http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opfeedback.jsp?id=ns238199#23

BE CAREFUL if you go hunting illegally in Florida. That deer you're about to take a potshot at might be a robot

Officers of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission have employed a robotic deer - dubbed "Robo Deer" - to help then nab poachers. According to a recent report on CNN's website, officers set up the realistic mechanical deer, complete with moving head and twitching tail, and then wait and see what happens next. So far Robo Deer has been run down by a truck, wrestled to the ground by a man armed with a knife, and shot repeatedly.

As the arrests have grown, so has Robo Deer's legend. Officers have been called by hunters reporting sightings of the mechanical animal in places it has never been.

"A lot of them want us to know we didn't fool them," a conservation officer said. "Then they want to know how we're able to get him to jump fences. That's when we just say, 'It's a secret, and we can't discuss that'."

Most state game dept have them. They catch some fools every year.

In CT where I used to hunt the DEP set one on the
road adjacent to where I hunt.They caught alot of
road hunters.I was suprised how many they caught.
And most,lived in the area.

In Pennsylvania, the Game Commission has been using full body mounted deer to catch slime-bag road hunters for years. Although several people have "legally" shot the decoy by first moving the required distance from the road.

cwilson

A friend of mine shot one a few years back. It was at night and on posted land! I don't know if he ever got back his grandads Win.94 Fuzz

It sure put a halt to night roadhunting on the highways that border our lease in south Georgia.

A few years back we say one headed out of the woods one night. We stopped and put the spotlight on it. We all piled out of the rig and went running up to it. The Gamies must have wondered what the hell we were doing. We got around the robo and my buddy started taking pictures soon a couple other trucks stopped and the posed for pictures also. The Gamies got aggravated and chased us off. It was a hoot.

[ 02-06-2003, 19:34: Message edited by: Oleman ]

Read about about an a$$hole in Georgia that had been busted for shooting a mechanized deer, bear and turkey before he was jailed. Game wardens called it the Mechanized Grand Slam.

I saw it one summer night while driving back from a vacation.It was along side the highway,next to a "You are entering Six Rivers National Forest" sign.Around the turn was a DFG rig trying to look discreet.

Anybody who'd shoot that thing would have to be drunk or have a horrible case of buck fever.I'd never seen one before,and knew exactly what it was when I saw it.Pretty funny.

Brian.

When I lived in Tx this was the greatest source of "Dumb A$$ " jokes going ,see them in the paper/TV news all time. Big problem!!
Haven't heard of them using it up here in ID but I'm sure they do. In TX it wasn't a joke for the PERP though confiscate all guns and vehicles on the spot and your going to see the jail cell up close and personal!! Which is the way it should be. I remmber watching one guy on TV new caught shooting across 4 lanes of traffic on I 20 and it was busy!!!

[ 02-07-2003, 00:06: Message edited by: Gunnut45/454 ]

dog,
I think Kentucky holds the record for dummies shooting at robo deer. The same guy was caught two years in a row for shooting at robo deer.
Bryan

This reminds me of when I was a teenager, my hunting buddy wanted to be a taxidermist because that's what his Dad did for a living. He had this old Deer mount his very first attempt, it had to be the ugliest mount I've ever seen. We salvaged the glass eyes out of it for his dad, and took into the mountains about three days before season opened! The day before opening, we headed up to our spot and on the way we thought we'd check out "OUR" deer to see that it was still in place and that sucker was so shot up we couldn't believe it! We did a similar thing with pheasant heads for all the "Road Hunters" , that was truly one of the funniest things to watch a guy crawl a 1/4 mile on his belly in the mud and cow manure to sneek up and shoot a pheasent head!

Here in NC we call them JAKE the Fake but anyway in Eastern NC they caught a guy about 11pm shooting it, wrote him a ticket and let him on his way and the same wardens caught the same guy shooting it again at 3am five counties away.

Opening weekend of the 2001 season we made a town run to register a deer. Standing along the road side was a dandy 8 point white tail. As we approached, it turned it's head to watch us drive by. We all knoticed that just it head moved and not the neck. We talked about going back and having our picture taken with the robo deer.
Heard later that someone else had done just that and the wardens came out and loaded up their throphy and left. No sense of humor I guess.

Guide 2

I watched a show on TV about using that thing to catch poachers. They had some good clips on there of guys running the deer down with there trucks. Emptying the mag into the thing out of the back of the truck. One guy was shooting before the truck had even come to a stop. One guy was reloading to keep shooting the thing when the wildlife cops came running out to grab him, the fellow was totally perplexed why this deer would not die he knew he was hitting it.

Mark

We used to plant pheasant heads in thickets on the side of the road too. you could come back by a couple days later it would be shot to hell or completely gone. Wish I could have stayed on it and watched-Probably would have been funny enough that a fellow would have to change pants

I've seen one of these and it still pisses me off. I was hunting with my son when he was 13 1/4 mil north of my parent's farmhouse in a bean field that was half in Mo. and half in Ia. during the Mo. season. My son shot a buck and to load it up, you have to drive around the road into Iowa and come back south across the field to where his buck lay. As soon as we came around the road, there was the bogus buck in the field. I stopped and pointed it out to my son, told him it was a fake(it was obvious to me.) Since your rifles have to be in a case when transported in Iowa, we'd left them at the fence at the edge of our property. When we pulled back out after loading the budk, guess what. Those fuckers turn on the lights, pull us over and hassle us until even my son was mad. Of course they asked us where we shot it, and tried to act like we killed it in Ia. I told them where our house was(you could see the lights) and said I sure as hell know where the state line was and we were a quarter of a mile south of it. Again, we had no rifle, didn't give anybody any reason to stop us, wasted a half hour of my time arguing with these assholes. Meanwhile it had got dark, so we'd missed the last hour of hunting that day, which really pissed me off, since I work 6 days a week, and was hunting a 2 week season. I've seen their robo deer-hope never again.

jstevens
So you were splitting hairs with shooting in that field? What would have happen if the buck ran into the IA side? Did you have an IA Non Res?

Some how Transporting it through IA sounds dicey to me. More trouble then it would be worth.

Gunnut- I don't think hunting in my own state is splitting hairs. Of course I didn't have an Iowa license, they limit their tags while Mo. welcomes anyone with a checkbook. As for transporting the deer through Iowa, yes it's a pain, but it's not a damn bit different than transporting a deer or elk through Iowa and Nebraska on the way back from Wyoming, which I've done many times. Would you or anyone else drag a legally killed deer a quarter of a mile if you could back up and load it on your tailgate? I don't think so. Just because it's near the line doesn't change anything. A lot of the farms in our area have land part in Ia.- part in Mo., I suppose the people who own those just shouln't hunt in either season, so they don't have to worry about splitting hairs.

Thought you ment the bullet proof one i shot at at 20 yds this year and he just kept on going.

Seen one heck my son and I SHOT one, sort of.....

We were hunting in Eastern Washington when we spotted one waaaaaaaaaaaay out across a field (at a lazered 525 yards). It had the nicest horns we'd seen all season so we got out the spotting scope and glassed it from the window of the truck. After watching it's head movement I figured out that it was a fake. Just for fun my son and I bailed out of the truck and bellied down in the field to do a little dry firing practice at a deer at that range. Neither my son or I had any ammo on us when the Gamey came up and asked us just what the hell we were doing. He didn't have much sense of humor when I told him we just wanted to do a little practice firing at that range.