Operation Night Cat, Episode 3: A Duck’s a Duck

Outside/In

NHPR

Society & Culture, Documentary, Natural Sciences, Nature, Science

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 19 November 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“Operation Night Cat” is a special three-part series from NHPR’s Document team and Outside/In. Episode 3: A Duck’s a Duck Two sets of potential crimes, investigated by more than five sets of law enforcement agencies. Why most of them never took a shot at accountability. News audio clip credit: WMUR. For a full list of credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT Operation Night Cat is made possible with listener support. Click here to support independent, investigative journalism. To hear more of Document's investigative journalism, including their three-part series on New Hampshire's YDC scandal, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is episode three of our mini-series, Operation Nightcat.
0:04.4	If you haven't caught up yet, go back and listen to the first two episodes.
0:08.2	Available in the feed now.
0:11.5	This is Operation Nightcat. I'm Nate Hedgy.
0:15.2	It was a cloudy spring day in 2023, and Fish and Game Warden Ron Arsenault had been summoned to an office building
0:22.5	near the New Hampshire State Capitol in Concord. He walked into a conference room and sat down at this
0:28.0	big roundtable. Can you tell me about that big meeting? Yeah, well, I can tell you, there was a lot of
0:33.9	people there. A lot of different alphabets, you know.
0:40.7	It was like four or five federal agencies involved.
0:46.9	Looking around, Ron saw special agents from the FBI, the IRS, the U.S. Postal Service,
0:51.5	attorneys from New Hampshire's Department of Justice, and investigators from the state's Public Integr integrity unit, corruption busters.
0:55.4	And it was just a meeting of how we had started this case and what we were at
0:59.8	and all the other stuff the other guys were finding at the search warrants.
1:03.8	You know, it was just spiraling out and spider web in every different direction.
1:09.0	It was crazy.
1:11.9	This alphabet soup of law enforcement agencies had assembled because of all the potential
1:17.8	crimes that Ron had uncovered during Operation Nightcat. First off, there was the illegal
1:24.0	poaching. Gray fox, bobcat, gray fox, bobcat, red fox, red fox.
1:29.4	Evidence that a group of men were hunting at night, hunting out of season, baiting animals.
1:34.7	It's like they're playing Grand Theft Auto behind their house, except with animals.
1:39.7	Mostly violations and misdemeanors.
1:42.8	But the dead bobcats, a protected species in New Hampshire, were being registered in other states where hunting them is allowed.
	...

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