buddy Gavin got his line stuck on the engine propeller,” Bowers told the news station. “So Aaron just went to the back of the boat to lift the engine up and try and untangle it. All of a sudden, as soon as he stands on the swim deck, the boat literally just sunk.”
In under 60 seconds the boat had gone under, according to the survivors, and the five men went into the Pacific, bobbing in heavy swells.
“You think of the next steps, but what are the next steps when you’re 15 miles in the ocean in a wind swell?” said Schwartzman. “We weren’t able to send a distress signal at all. The only thing you have out there is hope, hope that somebody finds you, hope that a helicopter flies over.”
Fortunately, the group of swimmers were military, dispatch, and medical professionals—all trained for emergencies. Bowers said the five men locked arms and started kicking and padding toward shore.
“We were looking for yellowfin tuna, then found a school of men,” Keeran, who rescued the struggling swimmers.
“It never ever occurs to you as a rescuer that you might need rescuing,”
Bowers said. “But when you do, it’s good to know that people will step up the way you would.”
Apart from the lost fishing boat, the ordeal turned out as well as it could have, with no one injured or requiring medical attention.
“We don’t consider ourselves heroes; we’re doing whatever any other fisherman would consider doing,” Keeran said. “I’m just so grateful by the grace of God, we actually did see something reflective, just the things that had to add up just to get to them.
This summer, high school student Lindsey Stallworth was fossil hunting on her family’s timber land in Monroe County, Alabama, when she discovered bone fragments embedded in rock. Stallworth and Drew Gentry, her biology teacher who was fossil hunting with her, followed the trail of bone up a hill and discovered the skull of a prehistoric whale that may be a new species.“We saw something and we were like ‘oh my gosh, what is this?’” Stallworth told AL.com. “Once we started digging into it and looking, we slowly realized what we had actually found.”
Gentry, a paleontologist, believes the whale may be a species previously unknown to scientists. He says the skull may belong to a whale that’s similar to, but smaller than, Alabama’s state fossil, a 50-to-60-foot prehistoric whale called the Basilosaurus cetoides. He believes the new discovery is more similar to the species zygorhiza, which has been unearthed in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
Millions of years ago Alabama was covered by ocean, and many residents regularly look for shark teeth and other ancient fossils; Stallworth, 16, has been finding fossils on the family farm since she was a kid. Taking Gentry’s biology class had encouraged her to expand her search for ancient marine life.
“My family mainly looks for different types of shark teeth, but we are realizing now there was a lot of stuff we’ve never recognized was there,” Stallworth told Good News Network. She had shown Gentry a bag of teeth she’d collected over the years. One tooth in particular caught his eye, and he asked if they could return to the area where she had discovered it.
Stallworth and Gentry spent a week excavating the skull with dental picks and other small hand tools until they uncovered most of the lower jaw. The two spent most of the summer extracting the skull and later transported it to a paleontology laboratory at their high school, the Alabama School of Math and Science in Mobile.
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“We don’t yet know if the entire skeleton is there, but the preservation is pretty fantastic,” Gentry told. “There are lots of different bones sort of protruding from the hill that we were digging in, so it’s likely more of the skeleton is present.”
Stallworth will continue her fossil work with Gentry during her junior and senior years.
“I already loved biology and I had originally wanted to be a marine biologist,” she said. “But this is more like marine paleontology because what we see is from the ocean.
Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources announced a new state-record sheepshead was caught Sept. 17 from Tangier Sound. Angler Brian Summerlin from the small town of Princess Anne in Somerset County caught the fish from Chesapeake Bay’s eastern shore waters, just north of the Virginia state line.“I thought it was a black drum at first, due to the way the fish was fighting with some big head shakes, but then I saw it was a very large sheepshead as it surfaced near the boat,” Summerlin said.
Summerlin knew his oversize fish was a contender for a state record after noting the current Maryland fish stats online. He then took his catch to Sea Hawk Sports Center in nearby Pocomoke City, where it was unofficially weighed and photographed.
From there Summerlin transported his record-size sheepshead to the Kool Ice and Seafood Company in the Chesapeake waterfront town of Cambridge for official measuring. There it tipped the certified scales at an official 16.6 pounds, with a length of 26.25 inches.
It tops the previous Maryland sheepshead record weighing 14.1 pounds, caught Aug. 9, 2020 by Daniel Mastronardi Jr. from southern Chesapeake Bay, who was using a crab for bait in 15 feet of water. (Curiously, Maryland keeps separate records for different water bodies; Summerlin’s qualifies as the Chesapeake Bay record. Another state-record sheepshead for the Atlantic division that weighed 18 pounds was caught in the Ocean City Inlet in 2017.)
Summerlin also used a soft crab for bait, and his new sheepshead record was caught in 15 feet of water, too. The crab was fitted to a sliding sinker “fishfinder rig” with an 8/0 circle hook. He used spinning tackle with 60-pound test braided line and a 60-pound test fluorocarbon leader.
Sheepshead, with rows of human-like teeth protecting the palate, are notoriously difficult to hook. Joe Cermele
Sheepshead are a highly-sought marine sportfish, avidly targeted by anglers throughout their inshore, and near-shore ocean range. They have light-colored delicate flesh and are valued as table fare.
Sheepshead have teeth that look oddly similar to sheep’s teeth, hence their common name. They have hard plates in their mouths for crushing shells when feeding on oysters, mussels, snails, barnacles, and other crustaceans. Their teeth and hard mouth structure make them particularly difficult to hook, and they can be spooky, stealthy targets for anglers, who target them around submerged rocks, pilings, bridge abutments, and reefs.
Sheepshead range widely throughout the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, extending as far south as Brazil and north to New York. Much of the angling effort for sheepshead is in the southeast, from Maryland through the Carolinas and Florida and along the Gulf Coast, though record fish have been caught as far north as New Jersey.
The IGFA all-tackle world-record sheepshead weighed 21-pounds, 4-ounces, caught by Wayne Desselle in New Orleans in Apr. 1982. He was using 20-pound test line and shrimp for bait.
Aside from Desselle’s all-tackle 21-pound 4-ounce fish, Summerlin’s 16.6-pound Maryland record sheepshead is larger than any other current IGFA line class record.
đăTroy Broyles is a bowhunter and Missouri State Trooper whose years of legwork and door-knocking helped him tag a giant buck in September. Although he now lives and works in southern Missouri near Thayer, he used to be stationed in Carroll County east of Kansas City. During his time there, the young sportsman met plenty of private landowners who gave him permission to hunt deer on their properties.
Broyles still hunts some of those properties and says the long drive across the state is well worth it. On the evening of Sept. 17, he killed the biggest buck of his hunting career: a 21-point behemoth with 190-plus inches of antler. The buck weighed more than 250 pounds.
“I had trail camera photos of the buck last year on the same farm, but never saw him while hunting,” Broyles tells Outdoor Life. “I placed cameras out before the 2023 bow season on the same farm, same spot. I checked them on opening day of the bow season [Sept. 15] and had photos on both cameras of the buck during late afternoon.”
Broyles got trail cam photos of the buck last season. He went to the same spot on the same farm this year. Courtesy Troy Broyles
Broyles didn’t get to hunt the area until Sept. 17. He walked in that afternoon, setting up a ladder and lock-on stand near a creek crossing where he could see a standing corn field 20 yards away. His stand was about 80 yards from where his trail cameras had recorded the giant buck two days prior.
“The wind was good for hunting the field edge and creek crossing where I set my tree stand,” says Broyles. “I got settled in about 3 p.m. but didn’t see much for a couple hours. Then I saw antlers in the corn, about 100 yards way. Using binoculars, I saw him stand up, and start walking my way, eventually to the edge of the woods and the corn field. He was feeding the whole time with no other deer around.”
Broyles recognized the massive buck from the trail cam photos. The deer slowly worked its way through the woods and headed to the trail leading to the creek crossing where Broyles was set up.
“When he was at eight yards, I drew my bow, aimed, released, and hit him right behind the shoulder,” he says. “When the arrow sailed through his chest he made a couple big leaps, then started slow walking away. He fell 35 yards from my stand.”
The buck had an estimated green score of 195 2/8 inches. Courtesy Troy Broyles
An excited Broyles called his wife Samantha at home. Then he reached out to his local buddy Dalton Hutchenson to help him get the buck out of the woods. Broyles met Hutchenson at a road near his hunting spot, and they drove close to where the buck was down. They estimated its live weight around 270 pounds, and then field dressed the deer before dragging it to Broyles’ vehicle for the 5.5-hour trip home.
“I packed the buck with ice, and took off for my house,” he said. “It’s a long drive, but well worth it for a whitetail of a lifetime.”
Broyles is having the buck mounted by Cane Creek Taxidermy in Poplar Bluff. The taxidermist gave the 21-point non-typical an estimated green score of 195 2/8 inches. After the 60-day drying period is complete, the rack will be officially scored for entry into the Pope & Young record book.
A wild game processor in South Carolina made a startling discovery on Saturday after a group of hunters brought in an 11-foot alligator they’d killed. Upon prying open the gator’s mouth, they found a deer antler embedded in its lower jaw. Cordray’s Venison Processing shared photos of the unusual discovery on Facebook, which show the intact, three-point antler stuck in the soft tissue of the alligator’s mouth.
The most logical explanation, according to owner Michael Cordray, was that the alligator preyed on the whitetail buck and then ate it—antlers and all. An alligator over 10 feet long is certainly capable of taking down a small buck, and the reptiles are known to ambush deer when they come down to the water’s edge for a drink. Cordray said it’s also possible (but unlikely) that the deer was already dead when the gator found it.
“We determined it has been that way six months or less, and likely happened while the alligator was chewing,” Cordray told McClatchy News. “It just shows you the destructive power of an alligator, that they even try to eat the antlers.”
The horn was wedged firmly in place with the three tines pointing toward the roof of the gator’s mouth. This likely would have caused excruciating pain anytime the alligator closed its jaws. After taking some photos of the wedged-in antler, the processors removed it.
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To Cordray’s point, the wild game processor based in Charleston County has found plenty of odd items inside alligators over the years. In April 2021, they cut open the stomach of a 12-foot alligator and found five hunting dog collar tags, multiple bobcat claws and turtle shells, a bullet casing, and a spark plug. They later determined that one of the collar tags belonged to a deer dog that had gone missing 24 years prior.
Louisiana waterfowl guides Hunter Soileau and Jered Cizek helped their clients wrangle a monster of an alligator on Sept. 22. The gator weighed almost 900 pounds and measured nearly 14 feet long.
Soileau, 29, has guided duck hunters since he was 15 and he now manages Full Strap and Stringer Outfitter in Deville. He’d only been guiding alligator hunts for a week when he and 18-year-old Cizek headed out with three clients from Arkansas. It was also Cizek’s first gator hunt. The two guides and three clients were in Soileau’s 18-foot johnboat, which they launched on private water near Sicily Island.
Their first stop was checking a pair of baited lines that Soileau and Cizek had set out the night before. The lines were rigged with heavy treble hooks and had an estimated breaking strength of 1,000 pounds.
“The first line we checked was broken,” Soileau tells Outdoor Life. “Which was really weird because nothing is going to part 1,000-pound test line.”
Three clients from Arkansas were onboard and they helped the guides dispatch the giant gator. Courtesy Hunter Soileau
They checked out the break in the line, and Soileau thought it was possible that the bait had hooked a small alligator, which was then eaten by a bigger gator. Pretty soon he noticed some bubbles coming up near the boat.
Cizek had hooked the gator in its tail, and when the massive tail broke the surface, they were blown away by its size. He and Soileau tied the line to their boat and threw out a few more heavy lines to get more hooks in the gator. It thrashed and rolled for at least 30 minutes, and Soileau realized he needed to get a hook in its head if they wanted to control it.
So, he quickly fastened a 10/0 treble hook to the tip of a cane pole he had onboard. He wrapped the heavy line around the pole and poked it down in the dark water, feeling for the gator’s head.
“I felt it hit, pulled on the pole to set the hook, and told Jered to haul hard on the line,” Soileau says. “That set the hook into the right side of its head near the jaw.”
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Even with all that leverage, the battle went on for another hour or so. They got the alligator close enough to the boat for one of the clients, Maranda Swain, to shoot it several times with a .22, which is usually enough to kill a big gator, Soileau explains. But this gator proved tougher than most, and Swain had to swap out the .22 for a 9mm handgun to finish the job.
The giant gator was taken back to the boat ramp and loaded into a truck. They brought it to a taxidermist, who told Soileau it was the biggest he’d ever seen. It tipped the scales at 890 pounds and measured 13 feet 9 inches long with a nearly 6-foot girth. Soileau estimates the alligator’s age around 70 years old.
“I had no idea that giant of an alligator was around,” he says. “That’s the biggest one we’ve ever seen, and we likely never will see another one that big.”
On a cold night in Graham County, Kansas in December 2022, game warden Jacob Brooke watched a small light dart through a field of tall grass in the dark. He waited for the light to stop and stay in one place. It emanated from a GPS collar strapped around the neck of Brooke’s K9 sidekick, a 7-year-old black Labrador retriever named Kreed. It’s a good thing when Kreed stops moving. That usually means he found something important—something that could change the course of a wildlife crime investigation.
Brooke, 42, and Kreed were responding to a call from a landowner who had witnessed a truck exhibiting suspicious behavior on a road that cut through his property. When the landowner heard a gunshot ring out from near the truck, he hopped in his own truck and followed the offending vehicle, snapping photos of the license plates. Eventually, the truck stopped and the passenger side door opened. A guy got out and swore up and down that he had only shot a coyote. Then he climbed back in the truck and sped off, and the landowner called Brooke.
Kreed found the .243 casing in the road within minutes of arriving at the scene. Even though coyotes are considered a non-game species in Kansas, the shooter had broken the law anyway by shooting onto private property without permission. But Brooke had a sneaking suspicion that the animal the suspect had shot wasn’t actually a coyote. He just needed Kreed to figure out what species—and where—the animal was.
This is Kreed’s job as a conservation dog, and he’s very good at it. Brooke has put him through a rigorous training program to detect and track the scent of humans, deer, turkeys, pheasants, and waterfowl. The duo is one of 10 units in the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks, and Tourism’s K9 program, which has assisted in countless criminal investigations since its founding in 2002. The dogs are trained to sniff out everything from pronghorn to paddlefish roe, and when they find something of interest, they sit and wait patiently for their reward.
In Kreed’s case, that reward is a quick game of fetch with his rubber Kong. He’d already been rewarded that night for finding the bullet casing on the road. It wouldn’t be long before he was rewarded again for finding something else.
K9 handlers train the dogs with rolled-up towels that carry scent. Kreed’s signature orange Kong is never far away. Jacob Brooke
A Man and His Dog
Brooke met Kreed for the first time in 2017. Prior to that year, KDWPT had gotten their conservation dogs from pounds, shelters, and families who were giving up their pets. But this time, Brooke had $1,000 of agency money to spend on a new dog of his choosing, he tells Outdoor Life. After ample research, he landed on Silver Lake Retrievers in Forman, North Dakota. The breeder drove a wiggly 3-month-old puppy over nine hours to Salina, Kansas.
“I thought, ‘Man this dog is gonna be pretty cool. He’s got what it takes,’” Brooke says. “He was jumping in the grass, fetching, sniffing, he was fearless. So we purchased him right there on the spot. From then on, he’s been beside me pretty much 365 days a year.”
Conservation dogs live with their handlers full-time, Brooke explains, so he moved Kreed in immediately. Brooke would have to wait until Kreed was at least a year old to start formally training him. K9 trainers wait this long to ensure their dogs are old enough to comprehend and retain the training. In the meantime, he focused on socializing the puppy, teaching him basic obedience, and exposing him to as much of the world around him as possible.
When Kreed was just 5 months old, he got away from Brooke at a KDWPT satellite office and ran into the road. A truck hauling a camper plowed into the puppy, running over his legs.
“He’s just running, being a dog, and here comes the truck pulling the camper, and it hits him broadside,” Brooke recalls. “The rear tire on the driver’s side hit Kreed in the rear part of his body. I holler to the office manager to call the vet and I run outside and scoop him off the ground. He’s trying to bite my face because he’s in so much pain, and he’s bleeding.”
Once Brooke got Kreed to the vet, they reassured him that his dog was very much alive and not dealing with any major internal organ damage. He did, however, break his legs and all the ribs on his left side. The vet instructed Brooke to drive Kreed to the veterinary hospital at Kansas State University, over two and a half hours away in Manhattan.
When he’s not sniffing out bullet casings, Kreed loves doing demonstrations for the public—especially kids. Jacob Brooke
“This dog wasn’t certified yet. But luckily, my boss believed that he could be great. There was just something about him. So we got him fixed,” Brooke says. “They plated each leg, wired stuff together. For him to go through that, he just has this toughness to him. And after three or four days, he was grabbing pens out of the nurses’ pockets. They were like, ‘Can you please come get him? He’s tormenting everyone.’”
Training for the Job
Kreed’s formal training began when he turned a year old. He and Brooke had to complete 400 hours of instruction in nine weeks or less to be certified.
“The first step is man-tracking, where the dog is tracking a human being. That’s what the majority of that time is spent on,” Brooke says. “You run multiple tracks every day, tracking different people with different scents. Then we go into [the second category of] wildlife detection. Waterfowl, turkey, and deer are the three pretty common species, and then each officer will dive into something different in their area. I’m on the edge of north-central and northwest Kansas, and we have pheasants out here, so we train on pheasants.”
The third major element of training is evidence recovery, or what Brooke calls “area searches.”
“They’re looking for any items that humans have touched and handled. Your cell phone, your wallet, anything that’s been handled a little bit and has scent on it,” he says. “Then we train on burnt gunpowder residue, shells or casings, guns, things people leave behind. [Poachers] don’t always pick up their spent casings.”
At the beginning of a search, Brooke snaps a simple nylon collar around Kreed’s neck and pats his chest to get him fired up. The noise of the plastic buckle signals to Kreed that it’s time to work, and the verbal command “search” sends him on a frenzied hunt for any sort of scent. Whenever possible, Brooke works Kreed into the wind to help increase his odds of catching a whiff of something.
“As soon as you snap that collar on, he gets jacked up. He rears back and is so ready to go. Then he hears ‘search,’ and he knows ‘I am out there looking for anything I trained on,’” Brooke says.
“He’s always jacked,” Brooke says, adding that Kreed takes his job very seriously. Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks, and Tourism
He keeps Kreed on a lead during detection and tracking work. If Kreed goes off-leash for an area search, he stays within Brooke’s immediate eyesight. K9s are often used to help find missing persons, children, and non-violent offenders.
Once Kreed finds something, Brooke rewards him then and there for his work. That means getting really excited, showering Kreed in praise, and throwing the rubber Kong while photographing evidence or taking notes.
“I’m gonna be 43 years old,” Brooke says, “and I act like a kid when I’m excited about him.”
Just Another Day
Back in the landowner’s field in Graham County, Brooke noticed the light had stopped moving. When he approached, he found Kreed sitting obediently next to the steaming body of a mule deer doe. More praise and more fetch ensued before Brooke carried on with the task at hand: taking notes of the scene. The landowner declined the meat, which eventually went to a nearby family in need. Yesterday, KDWPT announced that the suspect recently settled in court after pleading guilty for hunting without written permission from a landowner and shooting a deer without a license. The suspect paid a $1,500 fine and forfeited the rifle used in the incident.
Kreed struck again on Sept. 23 when he discovered a stash of dead ducks near a marsh in Jamestown, Kansas. A disorganized group of eight shooters left three birds behind after reportedly getting over-excited about the teal opener and failing to count properly. They even handed over a fourth duck during questioning. All eight were charged with shooting over their limit.
When Brooke and Kreed aren’t sniffing out wildlife criminals, they’re doing demonstrations for the public and teaching safety to kids. At a talk on boating safety, Kreed sat patiently on a jetski while sporting a life jacket and a boonie hat.
Brooke and Kreed present information on jetski safety. Jacob Brooke
Even though Kreed works fewer than half of Brooke’s cases, the two are always on the clock together. When Brooke has a day off, Kreed has a day off—and that only happens twice a month. Kreed will likely work for another year or two before retiring to Brooke’s home full-time with his three other dogs: a chocolate Lab, a yellow Lab, and a Brittany spaniel. Then Brooke will start all over again and continue his job as a K9 handler with a third working dog. Whatever dog falls next in line behind Kreed and Brooke’s first dog, a female black Lab named Kooper, will have a big collar to fill.
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“Kreed deserves a little bit of attention. There’s something about him. He’s so cool, and so tough,” Brooke says. “When you go to a [demonstration] and there will be 150 kids of all different ages, they’ll go through a few different stations or do different things, and then you ask them ‘What did you like the best?’ And their answer is always ‘the dog.’ He’s always the coolest part.”
