Poisoning cases illustrate dangers of pesticide misuse

Pesticide-laced globs of meat are strategically located to get rid of animals that people view as pests, but the concoctions are as deadly as land mines and equally indiscriminate.

Four hunting dogs died a year ago this week after munching on poisoned meat in Lee County. They might or might not have been the target for the poison. The investigation of that case has stalled.

Investigators from Clemson’s Department of Pesticide Regulation, which handles such cases in South Carolina, look into 6 to 12 such cases each year. Many pit neighbor against neighbor in disputes over wandering hunting dogs. Some are simply amateurish attempts at wildlife management, often efforts to get rid of coyotes. All such uses of pesticide for anything other than what’s stated on the label are illegal.

“They’re thinking, ‘This ain’t hurting anything. I’m just getting rid of a couple of feral dogs,’” said Lee Galloway, who works out of Clemson’s Florence office. “But ignorance of the law is no excuse. The label is pretty clear.”

Some people get the pesticide illegally, in containers without labels, and are told it’s great for getting rid of wildlife pests. There are even instructions on the Internet on how to mix pesticide with meat to create effective poison.

Clemson officials suspect they get involved in only a small fraction of the actual pesticide poisoning incidents. Rural residents often are reluctant to report neighbors to law enforcement, and nobody much cares if there are a few less coyotes or raccoons in the woods.

“But the cases we do get are pretty scary,” said Tim Drake, state programs manager for the pesticide regulation department.

In a 2010 case, Jake Gohagan of Scotia in Hampton County confessed to using pesticide to poison foxes that had been bothering his dogs. He said he got the idea from a website, and he stole the pesticide from a nearby farm where he briefly worked.

He left pesticide-laced hamburger patties in an old shed where the foxes had established a den. It worked, killing two juvenile red foxes. But DNR investigators also found nearby two dead black vultures, one dead armadillo, one dead domestic cat, one dead domestic dog, one dead possum and one carcass they couldn’t identify.

Gohagan confessed and paid a $2,000 fine.

Temik is the most common pesticide used in wildlife poisoning cases. It is sold to treat farm fields for nematodes — tiny worms that attack the roots of cotton and soybeans. Used properly, it is tilled into the soil. Buried in dirt and at weak concentrations, it’s unlikely to harm wildlife. Plus, it has a pungent odor designed to deter animals from eating it.

That’s why people using Temik as an animal poison mix it with meat to attract their targets. It’s incredibly effective as a killer. The victims often fall dead within feet of where they ingested the poisoned meat.

Bayer CropScience, the manufacturer of Temik, last year agreed to stop manufacturing it in the United States as part of a deal with the Environmental Protection Agency. Its use as a crop pesticide remains legal, though remaining supplies can be legally purchased only by someone with a pesticide applicator license.

Experts warn that a person putting out Temik, or any pesticide, to kill an animal can’t be sure what animal it might poison. Even if the intended target eats the poison, that doesn’t mean the killing ends there. Animals that feed on the carcasses of Temik-killed animals usually pick up the poison and die, too.

And a person might inadvertently handle the poison. “Our greatest fear is somebody’s going to do this and a person is going to get into it,” Drake said.

In the Lee County case last Dec. 30, the hunters tried to get help for their dogs and ended up needing help themselves. Thirteen hunters had to be decontaminated at KershawHealth Medical Center in Camden, including an 11-year-old boy who felt sick and was held overnight. He was released the next day.

The Lee County poisoning wasn’t an accident, Galloway said. The dogs got into poisoned meat, and lab results showed the poison was Temik. Somebody mixed powdered Temik with the meat on purpose.

Typically, Clemson works with county sheriff’s investigators and officers from the S.C. Department of Natural Resources on these cases. They gathered enough evidence to have solid suspects in the Lee County case, but they haven’t charged anyone, Galloway said.

Because that case hasn’t been closed, Clemson officials declined to provide details of the investigation. Other cases that have been closed in recent years offer cautionary tales.

In one case near Kingstree in March 2010, four dogs raised in one small community of mobile homes died in just a few weeks. The owner of the property found what he suspected was poisoned meat on the side of a dirt road. Toxicology tests indicated the poison was Temik.

Rick Grubbs, manager of a turkey hunting operation on neighboring property, admitted to putting out the poisoned meat to get rid of what he thought were feral dogs that were bothering turkeys on his land. Grubbs said the dogs didn’t have collars and ran into the woods, not toward the mobile homes, when he shooed them away.

“If I had any thought these dogs were not wild dogs and belonged to someone who lived on Bermuda Road, I would have discussed the issue with them in hopes they could control the dogs,” Grubbs wrote in a statement included in the case file.

Clemson officials responded with a letter: “The manner in which Temik was used in this case is not legal, regardless of what kind of animals may or may not have been exposed to the pesticide.”

Grubbs was cited for violating laws against the use of pesticides for unapproved purposes and was fined the maximum $2,000. He was lucky the dead dogs were found quickly. If a migratory bird or endangered species fed on the carcasses and died, more punitive federal regulations might have applied.

For instance, the Environmental Protection Agency fined seven quail hunting plantations in Georgia $335,000 in 2003 for injecting poison into eggs to try to get rid of predators. In that case, several federally protected migratory species succumbed to the poison.

In a more contentious case in 2009, a Clarendon County landowner admitted to placing Temik-laced chicken meat on the edges of his property. He told investigators he was angry that coyotes were bothering his horses.

But it wasn’t coyotes that picked up the poison. It was three dogs owned by hunters tracking deer on neighboring property. The hunters found their dead dogs, which were wearing tracking collars, and confronted landowner Gary Meyer of Pinewood with accusations he had poisoned their dogs.

Meyer at first denied placing the poison, but he later told investigators a local Department of Natural Resources officer had recommended using the poison to control coyotes. The officer denied making such a recommendation, saying instead that he had suggested Meyer turn on an electric shock line he had installed on his property. Meyer eventually confessed to misuse of the pesticide and paid a $2,000 fine.

“I’m sorry about them losing their dogs,” Meyer said in a taped conversation with a county sheriff’s officer. “You know I had no intention.”

But he offered a common excuse in confrontations involving roaming hunting dogs: “If they got into it, it was on my property.”

One of the dogs killed that day was Red Man, the prized red tick walker hound of Willie Myers of Orangeburg. “That was three years ago, and I ain’t found one as good as him yet,” said Myers, who along with his friends no longer hunts that Clarendon County property.

Sometimes the person responsible for poisoning is harder to determine. Three poisoned dogs died within a few weeks of each other in 2010 in a Batesburg-Leesville neighborhood. Two of them collapsed soon after vomiting chewed up hot dogs. Lab studies indicated the dogs had aldicarb, the active ingredient in Temik, in their system.

But the owners of the nearby land where the dogs apparently picked up the poisoned hot dogs denied having anything to do with the poisoning. Investigators couldn’t find evidence to charge anyone, but they did warn neighbors to keep their pets in their yards.

“These are difficult cases to make,” said Mike Weyman, assistant head of the pesticide regulation department. “These aren’t hardened criminals. And members of these close-knit groups don’t want to rat out each other.”

Because prosecution often is difficult, the Clemson department tries to approach the problem from the other direction. Training programs and pamphlets given out at Clemson Cooperative Extension Service offices stress the penalties for misuse, which include losing the license to purchase pesticides for legitimate farm uses.

“We slam that point home,” Weyman said. “Not only can they not use (pesticides as animal poisons), but they can’t give it to anyone else to use that way.”