My friend Matthew Puckett is Hunting in NM and had his SXS with 6 dogs stolen from the motel he was staying at. (2 pointers, one Brittany and 3 Setters). Please get the word out! I can't even imagine what he is going through right now. he goes by Cinchman here.his# is 2one four-7two8-fifteen twenty

Beautiful dogs. That's horrible. No level too low for scum like that. Did they get trailer and all?

"OUR SIDE BY SIDE WAS STOLEN IN LAS CRUCES, NEW MEXICO WITH 6 DOGS IN IT.
We stayed at a hotel and they hot wired the side by side, cut the winch and it took them over an hour to get it off the trailer.
Tonto, Banjo and Cutter are in it. And Philip Webster has Hawk, Finley and Huck in it.
2 pointers, one Brittany. 3 setters."

What part of the state was he in? I've got a lot of bird hunters in scattered throughout NM. I'll forward to them.

"OUR SIDE BY SIDE WAS STOLEN IN LAS CRUCES, NEW MEXICO WITH 6 DOGS IN IT.
We stayed at a hotel and they hot wired the side by side, cut the winch and it took them over an hour to get it off the trailer.
Tonto, Banjo and Cutter are in it. And Philip Webster has Hawk, Finley and Huck in it.
2 pointers, one Brittany. 3 setters."

I haven’t been on here in years. I know Matt Puckett from a long time ago. Good man and probably loves bird hunting as much as anyone on here. Let’s find these bird dogs.

First place I would check would be animal control, they probably just dumped the pups, hopefully someone knew what they were and called (I'm probably preaching to the choir)

Thanks! Sent to my network out there. Hope they recover the hounds and gear soon.

There's a particularly hot corner in Hell reserved for this kind of human excrement.

Hope the dogs are found and returned safely. The gear can always be replaced...

Mark

Hopefully didn’t get across the border before the theft was reported. I’d check with border patrol.

Damn was just talking to him a week or so ago about hunting. Hope they find the dogs. Can’t imagine what he is feeling right now

Rig and dogs have been found. All dogs ok.

That’s great news!

From Matthew's facebook page.

"UPDATE!! WE HAVE FOUND THE DOGS AND MULE!
The dogs are safe and were kept locked up, they’re a little thirsty but other than that, okay. The mule was stripped down a bit but otherwise in decent condition!!!
Thank you so much for everyone’s prayers and words of encouragement. I’ll post a more details story of how we found it and went running hundreds of yards through the desert, shotgun in hand, to get to it.
Thank you Lord!!"

That's wonderful news! My dogs are family so this was nothing short of kidnapping.

The best news that could have come from this. Thank the Lord!

Glad it worked out for the most part.

So glad you got your dogs back the Mule could be replaced, not those beautiful dogs. Hope you shot those bastards.

From Facebook
Matthew Puckett
·
FULL STORY
Since so many people became so invested in this and were kind of enough to reach out with prayers and encouragement, y’all deserve the wild, full story.
We parked the rig in a place none of us thought they could steal the ATV even if they wanted to. In what seemed to be a decent area, at a nice hotel. At 1:20am a single cab blue dodge with scrap metal pulled in, someone gets out and begins trying to hot wire the ATV, after an hour they’re able to get it started, back it off the trailer with no ramps, over a large curb, into a tree, and over 2 large boulders that came up higher than my knee, into the street and drove off in it. We went out at 6:30ish, saw it was gone and called the cops. The kicker is, the ATV has a GPS unit in it that is mounted individually from the battery. It has a 5 year life span because it pings off of cell towers every 12-16 hours. It pinged at 5:33am in a field 3 miles north of our hotel. The cops took over an hour to arrive so Philip and I dropped the trailer while Sammy stayed with it and the remaining dogs and we took off for the field. We found tire tracks in the field where someone had done donuts and took off again. We were afraid they had found the GPS so we searched for it in the field but never found it, which was a good sign.
We then searched surrounding neighborhoods from the last ping, and even went further north into an area we were told they often take stolen ATVs. Still nothing. We were checking for a new ping every 30 seconds it seemed. We continued our search all day with various tips and several folks telling us that the thieve’s truck was well known, we checked neighborhoods that we were given tips to check, no luck. The city cops seemed to be pretty numb to this kind of theft, as if from the beginning there was nothing they could do.
Then randomly, at 5:30pm we get a message from someone in the area that they knew where our ATV and dogs were, they didn’t want to be involved with the police, but they would help.…..for $1000. We texted back and forth with this guy for a while and he assured us he would help, well naturally we are calling bs. I talk to the guy on the phone and told him we wanted proof he had or knew where our stuff was before we sent a dime. He then sent pics of our ATV. He was with it. He said they had the dogs in a lean to horse shed, and that they were currently stripping the ATV. The pic was hard to make out, but sure enough it was the ATV, we also noticed the dog holes were still closed and latched but the air louvers were open. So we were fairly certain that the dogs were inside the dog box still. We tossed around whether to pay him or not, but ultimately decided it was our only chance and maybe worth the risk. We sent him $750 through cash app, he sent an address 13 miles south of town. We called the county sheriff and the race was on. 3 sheriffs beat us to the address, knocked open the front gate, lights on, looking in windows, while we watched from down the street. They came out and we pulled up to talk to them….an older couple lived there and were scared to death with all the commotion. The address was a fake, which is what we feared but we thought the $750 was worth the risk in getting our dogs back. The sheriffs explained that theft was at an all time high and atvs were the first to go. 6 different vehicles were stolen the same night that our stuff got stolen.
So back to waiting on the next ping, or if there would even be one. We didn’t know if they had found it by now and destroyed it, or if it was just taking an insanely long time to ping. All the worst thoughts you can imagine are happening, are the dogs dead? Did they leave them in the desert? Did they pen them up with a bunch of pit bulls (i think they’re the official dog of las cruces from what we saw) and was there a blood bath? Did they shoot them in the box? Was it all in Mexico by now? We talked to a border patrol agent who said it was highly unlikely it was in Mexico and was most likely still local.
It was plenty dark by now so we went back to the hotel to take care of the remaining dogs and try to eat something. I walked across the street to a family owned Italian restaurant and asked if they had cameras, they had moved them all to the back because they had 7 break ins in the last month. They kindly gave us 3 free dinner to eat the hotel. As we are sitting in the lobby eating, Philip looks up and says “Boys, we have a new ping!” At this point I was torn between excitement, but also the risk of further disappointment. The ping was in the middle of a desert area surrounded by houses and trailers. The owner of the GPS company had stayed in contact with us throughout the day and said the ping could be directly on point, or up to a quarter-half mile off given the area. It was 10:45pm, we then discussed it. Do we go right this very moment and go looking when it could be in someone’s backyard or shop? We couldn’t see anything in the dark, and the cops had already proven to be unhelpful. If we went that night and the cops did show up with lights and we couldn’t find it, we may raise awareness to the thieves that we were on to them. We didn’t want to risk it and decided to move at first light.
We rolled in at 7am, we called the cops and told them where to meet us and what time….they were late. So we went in on our own. As we drove the edges of the desert area, I looked out and several hundred yards away saw the ATV sitting in the middle of it. We grabbed our guns and ran to it, finding the dogs still locked in it, alive and well. They stripped various things off the ATV, lights, speakers, my .410 side by side was still on it, etc. They left my wingworks vest and they obviously don’t know how valuable Purina is because they left a 50lb bag of pro plan in it.
Randy Schultz drove out to help us and finally the sheriffs arrived. We assessed the damage, towed it out to the edge of the desert and pushed it onto the trailer. The sheriffs informed us that they knew exactly who took it, where he lived and have arrested him 16 times, he’s 24. One sheriff immediately hopped in his squad car to go pick him up.
He’s being charged with grand theft auto, animal theft, animal cruelty, extortion, and theft of a high value animal because they were bird dogs (never heard of that one). They know where he hangs out and hope to pick him up soon.
The 6 dogs are okay, they were thirsty and hungry, but doing well. None of them peed or pooped in the dog box for the full 36 hours they were in it!
We hustled back to the hotel and got out of Las Cruces as quickly as possible. As we were loading our dogs a random couple drove up and asked if we were the ones who had our dogs and ATV stolen, the wife started crying when she found out we recovered them. The power of social media is crazy!
Lock your side by sides up, ADD A GPS TO THEM, and back them up to something you know for certain they can’t back it off into. There were several people saying that we should’ve had GPS, well we did. We just couldn’t post that because the reach of social media is amazing and it got all the way back to him or someone involved, so he would’ve known.
We can’t thank everyone enough who shared the post, called, texted and messaged. There were a few close friends and family we stayed in constant contact with and they were great. We are mentally and emotionally exhausted but happy and thankful! The sheriff department told us that it was a one in a million chance we recovered everything like we did, and they had never had a recovery go that way before. Most are stolen and either never recovered or found destroyed months later.
So thank you to you all. Your efforts were appreciated. The bird dog community is truly AMAZING. Never been more proud to be apart of it. Seriously, y’all are the best!
To the elderly gentlemen walking his dogs in the desert this morning, sorry to scare you with the shotgun. Wasn’t trying to go Rip Wheeler on you.
To the thief, I hope you get a one way ticket to the train station.
Feel free to share.
Thank you!

God had a big hand in this recovery, so glad you got your dogs and side by side back

Amen. So glad dogs ok. hope perpetrators get theirs....

The GPS was smart and I'm glad everything turned out about as good it could.

My truck got robbed at motel in Van Horn by some kid. I lost some things but got lucky enough to keep the expensive stuff and my dog and shotgun were in my room. Be careful of yourself and things in those areas.

Great to hear that the dogs are alright!

I would like to catch the mother suckers