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Brian Stone calls himself a “late-onset” hunter.
The Terre Haute resident was then a university student in southern Illinois, surrounded by the Shawnee National Forest. Hunting — for waterfowl, deer and more — was a way to sustain himself outside the industrial food system. But it was also a way to tap into the world around him.
“There’s something about hunting, that you’re connecting with nature,” Stone said. “… You’re out, you’re listening and you’re watching … You become really attuned to the changes of the seasons, the way that different weather fronts will bring in pushes of waterfowl.”
Alongside that awareness grew respect for those communities of wildlife.
Wildlife, he said, “belongs to all Hoosiers. When someone … violates the laws that have been put in place as part of a conservation model, they’re stealing from all of us. They’re stealing from all Hoosiers when they poach a deer, when they poach a turkey, or even non-game animals.”
But the 200 conservation officers patrolling an expansive state “can’t be everywhere at once.”
Now, Stone sits on the 17-member board that pays fellow Hoosiers for information leading to arrests of law-breakers. The Turn in a Poacher (TIP) program also rewards reports of illegal pollution.
Indiana’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) houses the 40-year-old initiative, which has recorded skyrocketing interest after years of oscillation.
Poaching is the illegal harvesting of animals, plants, fungi and more.
Callers on the rise
The number of tips received swung between lows in the 300s and highs in the 500s for at least eight years, according to DNR data.
But the total approached 600 in 2022, then shot up to nearly 900 in 2023 and crossed 1,000 last year for the first time in at least a decade.
“Over the last couple years, we’ve been pushing really hard to promote the program or advertise it more, and we’re seeing that pay off,” Capt. Jet Quillen, a spokesman for DNR’s Law Enforcement Division, told the Capital Chronicle. He’s also a member of the TIP board.
The program’s 17-member board reviews cases. If a tip leads to prosecution, members decide if it qualifies for a reward of up to $500.
TIP paid out eight rewards totaling $4,000 in 2022, and 10 rewards totaling $5,000 in both 2023 and 2024, according to Quillen — although some tipsters don’t want the money.
Payout totals for previous years weren’t available. Neither were the number of warnings and arrests made thanks to the tips.
“We keep the number of TIPs we receive, but once they are assigned to officers for investigation, we are not tracking them until a reward is requested or we are notified for some reason by the investigating officers,” Quillen wrote in an email. “We are going to try to obtain these numbers in the future, but it will be an extensive effort obtaining these from our records keeping program.”
Tipsters can choose to be anonymous or to reveal their identities. Michiana Outdoor News documented the lengths one conservation officer went to bust a poacher while protecting his tipster.
Decades of dissatisfaction
White-tailed deer were native to Indiana — but were rooted out of the state through “unregulated hunting by increasing numbers of settlers,” according to a DNR pamphlet.
The last reported wild deer was killed in 1893, per a DNR timeline.
The state lacked deer until the 1930s, when officials began buying animals from Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Almost 300 were released on Indiana’s public lands.
Populations recovered. The state held a three-day deer season in 1951 — its first in nearly 60 years.
“The populations we have now are due to really good work on the part of biologists, but also law enforcement,” Stone said. “Because … from the first season, there have been issues with people acting outside the bounds of the law.”
Illegal slayings have long frustrated law-abiding hunters, newspaper clippings reveal.
“Traffic in contraband deer meat is heavier than it has ever been before,” the late Indianapolis Star columnist “Bayou” Bill Scifres wrote in 1963.
By 1966, he was complaining of a bad deer-hunting season, telling readers, “Your chances of bagging a buck are apt to be sliced considerable because somebody bagged your deer before the season opened. That somebody would be called a poacher, but in the simplest terms he is a thief.”
A reward-for-information program was already under study committee consideration for legislation that year, according to Scifres.
But it would take nearly two decades to become reality.
Jasper-area outdoor enthusiasts formed the Dubois County Sportsmen Against Poaching in 1979, Scifres wrote. Members subsidized nighttime conservation officer flights to curb jacklighting and advocated against weak, $1 poaching fines in court.
The “Dubois deer vigilantes” also pioneered what would become Turn in a Poacher.
The group distributed posters urging fellow outdoor enthusiasts to report violations, complete with a phone number belonging to the county’s assigned conservation officer. It offered cash rewards for tips that led to arrests and convictions.
By 1983, DNR had joined forces with locals.
That year, a task force held its first meetings, per Scifres, with plans to get a telephone hotline up and running in 1984. Within its first two months, Turn in a Poacher had led to 29 arrests and eight convictions, with more cases pending, Scifres wrote. Three Hoosiers earned $500 — funded through donations, just like now — for their tips.
Turn in a Poacher “is a continuation of hunters holding other hunters to account,” said Stone, who also serves on the board of conservation-oriented group Backcountry Hunters and Anglers.
“It’s part of that tradition of policing our own,” he said.
Program persists
But Turn in a Poacher advocates also encourage birders, hikers, kayakers and other outdoor enjoyers to take part.
“We need our citizens to be our eyes and ears and out there,” DNR’s Quillen said.
It’s not just deer and other animals. People also sometimes illegally harvest ginseng root or mushrooms, per Quillen.
Hoosiers should “know that if they see something, or hear someone talking about something that just doesn’t seem right, we want them to call our TIP hotline,” he said.
Stone said the board is pushing the program hard because, while Indiana’s wildlife isn’t necessarily facing extirpation, anti-poaching sentiment requires maintenance.
“If these things spread and it becomes acceptable for people to poach or to question the authority of the DNR and not trust the experts, that’s when you can find yourself in a bad situation. We know because it’s happened in the past,” he said.
Among the most prominent ways the program is advertising itself is through a trailer exhibiting deer racks, a snake skeleton and other seized evidence of poaching. Quillen said conservation officers take the trailer to county fairs and other community events, where Hoosiers can gaze at the exhibits and read about the investigations and criminal enterprises behind them.
Stone argued public education on poaching is important for hunting’s future, noting that various movements exist to limit or ban the activity.
“We want the public to see us in a positive light. And folks who go out and break game laws and behave unethically, it makes all hunters look bad,” Stone said.
Hoosiers can buy licenses and stamps by mail, online at GoOutdoorsIN.com, and in person: at DNR’s Indianapolis customer service center or the numerous DNR properties and authorized vendors located around the state.
Those born after 1986 need Hunter Education certifications before they can buying hunting licenses. Classes are held online — for charge by the third-party provider — and in person for free. Instruction on trapping, boating and more is also available.
DNR displays rule and regulation changes on its website, and a summary of what’s legal in the annually updated Indiana Hunting and Trapping Guide.
The Indiana Capital Chronicle is an independent, nonprofit news organization that covers state government, policy and elections.
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