Warden Murphy Brings Three to Court—Iowa Fisherman Goes to Jail.
Shooting partridges before the season opens, or catching too many fish are not profitable pastimes, as various offenders found out during the past week when brought to court by J. P. Murphy, Itasca county game warden.
Mike Troppman and Harold Buckman were arrested last Friday, north of Little Riley lake, by Mr. Murphy, and charged with violating the closed season on partridges. Both pleaded guilty, and paid fines when arraigned before Judge Keo Leroux. Troppman, who was once before convicted of violating the game laws, paid a fine of $25 and costs. Buckman paid $10 and costs for his bird.
L. L. De France, a tourist from Iowa, liked fish. He liked them so well that he planned on taking some fine fat pike hack to Iowa with him, so secured a barrel and salted the dressed pike that he had caught in Cut Foot Sioux lake and other lakes. Mr. Murphy became suspicious of the barrel, and examined it, revealing 65 pike and other game fish, far more than one man was entitled to at one time. De France pleaded guilty to the charge of violating the fish laws, and was assessed a fine of $10 and costs, or the alternative of five days in the county jail. As he was almost out of funds, De France took the jail sentence, and is now eating fish in the county jail.
A general warning is sent out to hunters who plan on shooting partridges this fall, in regard to shooting on the highways. At the last session of the legislature, the law was amended so that partridges could not be shot within the limits of any road, and as this has been interpreted to mean any road over which a person can ride or drive, care must be used not to violate this law and run foul of the wardens, who will be watching.
Grand Rapids Herald-Review, Grand Rapids, MN, October 8, 1924