Lathered in sweat and eating distance like a hot-nose coonhound, Steve Snow’s blood surged as he zigzagged through timber and followed a trail of fresh boot prints outlined in mud and ice—the telltale, fresh tracks of a shed poacher.
Spilling from the tree line where the prints withered in matted grass, whitetail legend Snow checked up and stared into the expanse of a 4,000-acre Iowa farm. Cemetery silence. Zero wind. He could feel, but not see, his quarry. Through cupped hands, Snow shouted a stone-cold warning across the pasture: “Billy Switek, you’re a piece of s*** thief. I’m coming for you.”
Reap the whirlwind. When Snow collared Switek* (suspect’s name changed; no court conviction), he exposed an organized ring of out-of-state bottom feeders stealing tens of thousands of dollars in antlers from multiple landowners across at least three years of theft, guided by aerial maps and insider tips, and devoid of prosecutorial fear.
“Law enforcement warnings and tiny fines don’t stop these kinds of thieves,” Snow says. “We caught them red-handed, and they won’t be back, but more are coming in their place. More always come.”
Welcome to hot pursuit in a wooly tangle of stolen sheds—and a dose of frontier justice.
A Bare Cupboard
Whether Bass Pro Shop wall hangers or Boone and Crockett winners, some of the finest U.S. whitetail on record hail from a chain of counties in southern Iowa. The region is the realm of thick-necked bulls wearing bone crowns—magnificent antlers that drive outlaws to lust and larceny.
Every late winter, according to God’s clockwork, bucks lose their antlers in mid-January to mid-March. The fallen horns—sheds—are Easter eggs to many sportsmen who legitimately hunt farms or woods by checking trails and bedding areas for specimens.
Particularly on high-management operations, sheds are the history of a herd, and invaluable provenance of health and vitality, i.e., DNA on a rack. In southern Iowa, a given landowner might spend $20,000 on the low end for deer management—food plots, minerals, and progression of a herd to an older age class. Fostered over generations of landowner effort, the results are mature, healthy deer with magnificent antlers, and thereby, beautiful sheds.
“A shed record ties in directly to land value because it shows what’s in your herd,” Snow explains. “When someone steals sheds, they’re also erasing the biography of your operation and taking your data. Literally, the theft impacts your land value, because potential buyers may want to see a succession of sheds.”
Awaiting the annual guarantee of antler drop, thieves arrive in shed season like bees to honey, hopping private property lines to steal from those who manage. Parasites.
“It boils down to money,” Snow says. “Trespass on someone else’s land; rob their antlers; sell them online; pocket $150 to $350 per antler on the nice ones, or way, way more. A truly big or unique antler can bring some serious money. And if they get caught, they can pay the fine with eBay proceeds, and have plenty of profit left to make it worthwhile. And do it all again the next year.”
“Bank robbers want to break into vaults with lots of money,” he adds. “Shed thieves want to break into whitetail versions of Fort Knox and take everything, and they know the law will do nothing beyond a small fine. Do the math: Robbing sheds is well worth it to these sonuvabitches.”
Snow doesn’t waste words. In 2009 and 2010, across his meticulously managed deer population, he was alarmed by the near complete absence of freshly dropped sheds. Giant, big, tweeners, small—all gone in hit-and-run raids. The cupboard was picked bare.
Greed Grows
Snow’s name is synonymous with monster deer—and by extension, monster sheds. With a hunting career often spent in the spotlight of video, television, and radio, Snow is a renowned bowhunter distinguished by his outdoor prowess and whitetail knowledge.
Traumatic shoulder injuries forced him to give up the bowstring, but in 2009, the lifetime farmer (raised in the Minnesota dairy industry) managed a 4,000-acre operation specifically for whitetails and row crops, along with his 1,400-acre farm in Decatur County—both locations home to superb whitetail genetics.
The 4,000-acre farm contained south-facing slopes: In winter, deer grazed and then bedded on the sun-soaked grassy hillsides. Therefore, the bulk of sheds dropped on the slopes. Yet, in 2009 and 2010, when Snow tried to collect sheds in mid-March (an effort to ease pressure on the herd and allow all antlers to fall), he found the slopes denuded of specimens. Best estimation: Poachers hit in late February or early March.
“Two years running and we found almost nothing from the finest antlers to the smallest, and those were critical to management. For example, if you see a 30”-jump between sheds from a buck, it’s clear evidence of giant potential.”
Theft was evident, but what Snow didn’t know, what he couldn’t know—the bone collectors originated 500 miles to the northeast. And their shed greed was only just beginning to grow.
How was Snow to respond? File police reports? More posted signs? No and no, he explains. “My only long-term solution was to catch them, sheds in hand.”
But on big acres with big calendar windows of opportunity, nabbing poachers is a tall task, sometimes eased by a tipoff. In January 2011, Snow’s cell screen brightened with an unrecognized area code from a nearby Midwestern state. An unfamiliar voice crackled on the line: “Mr. Snow, everything I’m about to tell you is what you don’t want to hear.”
The Hayfield Buck
Snow had tapped a leak. Over the phone, Will Rutland* (name changed to protect identity), a legitimate shed collector, poured out a buck-wild tale. Rutland claimed that while hunting antlers on public land, he met a horn hunter from Milwaukee, Wisc., who boasted of finding massive sheds of quantity in southern Iowa. The Wisconsin collector described county, land, farm, and deer associated with the claims.
Rutland’s in-person conversation led to a continued online acquaintance where the Wisconsin collector emailed shed pictures and provided further detail: I parked by a cattle pasture and crossed the blacktop to a big farm where they do video stuff.
Aware of Snow’s media presence, reputation in the whitetail community, and approximate location in Decatur County, Rutland connected the dots and became convinced the Wisconsin collector had stolen from Snow.
Every word from Rutland resonated with Snow. “It was a match—all of it. I had a source from out of state telling me about a thief from another state, and the source knew about sheds from a special, special deer we called the ‘Hayfield Buck.’ Nobody, and I mean nobody, could have known such detail.”
Rutland assured Snow he would stay in contact with the Wisconsin thief and keep an ear to the ground. True to his word, Rutland called back weeks later: “March. Steve, he’s going to steal from you close to Saturday, the first week in March. His name is Jim Jacoby* (suspect’s name changed; no court conviction).”
Bingo. Patience to bow hunt; patience to catch a shed thief. Snow would be ready. “It’s an upside-down world,” he says. “A guy from Wisconsin was driving seven or eight hours and 500 miles to rob us, but I knew that somebody would twist things to make me be the bad guy. But one thing for sure, I’d be waiting for him.”
No Honor Among Thieves
With roughly eight lookouts spaced along a blacktop road, per Rutland’s warning, Snow waited to trap a rat. Clear morning, first Saturday of the month, Snow and company were in position and on red alert.
In less than an hour, Snow’s cell buzzed. His crew had found a vehicle parked at the butt of a dead-end road, across the blacktop from the farm—a sedan with Wisconsin plates. The unlocked car’s contents revealed a stunning scope of theft. Sprawled across the backseat, aerial maps rested in plain view, including maps of the 4,000-acre farm, maps of Snow’s 1,400-acre farm, and maps of Lee Lakosky’s nearby highly esteemed ground. Snow’s pulse raged as reality dawned: He was dealing with a rattlesnake, not a sticky-fingered local amateur.
On pace with the map revelation, Snow’s cell flashed with a notification from a camera positioned in the middle of the farm. He stared at a real-time photo of a backpack-toting individual, Jim Jacoby, bending over to steal a shed. The antler in Jacoby’s hand had been purposely placed by Snow several days prior as bait to capture imagery of a potential thief via the lens of perfectly hidden trail-cam.
“In that instant, I literally knew right where he was standing,” Snow recalls. “The man in the picture sure as hell wasn’t one of us, and he was roughly 1 mile into the property.”
“Things came together because this same day, the farm owner and one of his buddies were on site to hunt sheds,” Snow continues. “I called and asked him to drive near the location of that camera and rev his 4-wheeler. The rest of us waited on the road for the thief to come out.”
As expected, Jacoby sprinted across a pasture toward the dead-end road and his parked escape vehicle—where he was collared by Snow’s waiting help. To Snow’s surprise, solo was duo. Jacoby was accompanied by a partner in crime, Michael Mahoney* (suspect’s name changed; no court conviction), and both men were clad head to toe in camo.
Livid, Snow approached Jacoby: 30-something, stockily built, tattooed, and the apparent leader of the twosome.
“You wanted to meet me? Here I am,” Snow snapped.
In possession of Snow’s antlers, as well as maps depicting numerous properties, and guilty of theft across at least a three-year span, the first words from Jacoby’s mouth revealed a total lack of remorse: “F*** you.”
Coldblooded. Unrepentant.
Snow balled his fist, stepped toward Jacoby, and disincentivized a return trip in the manner of Woodrow F. Call.
In the background, Jacoby’s confederate, Mahoney, crumbled. No honor among thieves. Mahoney talked: The pair were associated with other thieves as well—a web of theft. Presumably, they were hitting farms beyond Iowa, and possibly active on the road from the start to finish of shed season.
“I saw red and wanted these guys to pay in blood,” Snow says. “It all got splashed on the internet by the social media cowards, making me out as the one in the wrong. People behind a keyboard are desperate to excuse thieves, but if you want to protect what you’ve worked for your entire life to own, you better be self-reliant. These criminals were predators, searching for private property to abuse, and they factored the risks to be worth any penalties. At least I made certain they’d never come back to our county. Then again, I never dreamed a different one of the bunch would show right back up to steal from us the following year.”
And this time the shed trail led from the farm to a motel room cache.
No Shame
Fast forward 12 months, up to the beginning of March 2012. Freakish weather. Snowfall followed by 70-plus degree days produced a near-complete melt in Decatur County, except for patches of 1” powder hiding in heavy shade and timber.
Ready for a day collecting sheds, Snow was pumped for the hunt when he spotted a car parked across the blacktop on a wet gravel road. Polk County (Des Moines) plates. Odd. Incongruent.
Curiosity building, Snow pulled in behind the vehicle and copied the license plate number. Boot prints stamped in gravel sludge led toward the blacktop. Crossing over, Snow found the tracks again in gravel, stretching 50 yards parallel to the road, jumping a ditch, and entering the farm property. No doubt. A shed thief.
“I started moving fast, following these prints in timber. Most trespassing shed thieves wait until all snow has gone, but this guy was too greedy and got in before complete melt. I called my wife and told her to call the law, let them know we had a trespasser, and run the plates. She called back and said the car was a rental out of Des Moines, registered to Billy Switek.”
Inside the timber, Snow’s rage doubled at the site of more tracks, but outlined with less definition, crisscrossed beneath the fresh prints. No question, Switek walked the path a day before. He had already stolen sheds.
“I came out of the trees on top of a hill to a south-facing grass field that catches sun and had no snow. No boot prints. Everything was perfectly still and quiet. You could hear a pin drop. Knowing Switek would hear me, I yelled a threat as loud as I could to scare the hell out of him.”
Snow then doubled back to Switek’s car, prepared to play the waiting game. Assisted by his son, Snow wedged the rental car bumpers between two old Chevy three-quarter ton trucks. Switek was pinned.
“A sheriff’s deputy drove out to take a look and said that I had Switek’s vehicle in false containment. The deputy said if Switek walked out with antlers, he’d write him a trespass ticket. I said, ‘That’s it?’ and he came back with, ‘They’re just deer antlers.’ I had choice words for the deputy.”
“One, I knew Switek wasn’t coming down the road with antlers because he knew I was waiting. Two, even if he was crazy enough to do so, I couldn’t prove in that instant that he stole them from us. I knew Switek would stash the antlers before he got on the blacktop. He could even stash them in a road ditch right-of-way, and that’s country property, and we would have no recourse.”
Exhausted after hours of a winding cat-and-mouse game, and wet to the ears, Snow left his son on sentry duty, and zipped home in his truck for a change of clothes. Slipping on dry socks with 30 minutes of daylight left, Snow’s phone vibrated: “Dad, the guy is walking down the road from the opposite direction, approaching from the north away from the farm.”
Engine roaring back to the gravel road, Snow was face-to-face with Switek just two minutes after the call.
“You’re a trespasser and a piece of s*** thief,” Snow raged. “You and me on this gravel, right now.”
Dressed in camouflage, roughly 60 years old, Switek crumbled, begging for mercy. “I’m sorry, sorry, sorry. I’ll pay you for what we took. I’ll come and work for you for free.”
“You’re a damn liar. Just show me where the sheds are.”
“I’ll go get’em.”
“Hell no. We are going to get them together. In my truck, now.”
As Switek groveled in the cab, Snow drove a quarter mile. “He tells me to stop the truck and we got out and walked on our property about 100 yards along a creek,” Snow recalls. “On the ground, there was a backpack with a half-dozen sheds sticking out.”
Climbing back in the cab, Snow delivered an unexpected ultimatum: “Now, I want our antlers from yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” Switek feigned.
“Don’t give me that s***. I saw your other boot prints. Blink, or try anything other than telling the truth, and you’re not getting out of this truck.”
Switek’s memory instantly cleared: “They’re in my motel room.”
Indeed. Switek had flown from Milwaukee into Des Moines, rented a car, and holed up in a Clarke County motel.
Pistol on hip in case of trouble, Snow drove to the motel, and frog-marched Switek to the room, where the thief opened the door on an antler cache. Sheds blanketed the bed, but the prize was hidden.
Switek grabbed a bedside suitcase and opened the lid, revealing a carefully wrapped monster antler. “It was a 100” antler from the Hayfield Buck,” Snow says. “He had it packaged and ready to go. By itself, it might have brought $2,000 at the time. I have zero doubt he had more sheds than what were in the motel room, but I never found them.”
Recovering his stolen property, Snow gave Switek a final warning. “I made it crystal clear to him. Never, never return to our property or anywhere near it.”
Despite Switek’s pleadings, was he genuinely contrite?
A brazen answer came months later. Snow’s mailbox clinked with a letter from Switek, asking to buy the Hayfield Buck antler for $5,000.
“That shows the mindset of these thieves,” Snow says. “No shame.”
Damascus Road
Every deer season, Snow attempts to guide a youth hunt. Harvesting a deer, particularly for young teen who might not otherwise have the opportunity, can be a formative experience, Snow says. “Hunting should be about true love and respect of the outdoors. Across this country, there’s so many wonderful people involved, but the few poachers and trespassers don’t care about what’s right. If I stole sheds from them, you can rest assured they’d take action. Myself and most property owners just want to be left alone. Again, there are millions of wonderful people involved in hunting, but also a few bad apples.”
What might be an appropriate penalty for deer shed theft on private property?
In 2024, the Iowa legislature passed a new law, doubling the fine for a first offense hunting trespass from $265 to $500. A second offense was bumped to $1,000.
Snow doubts the deterrent effect. He recommends a $1,000 fine for the first offense; $2,000 and 5-year loss of hunting privileges for a second offense. And no verbal warnings.
“All the people I know with great deer and farm properties busted their asses to build what they have. Take a step back and look at the big picture. Taking sheds is theft and fundamentally wrong, end of story. If the antlers are big enough and worth enough, fines alone will not stop thieves if the math works in their favor.”
Wildlife outlaws are repeat offenders. Seldom does a poacher repent on the Damascus Road, and almost never does a poacher pull a one-and-done. With a lifetime volume of stories in his pocket, Snow has witnessed offenders of all stripes.
“Several years ago, I got a call from an out-of-town neighbor who got a cell camera notification of trespassers on his land. I crept over a hill and spotted a man strapped with a .44 pistol, with two kids—probably a 12- and 4-year-old. They packed my neighbor’s ground blind, along with a ladder sticks, antlers, and a tree stand—all they could carry.”
“I came out of hiding and hollered out, ‘Nice haul, %#%#%#.’”
Snow walked the trio off the land and to the nearest road, into an adjacent church parking lot, allowing the adult to assume the landowner (a sheriff’s deputy was in route) was on the way. Moving 50 yards away to ease the tension, Snow watched as the sheriff’s department vehicle came into view.
“The guy grabbed his pistol, gave it to the 12-year-old, and pointed for him to go hide it behind the church building,” Snow recalls. “The deputy pulls up and this guy lies that his name is ‘Jack Black,’ just like the movie actor.”
However, the deputy recognized the thief as Justin Mason—a convicted poacher—and Snow had helped nab Mason over a decade prior.
“About 15 years earlier, I heard a gunshot at 5 a.m., found his truck headlights, and followed him into town,” Snow recalls. “Long story short, the wardens raided him and found 52 racks. It became one of the biggest poaching stories of the last 50 years.”
However, on this occasion, Mason faced no charges. “Crazy, crazy,” Snow exclaims. “I caught him in action, but because all the stolen goods technically never left my neighbor’s property, he was allowed to walk.”
Paying the Price
What advice does Snow have for other landowners or land managers?
Cameras play an important security role, but are only a partial answer. “You can’t put cameras on big acres and solve anything,” Snow contends. “There’s nothing unusual about shed thieves putting on ski masks and staring right into your cameras. No, even if they work to perfection and don’t ever go down in service, they will not stop a determined thief that pulls a grab-and-go. If you have a lot of acres to protect, some other technology is needed.”
“I’m hoping satellite technology becomes available that can cover an entire operation. If it really worked, guys would pay a tremendous amount for that kind of security.”
In the meantime, Snow stays vigilant. “Sometimes in the public’s eye, everything gets turned around if you don’t react meekly. You become the bad guy for protecting private property, but I’m willing to pay that price. Shed poachers are the sort that’ll do anything when they think no one is looking. I’ll never hesitate to say they’re liars and thieves.”
For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:
Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told
Cottonmouth Farmer: The Insane Tale of a Buck-Wild Scheme to Corner the Snake Venom Market
Bagging the Tomato King: The Insane Hunt for Agriculture’s Wildest Con Man
Ghost in the House: A Forgotten American Farming Tragedy
Priceless Pistol Found After Decades Lost in Farmhouse Attic
Bizarre Mystery of Mummified Coon Dog Solved After 40 Years
American Gothic: Farm Couple Nailed In Massive $9M Crop Insurance Fraud
Evil Grain: The Wild Tale of History’s Biggest Crop Insurance Scam
Fleecing the Farm: How a Fake Crop Fueled a Bizarre $25 Million Ag Scam
The Arrowhead Whisperer: Stunning Indian Artifact Collection Found on Farmland
Skeleton In the Walls: Mysterious Arkansas Farmhouse Hides Civil War History
