Poacher dragged off from Deer Expo
Johnny Clay is in big trouble stemming from a 2009 deer he claimed as the #1 bowkill in Kentucky. The problem is that it now seems likely it was poached with a rifle in Ohio. Oooops.
This guy is from just upriver from us in Adams County, Ohio. As I understand the story, Johnny Clay claimed he took the buck on a Lewis County, KY WMA. He had this elaborate story about how he’d arrowed the deer in September and then spent over a week tracking it. When he finally found it, it was all gone but the head.
Later, a neighbor of Johnny’s came up with the same deer on his webcam, only this webcam had been on the other side of the Ohio River, back where Johnny lives in Ohio. Ooops.
There had been a lot of controversy over the buck on KentuckyHunting.net. There were a bunch of people that had trouble swallowing the original story. Johnny and his supporters were on there, swearing it was all true.
The whole thing came to a dramatic climax when the CO’s carted off Johnny and his deer from their booth at the Lewis County Deer Expo in early March. Johnny is in deep do-do, probably most of all for carting the head across state lines in order to perpetrate the hoax.
If you want more on this soap opera, I can recommend the following reading:
http://www.kentuckyhunting.net/forums/showthread.php?t=92972
and from when the stuff started to hit the fan in January:
http://www.kentuckyhunting.net/forums/showthread.php?t=90625
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The WMA area in Lewis County is located in the Ohio River bottoms which borders Adams County, Ohio while separated by the Ohio River. I work at a power plant 40 miles downstream and we have crews on the river 12 hours a day moving coal barges from cells directly across the river. The barge crews see deer swimming the river on a very regular basis. Personally, I have seen many deer hit the river when chased by dogs. There must be other evidence than that a deer was photographed in Adams County but killed a half mile away. I also don’t find it strange that a Ohio resident wanting to hunt in Ky would choose a WMA that he could possibly look across the river and see. There must be more here than meets the eye.
As I understand it, the something else was 10 priors and a confession. For details, consult KentuckyHunting.net . They were all over it