Jeff Ramori killed a wild turkey last October in Crawford County not far from Steelville and checked it legally. He then cleaned it and froze it. Shortly afterward a young conservation agent showed up and knocked on his door and wanted Jeff to show him the turkey and take him to where he had killed it. When they do that, you should never comply unless they have a search warrant. That warrant only applies if you killed the turkey or deer on your own land. If you killed it off your land, a search warrant is meaningless unless it is served on the owner of the land.
The agent had no search warrant, so Ramori, who was busy at the time, refused to comply. He had read one of my columns about how any agent asking you to take him to your hunting spot is about to give you a citation over some silly technical thing 100 percent of the time. Some agents will drop a little corn at the site out of their pockets when you aren’t looking. Then you are charged with baiting. In such a case you are just going to have to pay a fine because your word means nothing.
Ramori refused the order, then went back inside, closed his door and noticed that the game warden had not left. He simply waited outside for most of two hours before coming back to the door wanting again to see the place where Ramori had been hunting. Ramori again refused. Then he wanted to see the frozen turkey carcass that was in the freezer. Jeff made a mistake then; he brought the turkey out to show the game warden and the warden took it to his pickup and kept it. Then he wrote a citation stating Ramori was guilty of a violation called ‘failure to inspect.’
What that agent did was nothing less than theft. And he was trespassing. The turkey he took had been legally taken and checked. The agent had no right to it, and there was no legal basis for demanding that Jeff Ramori take him to his hunting spot, miles away. All this is typical of today’s young conservation agents. They feel they can do anything they want, legal or not and get away with it.
One older retired agent told me, “I was trained before I went to work as a game warden, 40 some years ago. We all were. But these new agents are not trained, they are brain-washed.” Agent Ron Vance resigned after a couple of years as an agent because he said his supervisor asked him to lie in court so the MDC could get someone they were after.
I called enforcement chief Randy Doman, and we talked about what had happened to Jeff Ramori and he said he would look into it, but like all personal matters he said he could not discuss what he had found. In such a manner, the MDC has to answer for nothing they do. At the time of this writing, the agent who targeted Ramori remained at the job, still searching for easy victims in his county. Mr. Ramori got the charge against him dismissed in court but of course he did not get his turkey back. He had to pay $500 to a lawyer who told him not to talk to me anymore about the matter. Of course, that lawyer was out of bounds asking such a thing. I believe it was because he was sympathetic to the MDC, and the whole thing made him some good money for little effort. Now Ramori has filed a small claims suit against the department because of the theft and bogus charges, and they have answered it by stating they have ‘sovereign immunity’ protecting them from such action.
I have appointments on August 19 to meet with the new director of the Department of Conservation and on the same day I will also meet with the enforcement chief, Randy Doman. I will attempt to set up public meetings where the outdoorsmen from Missouri can come and submit written questions to each of them. They do not want to do that! I will let readers know about the response and the date and place of any such meetings in my newspaper column, which you may read in any one of 40 newspapers or on the internet at larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com. Mr. Doman has asked me to bring him comments or questions from readers of this magazine or newspaper columns on that day, August 19. If you have a complaint, comment or question, email them to me at lightninridge47@gmail.com or mail them to me at Dablemont, Box 22, Bolivar, MO 65613, and I will try to get an answer for you.
If you have not received and read the magazine, “The Truth About the Missouri Department of Conservation,” send $6 to cover postage and handling to get one mailed to you. You will learn a great deal about what they do and what your rights are in connection to the activity of their agents. Act soon as there are only a couple hundred of them left. The address is: Dablemont, Box 22, Bolivar, MO 65613. Email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com.
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