Photo courtesy of the Des Moines Register
Farmer Marvin Clark says it was a mercy kill. He didn’t shoot the tall-racked buck out of lust for its antlers, but because it was stuck in a creek bottom with a broken leg. The Iowa man claims the trophy whitetail was killed in 2012, but the state’s Department of Natural Resources is calling him a liar. It says the buck was really killed illegally by an Oklahoma man and is refusing to return the confiscated rack to Clark.
According to the Des Moines Register, conservation agents raided a rural-area garage Nov. 11, 2013, after an informant told authorities four men from Oklahoma were staying there and hunting illegally. Agents believed the men had hunted in Iowa without licenses in 2012 and 2013. When they entered owner Rodney Alexander’s garage, they found Leonard Monks, 56, his two sons, and a friend.
Monks confirmed the agents’ suspicions and admitted that all four of them had hunted for two years without licenses. Agents found the trophy rack sitting on a microwave and seized it as evidence in the poaching case against the four Oklahomans and their Iowa host.
The buck’s head had been photographed lying on the ground and sent to conservation agents by an informant Nov. 14, 2012, three days after the Oklahomans went home. The following year, days before the agents’ raid, a second informant provided screenshots of text messages in which Monks claimed he had killed the deer.
But Clark, a friend of Alexander’s, said he brought the antlers over to show the visiting hunters, and that they did not kill the deer. According to him, the deer was killed a year to the day earlier when he was plowing a field near a creek. He looked over and saw the buck lying at the bottom with a compound fracture in its leg. He had an unused landowner/tenant tag, so he went home and got his bow to put the buck out of its misery.
Clark said the buck weighed between 250 and 300 pounds, so he cut off its head, called his brother, and the two moved the body out together some time later. The body, he claims, was infected, so he decided not to eat the meat. He moved the carcass to a nearby area for it to decompose.
Fast-foward one year and Clark’s rack was found by the agents — with the story’s corresponding tag information and harvest date.
Clark had went home and was absent when the raid took place.
Conservation officers believe one of the Oklahomans actually shot the buck during their first illegal visit, using Clark’s tag to cover their tracks. Clark admitted to loaning the Oklahomans a truck to use while they hunted, landing him a charge of aiding and abetting. A charge against him for unlawful possession was also given for his story of the buck’s death.
Assistant Marion County Attorney Benjamin Hayek called Clark’s story “self-serving” and “incredible.” He pointed out in a court brief Wednesday that Clark’s own words prove he violated state law by removing the head prior to tranporting the body — contrary to an Iowa administrative rule that requires the head to remain attached while the body is being moved for tagging and identification purposes.
The rack, estimated to be worth $5,000 to $20,000, has legal red tape wrapped firmly around its tines, with neither party forfeiting the right to keep the trophy. Clark’s misdemeanor charge of unlawful possession was dropped by a district court judge in October, but the DNR refuses to return the rack.
“I don’t think they (the DNR) wanted to go back and admit they were wrong,” Clark said in an interview Nov. 23. “That’s why they were pushing this, and they’re still pushing it.”
“The DNR does fully support the efforts of the Marion County Attorney’s Office, and if we prevail in court, we do intend to keep the antlers that have been forfeited,” said DNR spokesman Kevin Baskins.
The conflict has drawn attention from a wide range of observers, including Iowa Representative Greg Heartsill, who is calling on the DNR to return the rack since Clark was never convicted of a crime relating to the deer’s death.
Heartsill is also advocating for the administrative rule on deer carcass transportation to be changed.
Confiscation by law enforcement has drawn criticism from both democrats and republicans — both at the federal and state level. An investigation by the Register found Iowa had confiscated $43 million worth of cash and property over the last six years alone.
The legal battle over the trophy rack will continue Dec. 21 at a hearing in Marion County’s Knoxville. Clark’s charge of aiding and abetting will proceed to trial in March.
The Oklahomans, Alexander, and Alexander’s son were all convicted on various charges of unlawful hunting or aiding and abetting.