Last week, as I glanced out the living room window, I saw the first arrivals. There they were near the bird feeder, decked out in their formal wear of black and gray and looking like tiny maître d’s…the vile little creatures have come to seat us at the table of bitter cold until mid-March of next year.

I was expecting them, as they slip in like ghosts of winter’s past around this time each year.  Cinching their arrival, our TV meteorologist had forecast only two more days of unseasonably warm weather before the onslaught of a bitter cold front accompanied with snow. The weather cursing harbingers of winter… the snowbirds… the black-eyed juncos… have arrived, and they are bringing winter.

Hopping around under the bird feeder scarfing up scraps and stray sunflower seeds, the tiny birds seem happy and cheerful. How they survive the Arctic conditions they embrace, I have no idea.

As I stared at the Northern intruders, I realized the sunflower feeder was running low and was in need of filling. Putting on my jacket, I got the seed bucket and headed to the feeder. I can’t have the local birds or our new arrivals going hungry.

Lifetime suspension from hunting, a first in Indiana

An Indiana Conservation Officer investigation has resulted in multiple charges, fines and the first lifetime hunting suspension of its kind in state history for a West Lafayette man.

Twenty-five-year-old Hanson Pusey was sentenced Nov. 10 in Warren County Court to a lifetime hunting suspension along with home detention, probation and payment of replacement fees. The verdict stemmed from an investigation by DNR Law Enforcement involving the illegal hunting of wild turkeys in Indiana and six other states.

In spring 2020, Indiana conservation officers in District 3 received information Pusey, whose hunting privileges had been suspended since March 2019, was still hunting and taking multiple turkeys illegally in Indiana and other states.

Using advanced surveillance techniques, investigators monitored Pusey, gathering evidence of poaching in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts, as well as in Indiana, where they documented him taking four spring turkeys in 2020, two after the season closed.

Officers also documented Pusey helping family and friends poach turkeys. Search warrants were served on the man’s residence, and in cooperation with the other states’ fish and wildlife law enforcement agencies, filed charges in all of them.

During the search of the residence, officers found Pusey had kept the spent shotgun hulls from turkeys he had harvested, identifying the states and dates he took them. Officers documented 83 spent casings in the collection dating back to 2012, including 14 dated within three months of his first suspension of hunting privileges in 2019. Four were listed by Pusey as being taken from Indiana.

Punishments for various charges from the other states included $4,125 in fines and costs and an eight-year hunting license suspension in Pennsylvania, $324 in fines and costs and an indefinite suspension in Connecticut, $700 in fines and costs and license suspension during probation in Massachusetts, $2,335 in fines and costs in Georgia, $278 in fines and costs in North Carolina, and $525 in fines and costs in Tennessee.

Pusey was charged again in February for hunting without permission and theft of a trail camera card in Warren County, despite the 2020 investigation and his convictions in the other states.

Indiana’s DNR urge citizens to report hunting or fishing violations or intentional acts of pollution, to call Indiana Conservation Officer Central Dispatch at 812-837-9536 or 1-800-TIP-IDNR.

Never know what you’ll get when you go fishing

Indiana Conservation Officers were recently reminded there is no such thing as routine training.

The first week of November, while completing sonar training on the White River near Raymond Street in Indianapolis, officers discovered what appeared to be multiple automobiles under the water. In all, five vehicles were located and marked for search and removal.

Members of the Indiana Conservation Officers Dive Team, with the assistance of Curtis Garage and Wrecker Service Inc., were able to remove the vehicles from the river.

After removal, it was confirmed all five vehicles were reported stolen dating back to 2008.

The vehicles were found as far as 40 yards from shore in a stretch where the river reached depths of 12 feet.

Indiana Conservation Officers Dive Team consists of 37 Public Safety SCUBA divers. They respond to and investigate drowning incidents and other types of water related investigations, including evidence recovery, vehicle recovery, swift water rescues and boat accidents across the state of Indiana.

Whiting hunter injured in tree stand fall

Indiana Conservation Officers are investigating a tree stand fall that occurred the morning of Nov. 12 in Cass County.

Approximately 9:35 a.m., county emergency dispatch received a call of a hunter injured after falling from a tree stand near the area of 200 West and 1000 North.

Daniel Badia, 71, of Whiting, was deer hunting from the stand when he lost his footing on the platform and fell. Not wearing a full body safety harness at the time, he fell approximately 14 feet, sustaining serious leg, arm and torso injuries. Badia was transported via ambulance to St. Elizabeth Hospital in Lafayette and later transferred to Ascension St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis.

Conservation officers remind Hoosiers the most common hunting-related injuries are from accidents involving tree stands and elevated platforms. All hunters should wear a full body safety harness when going up to and getting down from elevated platforms. For more information, see hunting.IN.gov.

Other assisting agencies included Cass County Sheriff’s Department, Cass County EMS, and the Lucerne and Royal Center fire departments.

Readers can contact the author by writing to this publication, or e-mail to jackspaulding@hughes.net.

Spaulding’s books, “The Best of Spaulding Outdoors,” and his latest, “The Coon Hunter And The Kid,” are available from Amazon.com in paperback or as a Kindle download.