The Associated Press
ERIE, Pa. (AP) - Hunters this season may see a new breed of hunting dog - instead of pointing out game, they find poachers and evidence.
The Game Commission has added two Labrador retrievers to its cadre of game officers as part of a three-year test to determine if they want to use dogs to keep hunters honest and safe in Pennsylvania’s hunting lands.
“The dogs do a lot in the law enforcement aspect. They find things a lot faster than humans can,” said Darin Clark, a wildlife conservation officer in Erie County, who has been paired with Sarge, a yellow Labrador retriever, since March last year.
Game commission’s other canine officer, Onyx, works with Linda Swank in Lancaster County.
The dogs, which have both been certified by North American Police Working Dog, began training with simple games, like fetching shotgun shells, and eventually moved on to tracking, wildlife detection and evidence recovery.
The officers use different collars, which all identify the dogs as Wildlife Conservation Officers, to let Onxy and Sarge know what the job is.
Recently, Clark took Sarge to a marsh in Erie County for some training.
Clark scattered a shotgun shell, a semiautomatic handgun clip and two frozen half-pound chunks of bear flesh into light brush and tall grass and strapped a brown collar for evidence recovery on Sarge.
“Seek. Good boy,” Clark said, and Sarge began searching the brush. Five minutes later, Sarge dropped to his stomach with the clip between his front paws, nudging it with his nose.
“He’s trained to find the human odor. Some people think it’s the gunpowder, but it’s not,” Clark said and gave Sarge a piece of liver for a reward.
The Game Commission will test the dogs until October next year, when officials will decide whether to add two dog teams in each of the Game Commission’s six regions.
“The pilot project’s not over, but things seem to be going well right now,” said Jerry Feaser, a Game Commission spokesman. “In many of the cases, it’s easy from a human perspective to overlook evidence that canine units with their heightened senses are able to detect.”
Although he wasn’t fully trained, Sarge was in the field last winter. He helped find three deer poachers and clear a man in a hunting accident.
The man, who was accused of shooting another hunter, claimed he shot in different direction from the injured hunter.
Two officers searched the woods for the bullet the man shot, but didn’t find anything. A week later, Sarge found the bullet and the charges were dropped.
“They’ve proven they can do the job,” Clark said. “We hope this year they can do a lot more.”