Собака-полицейский из Миннесоты спасла пропавшего охотника и помогла раскрыть дело браконьеров

MILACA — Between farm life and hunting, Mike Krauel often found himself outdoors growing up, developing a passion and appreciation for nature. Krauel, who attended North Lakes Academy in Forest Lake in eighth and ninth grade, spent much of his childhood growing up on a farm, as his family lived on a farm in Stacy and then later moved to a farm in Milaca when he was in high school. “That really sparked my desire to be outdoors,” Krauel said of farming and hunting. Krauel said he had thought about becoming a conservation officer when he was in high school but he feared he would miss out on hunting season. “I started school thinking I was going to be a phy ed teacher and then I switched and I thought I was going to be a doctor, but then I followed a doctor around and realized that really wasn’t what I wanted to do,” Krauel said. “I wanted more, I don’t know, adventure and more being out in the woods and being outdoors.” It was a ride along with a park ranger he knew that gave him clarity on his career path, as well as some summer seasonal positions in college. “That really helped make my mind up that that’s what I wanted to do,” said Krauel, who works in the Minnesota DNR’s K9 Unit. “I wanted a job that could be outdoors, that’s different every day, and can challenge me every day.” And that’s what he’s found. Krauel, who graduated from St. Cloud State with a degree in ecology, spent about five years working in the DNR’s Parks and Trails Division. During that time, Krauel saw firsthand the job of a conservation officer and said he had an interest in pursuing that career, but going back to school wasn’t in the cards at the time. But the DNR’s new CO Prep Program, a paid training pathway for people without a law enforcement background to become conservation officers, gave him the opportunity he was looking for and paved the way to his career as a conservation officer. Following his selection, Krauel went through a law enforcement program at Hennepin Technical College, passed the POST exam all law enforcement are required to take, and spent 12 weeks at Camp Ripley for the conservation officer academy. “We focused basically on everything conservation officer related, so we learned how to drive boats and ATVs and trucks and trailers, and learned how to check fishing licenses and hunting licenses and all the different game and fish rules,” Krauel said. Krauel was sworn in as a conservation officer in 2015 and completed his 16 weeks of field training in early 2016 and has been based in Mora since 2018. Becoming a K-9 handler Even in the beginning of his time as a conservation officer, Krauel said he never thought he would become a K-9 handler in the future. “As time went on, and I paid more attention to what our dogs can do, and what goes into them, I really got more of a passion for it, and started pursuing it a lot more,” he said. Krauel became a K-9 handler in 2023. Krauel and his K-9 Bolt, a black lab mix, graduated from St. Paul Police Department’s K9 School and are among the nine teams in the DNR Enforcement Division’s K9 Unit. They are trained in Zebra mussel detection, tracking of persons, wildlife detection, evidence recovery, and performing educational demonstrations. Krauel said that Bolt is trained to find firearms and spent ammunition, providing critical evidence that can be used in poaching cases. “We’ll use him a lot in cases where maybe someone shot from the road, and we need to prove that they shot from the road or maybe we need to prove that they didn’t shoot too close to a house,” he said. Bolt is also trained to detect Zebra mussels. Krauel said they spend a lot of time during the summer searching at boat accesses. Locating hidden Zebra mussels isn’t the only benefit. “It really raises awareness about invasive species,” Krauel said. “When people see the dog searching, a lot of times maybe they’ll quick try to search again before the dog gets there to make sure they didn’t miss anything, and [it] just really raises awareness for people to be paying attention when they’re pulling their boats in and out of the water.” In addition to Zebra mussels, Bolt has had many other successful finds, including shell casings that have helped prove either guilt or innocence in cases, weapons like firearms that were dropped in public places, and a knife a suspect threw in a ditch. But Krauel said the most rewarding finds are people, and he said Bolt has found two people — a missing hunter who got lost and wasn’t able to get out of the woods and a missing juvenile boy who Bolt located in just eight minutes or so about a quarter of a mile away from the house in a swampy area. “That’s what makes everything worth it,” Krauel said, later adding, “If you can find a person and save their life or help a person out, that’s I think why every conservation officer wants to do this job is they want to help keep people safe, and help the public out.” While there’s been many ups and downs, Krauel has found the job gratifying. “It’s probably one of the hardest, most frustrating, but also the most rewarding thing I’ve done in my career,” Krauel said. “I wouldn’t trade a minute of it. Even the frustrating parts I wouldn’t trade because it helps you as a handler to work through problems but then when you do work through that problem, and you see the success on the other end, it’s a pretty rewarding thing to do.” Krauel said helping people and protecting Minnesota’s natural resources by catching poachers who are trying to cheat the system are his favorite parts of the job. He’s been recognized for both, as he was named the Turn in Poachers Officer of the Year in 2021 and received a Boat and Water Safety Achievement Award in 2022. “It’s been a lot of work and a lot of effort, but it’s been a really rewarding career so far,” Krauel said.