SD conservation officer supervisor Chris Dekker | Facebook
South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks does not pretend it can watch every inch of the Mount Rushmore State. Conservation Officer Supervisor Chris Dekker made that the point of his presentation on Friday, when he put a single investigation in front of the GFP Commission and asked members to remember how most of these cases actually start.
With a phone call.
The file GFP internally labeled “Crossbow Crazy” belongs to Jon Paul Schell, a former Hill City man and former owner of Black Hills Destinations, a hunting, fishing and guide service. Dekker told commissioners the business operated without the U.S. Forest Service guide permits required to take clients onto national forest land. Schell was arrested in December 2025 and charged with six counts of hunting big game without a license, five counts of failure to tag, seven counts of unlawful possession of an animal and two counts of prohibited hunting of big game. He also faces $18,000 in civil damages.
Dekker said Schell hunted primarily with a crossbow, which is how the file got its name. The incident GFP used as the spine of the presentation dates all the way back to December 2023.
According to Dekker, Schell and his girlfriend were seen with crossbows on the shoulder of a road near a Hill City subdivision. A woman driving her children to school stopped to investigate the peculiar scene, where Schell allegedly told her he was a disabled veteran with permits to hunt from the road with a crossbow. Even though South Dakota does indeed require a special permit for crossbow hunting, hunting alongside the road in a subdivision remains questionable at best. But after seemingly tugging on her heart strings, the woman, Dekker said, soon invited Schell onto her property to help him put meat in the freezer.
Later that day, the woman reported that her son watched Schell shoot at five deer, hit at least three and recover only one. They later found a doe Schell had already wounded, one Dekker went on to say that Schell finished with a pistol right next to a residence. It was that shot that prompted a call to Game Warden Jeff Edwards and prompted a thorough investigation.
It didn’t take long for search warrants to be issued. Officers then seized firearms, crossbows, cellphones, electronics and deer parts from Schell’s house, freezers, sheds, and trash cans.
“There was a lot of stuff in the house and we’re looking for deer parts and hunting equipment,” Dekker said. “You’ve got stuff in freezers and sheds. You’ve got stuff in bone piles, and we’re going through collecting that, and taking stuff out of trash cans. We lucked out and got there before the trash got picked up that day, so we were taking parts and pieces out of the trash cans.”
With more evidence than they expected, officers made the arrest on the spot and also came across warrants in Elkhart County, Indiana, for failure to pay child support. Dekker said Schell will be held there until December and remains hopeful that he is then returned to face the wildlife charges.
“When we’re fully staffed, we’re maybe 60 field officers across the state,” he said. “That’s not enough to cover all of the area. So, we’ve got hundreds and hundreds and thousands of hunters out there every day, and anglers out there every day, and they’re our eyes and our ears. So we get these amazing tips from our sportsmen and women out there, and that’s how we’re able to better protect our resources, because we can’t be everywhere at once. But, odds are, someone has seen something. So, we always encourage everybody in the outdoors, if you see something that looks funny, say something.”
