CHESTER TOWNSHIP, MI -- A tip from a nearby resident led a Michigan DNR conservation officer to four men busted for waterfowl poaching at the start of the hunting season.

CO David Rodgers received a call the morning of Sept. 25 that a large amount of shooting was heard near a farm field in Chester Township, one day after the duck opener in Michigan.

Rodgers said he was about 15 minutes away from the area at the time.

"I sat and I hid for probably a good hour watching the activity, seeing what they were doing, watching them handling birds, looking for birds," Rodgers said. "They shot a very large amount of birds in a short time so they had a lot of birds on the ground, in the water, in the weeds, in the cornfield.

"I watched for quite a while while they retrieved birds, and they were laughing about all the birds they shot."

Rogers said he observed one of the four men leave the hunting spot and head back to his truck. That man was apprehended by CO Chris Simpson, who was also with Rodgers.

"Once he left I approached the others that were still in the area. They were very surprised," he said. "I've been doing this for 20 years now, and this is the worst case of over-limit on waterfowl I've seen in my career. They had no caring for the law at all."

Rodgers said their initial response was one of surprise.

"They didn't show as much remorse as you'd think for killing that many birds," he said.

In total the men had shot 58 birds, over twice the legal limit for their hunting group size.

On top of that, they had hunted over bait, which is illegal for waterfowl hunting.

"They had two types of birds, mallards and wood ducks," Rodgers said. "Twenty-three mallards (13 hens) and 35 wood ducks.

"They were twice over the legal limit, and that's all beside the point because they were all taken over bait. They had shed corn that they had thrown out in the pond and on the edge of the pond."

Rogers likened it to picking birds off at your bird feeder where they'll keep coming back as long as there's food there.

"It's not like a deer baiting or bear baiting where they'll sniff the air, they'll look for humans and then come up and and take the bait," Rodgers said. "Birds and waterfowl especially want to come in to these grain fields and eat. They want to come into it and you could stand out in the open and shoot.

"These guys weren't even using decoys, they shot all those birds within the first hour of sunlight and that's just not normal for a typical waterfowl behavior."

The four men all received citations to appear in Ottawa County Court on Oct. 26 while the man in the truck also was cited for traveling with a loaded gun in his vehicle.

"We're asking for restitution for the birds, we're seeking condemnation of the guns and all of them were waterfowl guns, very nice ones, probably around $5,000 of firearms for all of them."

The birds are in frozen storage as evidence at a DNR facility, Rodgers said. "After they serve as evidence, the waterfowl will be used in the next conservation academy school for scenario and identification training.

"We take it very seriously," Rodgers said. "It's a shared resource, it's not just a Michigan thing. These ducks go from Canada all the way down to the southern United States, and they're very susceptible to poaching at certain times."