New Hampshire Man Caught in Illegal Deer Kill Scam

By Jim on December 11th, 2008

A strategically placed business card led to the arrest of David Howard, 44, who is charged with falsely registering a deer and trespassing. Authorities say he killed a deer on posted property in Lee, lied about it on a registration form in Greenland then moved the deer’s “gut pile” to Stratham to avoid prosecution.

But that last move tripped him up. A Fish and Game investigator who had found the pile earlier in Lee had stuck his business card in the deer’s stomach. When Howard led them to the supposed kill site, investigators pulled out the card as proof that he had moved the pile.

“At this time Howard handed (Officer William) Boudreau a … confession that he had typed up that morning,” according to court records.

Ouch. You’d think that if he was going to kill a deer illegally on posted property that he would have used a bow. Apparently the gun shot was what tipped off the property owner to this nefarious deed:

The investigation began Nov. 8 when a Lee property owner reported hearing a gunshot and then finding “gut pile remains” of a deer in the Maud Jones Memorial Forest. From there, investigators found drag marks leading to a locked gravel pit owned by the University of New Hampshire, where Howard is the public works supervisor.

One thing that puzzles me about this story is why he’d bother to shoot a deer on posted property in the first place? There are tons of deer around so why bother to go onto somebody else’s property to shoot one illegally? As if there aren’t many other places he could have hunted them? Seems like he went to a lot more bother than he would have had to deal with otherwise if he’d just followed the law.