MAYES COUNTY — The Oklahoma Game Wardens in Mayes County are searching for a poacher who killed a buck with a rifle outside of the proper hunting season.
“Saturday, November 9th, we had a rather large buck found still alive, but mortally wounded, obviously hadn’t been there for very long,” said Oklahoma game warden Kody Moore. “It was found by individuals in the area. They called it in. We went and looked at it and it had been shot with a gun.”
While Oklahoma is currently in bow hunting season for deer, it’s still illegal to hunt deer with guns until Nov. 23.
The deer was killed near MidAmerica Industrial Park in Pryor.
Moore said these kind of incidents negatively impact the deer population.
“We time that season because we know that’s when the most people are going to be out there. That’s when they have the most legitimate chance of killing deer. We time that to be just past when the deer mates…I actually on my way here heard numerous calls of people [who] had hit deer. Well, they’re moving a lot. They are mating right now and we time our rifle season to just past that so we know that we’re insuring that we’re going to have a healthy population.”