BROOKSVILLE, Fla. — On Saturday afternoon, around 2:30 p.m., Tim Hunt and a friend Doyle Lufcy were out riding four wheelers when they saw a poacher kill protected state birds.
“To just take the life for no reason something wrong with that guy,” Hunt said. “It was really weird just seeing it, and we knew something was up the way he took off and ran back to his truck and stuff.”
After hearing the gunshot Hunt said he drove over to see what the men shot.
“I look on the ground and see a big Sandhill crane; it was all bloody and dead,” Hunt said.
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That’s when Hunt and Lufcy started chasing the men. The men drove off in a gray Ford quad cab truck.
In cell phone video provided to ABC Action News, Lufcy gets in the man’s face, screaming he is going to jail for shooting the bird. The man in the truck, who we are not identifying until FWC officers release him as a person of interest, slaps at the phone in Lufcy’s hand.
“The guy tried to slap the phone out of his hand,” Hunt said. “The guy almost wrecked running from us, and stuff was flying all out of the back of his truck.”
Hunt and Lufcy collected the two dead birds, one shotgun shell, and gave all of their videos to investigators at FWC. Hunt’s Facebook post is getting a lot of shares and comments.
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“We caught them red-handed,” Hunt said. “I think the community justice, just shaming the guy and knowing what type of person he is. That is better to me than a misdemeanor. Cause, if a lot of people seen what I saw and picked up them birds it wasn’t right.”
Hunt said the men didn’t even try to get the bird to eat it after shooting it which made him think the crime was committed out of pure evil.
“I like to see him get some help, to be honest with you because I feel like he’s got deeper problems than just shooting that bird that day,” Hunt said. “There is nothing in you that makes you want to kill that bird for fun.”
