Landowner to pay $675 in fines and court costs in connection with duck hunters' confrontation
Apr. 6—NEW ROCKFORD, N.D. — A Bismarck man charged after an October confrontation with a group of duck hunters in Eddy County, North Dakota, which was captured in a video that later went viral, has been fined $675 in fines and court costs, court records show.
As part of a plea agreement, Jeffrey Erman pleaded guilty to Class B misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct-obscenity and interfering with the rights of hunters and trappers. In addition, Erman's hunting privileges in North Dakota were suspended for one year, and he must take a hunter safety course and show proof of successful completion before his hunting privileges are reinstated, court records show.
A third charge, trading in special influence, a Class A misdemeanor, was dismissed.
Erman had pleaded not guilty to the three charges in November, and a jury trial scheduled for April 6 was canceled as a result of the agreement.
The sentence results from an Oct. 21, 2022, incident in Eddy County, in which Erman confronted a group of waterfowl hunters who were set up on the property line of a neighboring field. The hunters had permission to hunt the harvested bean field but had been told by the landowner not to set up near Erman's land without his permission.
Upon seeing the hunters, Erman drove up in a side-by-side Polaris Ranger and confronted the hunters, saying they were touching his land and had ruined his plans for a morning hunt.
One of the hunters, Jacob Sweere of Madison Lake, Minnesota, recorded the confrontation and posted a video on his
YouTube hunting and fishing channel
that quickly went viral. The video shows Erman shouting obscenities at the hunters and offering to let them hunt if they paid him $300, an offer which they declined.
As of April 6, Sweere's video had been viewed nearly 3 million times and generated nearly 14,000 comments.
One of the hunters, Dustin Wolf of West Fargo, pleaded guilty to criminal trespass, a Class B misdemeanor, in late December and was ordered to pay $250 in fines and court costs, court records show.
Erman received a deferred imposition of sentence on the disorderly conduct charge as part of the plea agreement, according to Ashley Lies, Eddy County state's attorney. That means the disorderly conduct charge will go off his record in a year if he complies with the requirements outlined in an unsupervised probation period that began March 27 and continues through March 21, 2024, Lies said. Unless the interfering with rights of hunters sentence is appealed, it will stay on his record "no matter what," she said.
