By Wayne Laepple
HUNTINGDON -- Pennsylvania Game Commission officers using a specially trained search dog to track down ballistics casings cracked an investigation that led to the arrest of a Sunbury man on deer poaching charges.
Game officials said an unidentified landowner and his son were on their property attempting to videotape a hunt when they heard two nearby shots. Approaching the area of the shots, they observed a person dragging an antlered deer from a harvested cornfield. Game commission officers said Marshall Scholl, 30, of Sunbury, gave a false name to the landowner and, when asked for identification, ran away, abandoning the deer.
"Despite a long search with no results, we felt sure that the violator's spent shell casings were lying somewhere near where the buck was killed," Snyder County Wildlife Conservation Officer Harold Malehorn said in a statement released by the Game Commission. "That was important to solving this case."
Malehorn requested the assistance of Onyx, a female Labrador retriever specially trained by the Game Commission to locate evidence related to wildlife-related crimes and to retrieve hidden evidence.
Within five minutes of exiting the vehicle, Onyx had found two recently fired .270-caliber casings lying under some vegetation, game officials said.
Given a description of the vehicle, officers were reportedly supplied Scholl's name from several citizens. Malehorn charged Scholl with unlawful taking or killing of wildlife, trespass on private land while hunting, giving a false name and refusing to show identification to a landowner and improper retrieval and disposition of killed or wounded game.
