08/11/2026
The Second Trophy
(How desire, deception, and recognition can change the person behind the weapon)
By Matt Brigner
For most of my adult life, I have studied the behavior of whitetail deer. I have watched how they recognize danger, respond to pressure, and adjust when something changes within their surroundings. But after examining several poaching cases, I found myself studying a different subject. I began watching the hunter.
The men involved could not have been more different. One was accused of repeatedly hunting and fishing while his privileges were revoked. Two built a public identity around their success with mature urban bucks. Another attached his future to a single world-class deer, while a fourth spent more than two decades embracing the identity of an outlaw hunter.
What connected them was not simply the act of breaking a wildlife law. It was what happened within each man before and after the boundary was crossed. Desire required justification. The act required secrecy. Once questions began, the story had to be protected.
The deer was the visible reward, but it was not always the only one. Beyond the antlers were recognition, money, admiration, defiance, and the belief that someone had accomplished what other hunters could not. Even after the animal was gone, that second reward could remain.
This is the second trophy. To understand how someone begins pursuing it, we must look earlier than the shot or the investigation. We must return to the first private moment when a hunter recognizes a boundary and begins searching for a reason it should not apply to him.
Before the Law Is Broken
Poaching begins before a weapon is discharged or a property line is crossed. It begins when desire encounters a boundary and the hunter starts searching for an exception. The rule may still seem reasonable when applied to everyone else, but this animal, this opportunity, or this moment begins to feel different.
The justification rarely sounds like a declaration of lawlessness. The property is not being hunted. The owner has more land than anyone could use. The deer will eventually cross somewhere else, or another hunter will kill it first. Each explanation reduces the importance of the boundary while increasing the importance of the person’s desire.
Charles Beaty described becoming fascinated with large whitetails when he was young. Over time, he said that fascination became an obsession. The famous King Ranch and Kenedy Ranch held exceptional deer, but their inaccessibility also became part of their attraction. The boundary did not diminish his interest. It intensified it.
For Beaty, effort appeared to create its own sense of permission. He entered difficult country, camped for extended periods, endured harsh conditions, and developed the ability to move without being detected. Those accomplishments were real, but difficulty does not create consent. A person can work extraordinarily hard for something he still has no right to take.
CJ Alexander’s situation developed around one extraordinary Ohio buck. Private messages later recovered by investigators showed that he had already connected the deer to national attention and potentially life-changing money. The buck was no longer only an animal he wanted to hunt. It had become a possible answer to ambitions far beyond the woods.
That transformation changes the question inside the hunter. Instead of asking whether he has permission, a valid license, or a legal opportunity, he begins thinking about everything he could lose by walking away. The time invested, the recognition imagined, and the fear that someone else may reach the deer first can make restraint feel like surrender.
Most lawful hunters will eventually face some version of this moment. A target buck crosses onto property where permission ends. Legal shooting light expires while the animal remains within range. A season closes before the opportunity arrives. The difference is not how badly the hunter wants the deer, but whether wanting it is allowed to move the boundary.
The first step toward poaching is therefore not the shot. It is the private decision that one set of circumstances deserves an exception. Once that exception is accepted, the law has not changed, the property line has not moved, and the animal has not become more available. Only the story inside the hunter has changed.
When the Forbidden Becomes Part of the Reward
Once a person accepts the first exception, the boundary can begin changing meaning. It is no longer only a restriction separating him from what he wants. Defeating it can become part of the experience.
Charles Beaty’s stories reveal this progression clearly. For 22 years, the enormous King Ranch and Kenedy Ranch offered trophy whitetails, but they also offered isolation, danger, security patrols, and the possibility of capture. His run ended on February 6, 1998, after Texas game wardens followed his tracks for approximately 18 miles across the Kenedy Ranch. His accounts suggest that the challenge had grown beyond pursuing deer. He was also testing whether he could enter guarded country, remain there undetected, and escape with something few hunters would ever possess.
Each successful trip provided two rewards. One was the buck. The other was the satisfaction of defeating the people, property lines, and laws intended to stop him. Close calls that should have served as warnings became stories of resourcefulness and nerve.
Repeated success can also distort a person’s understanding of risk. Every violation that ends without consequences becomes evidence that the system can be beaten. Fear gradually gives way to confidence, and confidence can harden into a belief that the person is more capable than those pursuing him.
A Wisconsin case reflects another version of this change. According to a criminal complaint, 27-year-old Dylan Wolff hunted or fished approximately 174 times across five counties between October 2024 and January 8, 2026, while his privileges were revoked. He allegedly took about 22 deer, two turkeys, and 43 fish while using everything from ri**es and sh****ns to crossbows, compound bows, and a recurve bow. Wardens confronted him on January 8, 2026, at a church cemetery where they suspected he had been hunting. A prohibition intended to remove him from those activities had instead become something he repeatedly worked around.
At that point, breaking the rule may no longer feel like a separate decision made before every trip. It can become routine. The person prepares his equipment, travels to the location, and enters the woods much as he did before the revocation, preserving the identity of hunter by ignoring the authority that attempted to take it away.
This is where ordinary deterrence begins losing strength. The person’s lived experience tells him that the boundary exists on paper but has little power in the field. Each successful return home reinforces the behavior and makes the next violation easier.
Eventually, the forbidden opportunity can offer something a lawful hunt cannot. It may provide secrecy, danger, exclusivity, or the satisfaction of entering a place closed to everyone else. The hunter is no longer only pursuing the animal beyond the boundary. He is pursuing the feeling that comes from crossing it.
The Lie That Protects the Act
When Wisconsin wardens confronted Dylan Wolff on January 8, 2026, the boundary was no longer private. Investigators had tracked his vehicle to the cemetery, examined the area, and found footprints leading toward the woods, corn near where he parked, and a discarded bottle of scent-eliminating spray. A .270 r***e was reportedly inside his vehicle.
Wolff initially said he had not hunted or killed any deer during the 2025 season. As the questioning continued, that denial began to narrow. He admitted taking a buck on public land near Pella and another on Stockbridge-Munsee land, followed by additional hunting activity.
This pattern is common when a person realizes the questioner already possesses evidence. The first answer attempts to protect the entire secret. When that answer becomes impossible to maintain, the person surrenders only the portion he believes can already be proven.
The truth then arrives in controlled pieces. One animal is admitted while others remain concealed. One location is acknowledged without revealing the full range of activity. The person may appear increasingly cooperative, even though each admission continues trailing behind the evidence.
A later interview on March 10 brought additional admissions. Wolff reportedly described more deer taken across several properties, including animals registered with his mother’s harvest authorizations. What began as a denial of hunting expanded into an investigation involving numerous outings, multiple counties, and several species.
The lie in this setting is defensive. It is not designed to create fame or attract an audience. Its immediate purpose is to preserve freedom, avoid additional charges, and retain as much of the hidden life as possible.
But defensive lying reveals something deeper than fear of punishment. It shows how strongly a person may protect the version of himself that existed before the confrontation. As each answer collapses, he is not only losing control of the facts. He is losing control of the story that allowed the behavior to continue.
The evidence eventually tells what the person will not. Vehicle locations, weapons, tracks, harvest records, digital information, and physical signs can be examined independently of his explanation. The lie may delay the truth, but once the investigation begins connecting those details, it can no longer contain it.
The Lie That Produces Value
Not every lie is created during confrontation. Some are built long before questions begin, then repeated until they become part of a public identity. Instead of merely protecting an act, this kind of deception can produce recognition, opportunity, and financial value.
On August 22, 2023, William “Zak” Bethel and Justin Booth appeared on the HUNTR Podcast as Creek Kings Outdoors. The two cousins from Columbus, Ohio, described how they pursued mature bucks in urban and suburban habitat. They spoke about knocking on doors, finding overlooked properties, and working harder than hunters who depended on increasingly crowded public land.
Their explanation was convincing because it answered the natural questions surrounding their success. Exceptional bucks came from overlooked urban cover. Access came through persistence and personal relationships with landowners. Locations remained secret because small permission properties could easily be lost to competition.
Those claims created the image of two resourceful young hunters who had found a lawful path around barriers faced by people without farms, leases, or inherited ground. Their videos appeared to confirm that the method worked. Each mature buck strengthened their reputation and made the next story easier to believe.
In February 2024, a visitor discovered bait, tree stands, and trail cameras inside Three Creeks Metro Park, where recreational hunting was prohibited. Officers removed the equipment and monitored the area. The men returned, and investigators began documenting their presence inside the park.
The discovery changed the meaning of their public explanation. According to Wildlife Officer Mark Williams, Creek Kings had treated protected public property like a private hunting preserve. Investigators eventually traced other deer to properties where the men lacked permission and found that supposed Kentucky harvests had actually occurred in Ohio.
Williams later said every deer they killed on their channel had been killed or possessed illegally in some way. Bethel and Booth were charged in September 2025 and each entered 20 guilty pleas in May 2026. The success presented as evidence of persistence and urban hunting knowledge had been supported by advantages unavailable to hunters who obeyed the same boundaries.
That deception did more than conceal where deer were taken. It converted the animals into proof of ability. The videos generated views, the views attracted subscribers, and a growing audience increased their value to potential sponsors.
The lawful story was therefore essential to the product. Viewers were not only watching large bucks being killed. They were watching what they believed skill, determination, and legitimate access had made possible.
This is what separates productive deception from the lie told during an interrogation. One attempts to prevent something from being lost. The other creates something the truth could never have produced.
When a Person Becomes Trapped Inside His Own Story
A defensive lie usually becomes smaller as evidence grows. A public lie can move in the opposite direction. Each person who believes it adds another reason the truth feels impossible to admit.
On November 9, 2023, Christopher “CJ” Alexander killed a massive typical whitetail on private property in Clinton County, Ohio, where he did not have permission to hunt. Investigators later determined that the buck and related evidence were moved approximately 10 miles to property owned by his sister. A false recovery scene and written permission obtained after the kill supported the claim that the deer had been taken there legally.
The public account appeared almost designed for hunting folklore. An unknown hunter carried a borrowed crossbow onto a small family property without knowing the buck existed. After a quiet day, a doe appeared, an enormous buck followed, and a chance encounter produced what could have become one of the largest typical whitetails ever recorded.
The story spread because people wanted it to be true. It suggested that an ordinary hunter without wealth, managed land, or industry connections could receive the opportunity of a lifetime. Interviews, articles, antler value, sponsorship interest, and national recognition quickly gathered around the deer.
Private messages recovered by investigators revealed that Alexander had known about the buck and pursued it before the kill. In one message to his fiancée, he predicted the antlers could bring “buying house type money.” The deer had become more than an animal. It appeared to offer a different future.
When wildlife officers began examining the claimed location, small details challenged the account. Video placed the buck miles away, trail-camera photographs connected it to another property, and vegetation in recovery images did not match the staged site. Cellphone locations, photographs, messages, and other digital evidence gradually reconstructed what had happened.
Alexander admitted the false location privately to officers, yet he continued defending the original story publicly. He appeared in interviews, criticized the investigation, and allowed supporters to believe wildlife officers were attempting to discredit a legitimate accomplishment. Some people defended him, while others contributed money to help him fight the case.
By then, admitting the truth meant losing far more than the antlers. It threatened the record claim, his reputation, financial opportunities, public sympathy, and every person who had defended him. Each repetition made the lie more dangerous, but it also made the truth more expensive.
The information available to the public was badly unbalanced. Alexander could speak freely and emotionally, while investigators were restricted from discussing evidence during an active case. Their silence created space for his version to survive even after he had privately acknowledged that it was false.
A Clinton County grand jury indicted Alexander on May 10, 2024. He pleaded guilty to 14 charges in October of that year. By then, the original act had been surrounded by months of staging, promotion, accusation, and public defense.
The buck had been killed once, but the false version had to be kept alive every day afterward. Alexander admitted the false location when the evidence left him nowhere to go, yet the audience still gave his public story somewhere to hide.
Two People Can Make the Unacceptable Feel Normal
A person acting alone must answer only to his own conscience. When another person participates, agreement can begin replacing conscience. Each person’s willingness becomes evidence to the other that the behavior is acceptable within their private world.
Zak Bethel and Justin Booth did more than hunt together as Creek Kings. They scouted, filmed, recovered deer, and supported the stories presented through their channel. Their partnership allowed each success to carry the appearance of independent confirmation because two people remembered the same hunt and repeated the same explanation.
Shared behavior can also divide responsibility. One person may locate the deer while another provides access. One may film, transport the animal, hide equipment, or reinforce the location story. Because no one person performs every act, each participant can feel less responsible for the whole.
The CJ Alexander case expanded in a similar way after the buck was killed on November 9, 2023. His friend Corey Haunert helped recover and move the deer, while CJ’s sister, Kristina Alexander, provided written permission after the kill for property where the recovery was staged. Corey and Zachary Haunert, along with Kristina, later pleaded guilty to charges connected with the case.
Their involvement made the false account possible. The story required more than CJ’s words. It needed people willing to move the deer, support the alternate location, and help create records that made the account appear legitimate.
Charles Beaty described an even broader outlaw culture during his 22 years of poaching. He said friends, relatives, and people from several professions joined him, including law-enforcement officers. Participation by respected people could make wildlife laws appear less like moral boundaries and more like technical rules that members of the group had privately agreed to ignore.
Within such a circle, the group creates its own standard. Trespassing becomes adventure, evading wardens becomes skill, and taking a protected animal becomes evidence of courage or ability. Approval from the people present can become more influential than the judgment of those outside it.
This does not remove individual responsibility. It explains how repeated conduct can begin feeling ordinary among people who continually validate one another. What one person might question alone can become easier when a partner is already preparing for the next trip.
The most dangerous agreement may never be spoken. It is found in the continued participation of everyone involved. As long as each person keeps showing up, the group can mistake shared willingness for proof that no one is truly doing wrong.
The Audience Enters the Woods
A private group can normalize misconduct through participation. A public audience can reinforce it without knowing the truth. Every view, compliment, subscription, and invitation tells the person that the identity being presented has value.
Creek Kings used videos to turn illegally taken or possessed deer into stories of urban hunting success. When Zak Bethel and Justin Booth appeared on the HUNTR Podcast on August 22, 2023, the invitation itself strengthened their credibility. Nearly 100,000 viewers eventually watched them explain the persistence and access behind their success.
CJ Alexander’s story traveled even farther because his buck appeared capable of rewriting the record book. Hunting publications and podcasts repeated the account of an ordinary hunter unexpectedly encountering a world-class deer. The larger the story became, the more difficult it was for many people to accept that its foundation might be false.
Alexander continued appearing publicly after admitting the false location to wildlife officers. His supporters questioned the investigation, defended his reputation, and contributed to a fundraising campaign. The audience did not know it was protecting a story he had already abandoned in private.
Media attention does not disappear when the truth changes. The successful hunter becomes the suspected hunter, then the accused poacher, the convicted offender, and eventually the remorseful guest explaining what went wrong. Each stage creates a new reason to watch.
Charles Beaty demonstrates how long that value can survive. Beginning years after his February 6, 1998 arrest, he appeared on numerous podcasts to recount his outlaw hunts on the King Ranch and Kenedy Ranch. Hosts often state that they oppose poaching, yet titles describing him as a legend or the Prince of Poachers can turn condemnation into promotion.
Beaty now says he tells his story to warn others, and that warning may be sincere. But enormous bucks, guarded ranches, helicopters, long wilderness trips, and narrow escapes remain compelling entertainment. A listener may hear the lesson while still admiring the life that produced it.
This does not make every interviewer irresponsible. Officers, journalists, and ethical hunting platforms can use these cases to explain wildlife crime, expose deception, and protect public resources. The difference lies in whether the conduct is examined honestly or packaged primarily as outlaw adventure.
The audience must also examine its own appetite. If a poacher receives more attention after exposure than an honest hunter earns over a lifetime, notoriety becomes another reward. The public may never cross the property line, but its attention can still become part of what was waiting on the other side.
The Third Story
The first story is told privately to justify crossing the boundary. The second is told publicly to protect the act or transform it into success. After exposure, a third story often begins.
This version may include responsibility, regret, explanation, and promises of change. It can be sincere while also helping the person construct an identity capable of surviving what the evidence revealed. The successful hunter or outlaw becomes the man who made mistakes and now hopes others can learn from them.
On July 30, 2025, CJ Alexander appeared on the Deer IQ Podcast to discuss what was described as “The Real Story” of the buck. He acknowledged the fabricated account, explained why he continued defending it publicly after admitting the false location to officers, and spoke about consequences he had not anticipated. He also challenged portions of how he believed the case had been portrayed.
Admission and self-protection can exist in the same conversation. A person may accept the central wrongdoing while continuing to negotiate motive, intent, and how others should judge him. Explanation can provide genuine understanding, but it can also reduce responsibility if the reasons receive more attention than the choices.
Charles Beaty’s third story has developed over a much longer period. He says he now shares his experiences to discourage outlaw hunting, and a portion of his book proceeds is donated to Operation Game Thief. Yet the title Prince of Poachers remains the identity under which his books, merchandise, and podcast appearances are promoted.
That contradiction does not prove his reform is false. It demonstrates how difficult it can be to abandon the identity that gives a person’s life its greatest public value. The behavior may end while the story surrounding it continues providing recognition, income, and belonging.
Regret must also be separated from remorse. Regret focuses on what the person lost through fines, jail, damaged relationships, or public shame. Remorse recognizes what his choices took from landowners, wildlife, lawful hunters, investigators, and people persuaded to defend something untrue.
Redemption should remain possible. A hunting culture that offers no path back gives offenders little reason to accept responsibility or help prevent future violations. But redemption requires more than replacing the original story with one that is easier to live with.
The third story becomes credible when the person no longer needs to remain its hero. He can acknowledge the full harm, surrender the parts of the legend that still reward him, and allow the truth to stand without reshaping it around his image.
What Honest Hunters Are Actually Competing Against
The consequences of poaching extend beyond the animal that is taken. Every false success story creates a comparison for hunters who believe everyone is operating under the same rules. When those rules are quietly removed, the appearance of exceptional ability can be manufactured.
A lawful hunter must accept limits that may prevent success. Permission can be denied, legal shooting light can expire, a season can close, or a target buck can move onto property where access ends. The discipline to stop is part of hunting, even though it rarely produces a photograph or story.
Creek Kings presented mature urban bucks as the result of persistence and lawful permission. Their viewers could reasonably conclude that similar success was available to anyone willing to scout harder and knock on more doors. Investigators later showed that the comparison was never equal.
CJ Alexander’s buck created a similar illusion. His original account suggested that an ordinary hunter on a small family property had received an unexpected opportunity of historic proportions. Other hunters were comparing their seasons to a story built around prior knowledge, unauthorized access, staged evidence, and a fabricated location.
This does not diminish the woodsmanship those men may have possessed. A person can understand deer movement, shoot accurately, endure difficult conditions, and still violate the principles that give those abilities meaning. Skill does not become ethics simply because both are carried into the woods.
The honest hunter’s greatest decisions are often invisible. Nobody sees the buck he allows to walk across a boundary, the stand he refuses to hang without permission, or the opportunity he gives up when legal light disappears. Those moments attract no audience, but they reveal what remains when desire is denied.
Poaching also damages relationships that lawful hunters depend upon. Landowners become less willing to grant access, public confidence in hunting declines, and every remarkable deer attracts suspicion. The dishonest hunter takes an animal, but he can also take opportunity and trust from people he may never meet.
The true comparison is therefore not between the sizes of two sets of antlers. It is between what each hunter was willing to accept in pursuing them. One brought home the deer. The other preserved something that could not be mounted on a wall.
The Second Trophy
The visible trophy in each of these cases was the animal. It was the buck pursued across a boundary, taken without permission, hidden behind a false location, or displayed as proof of unusual ability. But the behavior surrounding those animals reveals that possession was only part of the reward.
For Dylan Wolff, the second trophy may have been the preservation of his identity as a hunter. Revocation removed the privilege on paper, yet the alleged pattern continued across counties, species, and methods. Each outing allowed him to keep living a life the law had attempted to interrupt.
For Zak Bethel and Justin Booth, the second trophy became credibility. The deer shown through Creek Kings Outdoors supported an identity built around persistence, access, and urban hunting knowledge. The animals produced stories, and the stories made their success appear repeatable and worthy of recognition.
For CJ Alexander, one extraordinary buck appeared capable of producing money, attention, and a different future. After the animal was taken, the public story became something else he could not bear to lose. Protecting it eventually required more decisions than the original act.
For Charles Beaty, crossing the boundary became part of the trophy itself. The guarded ranch, extended stay, close escape, and victory over pursuit helped create the Prince of Poachers identity. Decades later, that identity continues attracting audiences even as he warns others not to follow it.
The second trophy takes a different form in every person. It can be secrecy, status, defiance, money, admiration, or the private belief that someone accomplished what others could not. Unlike antlers, it does not have to remain in the offender’s possession to retain value.
An audience can keep it alive. We watch the successful hunt, debate the accusation, follow the investigation, and return for the confession. The deer may be confiscated, but the person can still receive attention from the story of how it was taken, hidden, exposed, and regretted.
That does not mean these stories should be ignored. They can teach hunters how rationalization develops, how evidence exposes deception, and how quickly admiration can reward a false identity. But we should understand what our attention is celebrating and whether the lesson is stronger than the legend.
The most revealing question may never be why someone wanted the deer. Hunters understand that desire. The deeper question is what the person expected the deer to prove about him.
Every hunter eventually meets a boundary. It may be a fence, a closing hour, a property line, a filled tag, or a season that ends before the opportunity arrives. Nothing visible separates the hunter from the poacher in that moment except the decision that follows.
Long before a weapon is raised, a person must decide whether the deer is something he hopes to possess or something he believes he is entitled to take. That difference may never appear in a photograph or hang on a wall. It remains the truest measure of the hunter making the choice.
Author note:
This article is based on publicly available interviews, court records, criminal complaints, and information released by wildlife agencies. Allegations involving unresolved cases are identified as allegations. The behavioral observations expressed throughout the article are the author’s interpretations of the documented statements and events.
Columbus and Franklin County Metro Parks
Battelle Darby Creek Metro Park
