Deer in the Headlights : Criminal Justice Department Deploys a Decoy to Shed Light on Wildlife Crime

Imagine you’re a current student in the College of Humanities and Behavioral Sciences and you’re walking through the halls of its new building, rushing to get to the elevator so you can make it to class. You push the call button.

The elevator arrives and the door slowly opens. A pair of eyes stares back at you — but they aren’t human.

As your brain rushes to figure out what your eyes are seeing, students push the deer out of the elevator on a cart, with one holding a remote controller.

What you and other students just saw was a mechanical decoy deer, a tool used to teach students in wildlife crime how to effectively combat spotlighting, a term used to describe a type of illegal hunting.

During such an operation, officers place the deer offroad, hidden enough to make the deer appear realistic but also visible to a passerby. Officers typically hide on either side of the decoy and the entire operation is recorded.

“Having a realistic wildlife decoy at Radford University is a great tool to give students hands-on experience,” said Criminal Justice Professor Egan Green. “I’m not aware of anywhere else that teaches a class on wildlife crime and conservation enforcement. There’s no book. It’s a niche class that we offer.

“I give students practice using the tools of the trade. It takes practice to make movements smooth and lifelike. When students apply to agencies, they are able to say that they have experience using a decoy.”

When seniors Carly Ruth and Grant Scott first saw the deer, they thought it was mounted.

“I saw that the front leg was detached, which isn’t a normal thing for a full-mounted deer,” Scott said. “I knew something was up, but I had no idea what it was until the head started moving slightly.”

Ruth said that she could see Green looking down each time the deer moved, so she knew that he was controlling it.

Both students agreed that the deer decoy aided their understanding of spotlighting while doing so in an interesting and unique way.

“This was the perfect class for me,” Grant said. “This is something I’m really interested in and something for which I have a passion. When applying to jobs, which will mostly be in rural counties, I can tell the departments that I’m familiar with some of the ways they catch poachers.”

“It helps that the deer decoy is different,” Ruth said. “It gives you an edge if you’ve never heard about it before or had the opportunity to use a decoy before.”

Another objective for students in Green’s classes highlight the shared resources between departments and offices.

“It helps because there is a lot of overlap between agencies, since a lot of them need help from others,” Ruth said. “Some agencies are subject-specific, such as wildlife. If there was ever an issue where one agency needed to have additional skills, they can easily shift between agencies for help.”

Ruth summed up the opportunity of Radford University’s Criminal Justice Department when she said, “Not many universities have someone who specializes in this field. These classes open your eyes to all the possibilities within criminal justice.”