The idea that deer need to be protected is hilarious. All around the Midwest (USA) you can see obvious signs of deer overpopulation. Every doe gives birth to twins. The understory in the forest is bare.

This guy is selling 60 deer decoys a year? The DNR is just playing a power game.

If the focus of the article were about poaching an animal that isn’t as common as mice, I would be more sympathetic.

Instead it seems like the focus is on the easiest poaching to catch (because of the massive numbers of infractions), not the greatest impact.

I don't know, I'm not there, not my world.

But I would think the goal is to reduce the number of poachers. Poaching being a mind set, a criminal behavior, regardless of that actual animal they're harvesting. If someone is willing to poach deer, perhaps it's a gateway to poaching something more vulnerable. Learning how to avoid the game wardens, building an "underground" community.

Similarly, if the deer are that plentiful (and they no doubt are, there are all sorts of stories about deer populations expanding), then it would seem good policy to encourage hunting. Lower the fees, increase the bag limit, do some outreach with safety training, etc. "No out of state fees to come hunt in Minnesota!" The goal to get poachers out of the fold and into legal hunting.

And, of course, there's "dual use" concepts, as deer can be considered pests in some scenarios (which fall under different guidelines than game animals). That can always blur the lines. So, maybe not everyone running around at night with thermal imagers is, actually, a poacher. Perhaps they're doing pest control. But that's someone who shouldn't mind encounters with game enforcement.

I am not familiar with poaching issues in the USA, but in Canada, one isn't allowed to hunt too close to roads; doing otherwise is poaching. It seems reasonable to not discharge firearms next to public roads, so stopping poachers who do so is a great use case here.

usually these kind of stings are not about poaching in the classic sense, its about basic safety, like not shooting; on; along; or across a road, so they set it up somewhere in that zone considered "along" the road, and wait for someone to start setting up for a shot.

Echoing my own comment below, it's important, given the pointlesness of fighting poaching while deer are everywhere, to note that in the US, agencies like DNR (some states have different names for them) have extraordinary police powers that allow them to enter property if they suspect a violation. In similar situations, police officers would be required to get a warrant from a judge, but the DNR can just go in. So, often they use the pretense of poaching to go see what someone is up to on their own land. They even have the right to install hidden cameras on private property without telling the landowner to try to detect violations.