A Greenville County deer hunter who says he was doing nothing more than glassing a roadside buck now finds himself at the center of a high‑stakes civil rights fight. After a poaching sting involving a fake deer ended with him in handcuffs and a night in jail, he is suing the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, arguing that officers turned routine wildlife enforcement into a personal crusade that cost him his reputation and nearly his livelihood.
The case of TIMOTHY SHANE HUFFMAN has already toppled the criminal charge that threatened his ability to hunt, and it is now moving into civil court where he claims wrongful arrest and malicious prosecution. Body camera footage, court filings and investigative reporting have combined to raise pointed questions about how far game wardens can go when they set out to catch poachers, and what happens when they target the wrong person.
The Night a “Career Case” Fell Apart
The confrontation that sparked the lawsuit unfolded during a 2024 sting in Greenville County, where South Carolina game wardens were using a deer decoy to catch illegal spotlighting. According to investigative records, officers with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (often referred to as SCDNR) had staged what one of them later described as a potential “career” case, a high‑profile bust they believed could showcase aggressive poaching enforcement. Instead, the operation ended with the arrest of Shane Huffman, who maintains that he had simply stopped his truck, looked at the decoy through binoculars while his rifle remained in the vehicle, and then tried to drive away when he realized the deer was not moving.
Video and court documents show that as Huffman pulled off, officers moved in, ordered him out of the truck and ultimately arrested him on a hunting violation tied to the decoy encounter. The agency framed the incident as part of a broader push against illegal night hunting, but the case soon unraveled in Greenville County court, where a judge dismissed the charge for lack of evidence. That outcome, detailed in investigative records, turned what was supposed to be a showcase prosecution into a liability for the officers involved and for South Carolina DNR leadership.
Who Is TIMOTHY SHANE HUFFMAN?
The hunter at the center of the dispute is identified in Greenville County filings as TIMOTHY SHANE HUFFMAN, a local outdoorsman who had built much of his free time and social life around deer season. Court documents list the civil case as “10082025 TIMOTHY SHANE HUFFMAN V SCDNR,” a caption that now formally pits him against the statewide law enforcement agency tasked with policing South Carolina’s woods and waterways. For Huffman, the sting did not just produce an embarrassing traffic stop; it threatened the “career” of hunting that he had cultivated over years of buying tags, managing land and mentoring friends and family in the field…