The Oklahoma Game Wardens Facebook page shared a few photos and a public announcement on a game warden that caught a poacher on the dating app, Bumble.
“As Game Wardens our personal lives are often blurred into our professional lives. This is often the case when it comes to social media, personal cell phones, and now dating apps,” Oklahoma Game Wardens wrote on Facebook
Game Warden Cannon Harrison who lives and works in McIntosh County shared the photos with the Facebook page who reshared them. The reason–to show the public why bragging about doing illegal activities on dating apps is not the smartest move.
Harrison shared screenshots of their conversation where the lady on the dating app reached out to him to tell him that she had just killed a ‘Bigo’ buck. Obviously not knowing Harrison was a game warden, her date night took a turn for the worst!
“Honestly, the first thing I thought was that it was someone who was messing with me because they knew who I was,” he told The Washington Post. “It seemed too good to be true.”
The season in which licensed Oklahoma residents are allowed to hunt deer with a rifle had already ended and the only legal way to shoot a deer was to do it with a bow or crossbow.
Knowing this, he decided to play along and ask her a few questions to see if she would reveal how she killed the animal.
“Hell yeah, get em with a bow?” he wrote back, the screenshots on Facebook revealed.
The woman replied, “Well we don’t need to talk about that.”
Harrison then asked the lady if she had been spotlighting, a practice that is illegal in the state of Oklahoma where a hunter shines a bright light into the animal’s eyes, creating a literal deer-in-the-headlights effect.
Spotlighting is also referred to as spotting or head lighting and is considered by some hunters as unsportsmanlike, as well as raises safety concerns since the spotlighters are not able to see as far as the bullet will usually travel.
The woman eventually revealed that she shot the deer on her ranch and Harrison asked if she’d share a picture of the deer with him.
She sent him a photo with her crouched down beside the dead deer holding up its antlers and a few other photos and the conversation ended there.
Armed with woman’s name and general whearabouts, “Oklahoma Game wardens arrived at the property she killed the deer and made the illegal deer case,” Oklahoma Game Wardens wrote on Facebook
The woman ended up pleading guilty to her crimes and having to pay multiple fines for her actions which led up to around $2400.