It's 4:29 a.m. on a recent Saturday on a private logging road near Brownsville that's open to the public.

The gravel crunches as a vehicle approaches. The headlights sweep through the trees and stop on the profile of a deer. The car slows, stops. The door opens, the man steps out, hunkers down. Crunch, crunch.

BANG!

The hunter lands the shot. Too bad. He's hit a decoy.

Doubly bad, the decoy has been set up by Oregon State Police troopers to catch hunters going about their business before safe - and legal - hours.

The man quickly gets back in his car and begins to drive away.

Police lights flash and an OSP pickup appears from a side road. The hunter immediately apologizes. He says he has been laid off.

He is cited to Lebanon Justice Court on a charge of poaching, specifically taking deer with the aid of artificial light. A conviction could result in fines up to $6,250 and a year in jail.

A more likely result, police say, is $1,800 to $2,000 in fees and fines, a two-year hunting suspension and the loss of any rifles being used at the time.

Troopers James Halsey and Kirk Burkholder had set the decoy just before 4 a.m. a week ago Saturday. They stabbed the points of its legs into the ground, far enough from the road not to be spotted as a fake, but near enough for the driver to see it and think he has a clear shot.

The troopers secured the four-point antlers with fishing line.

One trooper hunkered down in the brush. He was the spotter. The other trooper drove past the location to make sure the watcher couldn't be seen from the road, then took his place on a side road. He was the chaser.

Then they waited.

About half an hour later they got their first and only hit of the morning.

Legal shooting time is a half hour before sunrise to a half hour after sunset, Halsey said.

Troopers used the decoy again last Saturday and cited four hunters on two separate incidents at the same site.