Shooting out of season? Beware – your quarry may not be all that it seems, thanks to taxidermy with a touch of Terminator
“CEASE fire,” someone shouts. “Put down your weapon!”
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It’s early morning in northern Wisconsin, two weeks before the start of the deer hunting season. A white-tailed deer standing at the edge of a misty field has just been struck by a bullet. Two police officers emerge from hiding and carefully approach a pickup truck parked on a track nearby. A rifle barrel protruding from the window is replaced by a pair of raised hands. It has been a long wait but the officers’ patience has paid off.
Stings like this are the most reliable way to catch poachers red-handed. Yet even when they are successful, wildlife often pays the ultimate price: police can only pounce when a crime has been committed and an animal has been shot. However, here in Wisconsin, the deer is standing calmly in the long grass, flicking its tail as if nothing had happened.
This is no normal animal. It is the creation of Brian Wolslegel, a taxidermist and self-taught engineer from Mosinee, Wisconsin (see photo). Wolslegel works with conservation organisations and US law enforcement agencies to snare illegal hunters using robotic decoys made from real animal parts with electronics hidden inside. His mechanical menagerie includes everything from wild turkey to giant elk, all cunningly designed to flick their tails, peck or graze for food, and even move through the undergrowth (see photo). It’s taxidermy with a touch of Terminator.
Wildlife officers and conservation workers install these ersatz animals in places known to attract poachers or out-of-season hunters and, with video cameras rolling, they sit back and wait. When a hunter takes the bait and opens fire, the agents pounce.
To fool experienced hunters, these robots must behave like the real thing. Rather than relying on pre-programmed motion, Wolslegel has found that the best way to make movements that are truly lifelike is to create decoys which can be controlled remotely. Wolslegel has plans to build animals that even appear to breathe. Yet whatever electronics he installs, he has to assemble the decoys so that every component is easy to replace. After all, he says, taking a bullet or two is part of the job.
Each year, tens of millions of animals are shot legally by hunters in the US. Yet for each one legally hunted, at least one more is poached, according to the Wildlife Land Trust, a conservation charity based in Washington DC. Poachers may be after trophies or meat. Some plan to profit from the market for animal parts, such as black bear gall bladders used as health remedies in Asia. Others simply want to save on fees for licences and permits, or crave the excitement of the hunt and the challenge of outsmarting game wardens and police.
Escaping the law isn’t too difficult, and in many states illegal hunting is on the rise. Wildlife agencies have huge areas to monitor: in California, for example, just 230 wardens patrol some 4 million hectares, and poaching in the state rose 270 per cent between 2003 and 2007. According to the Humane Society of the United States, at least 19 out of 20 poaching crimes are never solved.
So police and law enforcement agencies have begun to strike back by tempting hunters with realistic decoy animals. Some use plastic models that only fool hunters from a distance. Others deploy more realistic stuffed animals. According to Tom Stoner of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the most effective way to catch poachers is one of Wolslegel’s half animal-half machine decoys.
Wolslegel began making his creatures after a chance meeting in the 1990s. He was busy at his taxidermy bench when a game warden came into the workshop and asked if he could make a stuffed animal move. With no training in engineering, Wolslegel’s first attempt was crude: he tied fishing line to a deer’s ear to make it twitch. Since then he says he has refined his technique “mostly by trial and error”.
Wolslegel’s procedure begins like normal taxidermy. He takes a cleaned animal skin – either donated or confiscated – and stitches it onto a hollow polyurethane or fibreglass form. Once the skin has dried, he separates the animal’s head, tail or limbs and reattaches them to the body using servo motors like those found in remote-controlled cars. He then mounts other electronics, including controllers, battery packs and receivers, inside the animal in places that are not usually hit by bullets, such as the legs.
His robotic zoo includes deer, antelope, elk, wild pigs, turkey, coyote, moose and bears. While some used indoors at nature centres follow pre-programmed routines or include sensors that respond to nearby movements, his outdoor decoys are operated remotely. Wolslegel is also testing a pressurised CO2 cartridge system that he plans to install inside an animal’s head to create regular puffs of vapour, which on cold days will resemble breathing. He even adds artificial eyes designed to reflect light just like the real things. Poachers often use these reflections to locate their prey at night.
Deer are Wolslegel’s most popular robots (see photo). Each one weighs about 10 kilograms and can feature a rotating head, legs that lift, and a twitching tail or ears. Wolslegel bases these movements on those of real animals he observes during his own hunting trips. Some are also mounted on rails, so they can be moved back and forth under remote control. This plethora of equipment means the decoys don’t come cheap. A deer costs around $1400, for example, but the investment is worthwhile. A single robot can earn wildlife law enforcement agencies around $30,000 in fines every year.
A typical poaching sting takes place outside the hunting season or legal hunting hours, or with the decoy on private property. At least four officers are involved: one to work the decoy, one to film any incidents, and two or more to apprehend the offender. The officers take pains to stack the odds in their favour. “We try to place it so that no matter who shoots it, it’s illegal,” says Jeff Darrah, an officer for the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks department.
The ideal location is also visible from a road, since poaching is often a spur-of-the-moment thing. According to Darrah, a lot of the people he catches don’t leave home thinking they are going to poach an animal. “All they have to do is see that tail move,” he says.
Apprehending a lawbreaker can be nerve-racking, Darrah admits. Sometimes an offender tries to flee. Stings can also turn to farce. One hapless poacher was so trophy-hungry he continued to pump bullets into a robotic deer even after officers told him to stop. Another was so surprised when the officers appeared that he put a bullet through the door of his own pickup.
“One hunter was so surprised that he put a bullet through the door of his own pickup truck”
Darrah also recalls using a fake elk to catch a poacher, then having to talk a second overexcited hunter out of blasting the decoy while trying to issue a ticket to the first. “I said, ‘Do you really think that’s a real elk?'” The man even ran back to his truck and put on his orange safety vest. But the most common reaction is humiliation. “People are shocked that they did what they did, and embarrassed that they were duped,” says Darrah. “They don’t want their buddies to find out.”
As for the decoys, a lifespan of three to four years is average. The damage they sustain depends on lawbreakers’ marksmanship, of course. Wolslegel tried housing the electronics in protective steel cases, but found that bullets from high-power hunting rifles tend to ricochet off the metal and destroy the entire animal. Without armour, bullets pass straight through and this helps keep repair costs low.
According to Darrah, the decoys have proved extremely successful. In some areas even legal hunters have started to think twice before pulling the trigger, he says.
Meanwhile, Wolslegel is looking to try his hand at new animal automatons designed to help rare species that are on the edge of extinction. In particular, Wolslegel would dearly love to see his decoys among big game herds on the plains of Africa. Imagine breathing life into a robotic rhino or electric elephant, he says. “Wouldn’t that be amazing?”
