This is how it ought to go

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By Barb Ickes | Saturday, May 24, 2008 9:33 PM CDT | () comments

When you find something that doesn’t belong to you and you sell it, is that stealing?

What if the owner’s name is on the item you found?

What if you intentionally set out to search for property belonging to somebody else?

Tricky business.

A Davenport man had a little talk with police last week about his practice of “fishing” in the creeks and lagoon at Eastern Avenue Park for discs that were lost by disc golfers.

I’m not naming the man because he hasn’t been charged with anything, but he’s sure unpopular among some Quad-City disc golfers (the sport is getting huge, by the way).

Most of us have heard of wetsuit-wearing entrepreneurs who dive into ponds on regular golf courses to fetch golf balls. Somebody’s got to do it, right? Otherwise the water hazards would fill up with Titleists and Pinnacles.

But the disc golfers say they’re perfectly capable of recovering their own discs from the Eastern Avenue water hazards — if only the “fisherman” would give them the chance. They often have to wait a day or two, they said, because the water is sometimes too high or too cold to retrieve a disc immediately.

A couple days are often too late, though. The man with a homemade retrieving hook already collected their lost discs. And even though most golfers write their initials and phone number on them with Sharpies, they aren’t returned.

Instead, the Davenport man collects the discs by the dozens and sells them on eBay. They cost an average of $15 new but can run much higher. They fetch between $5 and $15 (or more) on the Internet auction site.

The “fisherman” said Friday that he saw nothing wrong with his hobby. He was not aware until some of the golfers pointed it out to a Davenport police officer that Iowans are, in fact, obligated by law to “inform the owner” when they find lost goods valued at $5 or more.

Since he’s lost more than 20 discs himself and no one ever called him to return one, he figured the losses were merely inherent to the game.

Other golfers don’t see it that way.

“When the water’s high or the area’s muddy, you can’t see the discs,” said John Resch, chairman of the Quad-City Disc Golf Club. “If you remember where it went in, you can sometimes go back in a day or two to get it if this guy hasn’t already been there.”

Andy Swan, a Moline golfer, called the disc fishing “unethical” and said the only reason it’s been going on, uninterrupted, for several years is that disc golfers are “pretty mellow and nonconfrontational people.”

This apparently is true, because the “fisherman” is a disc golfer, too, and he instantly agreed to stop collecting and selling the lost discs. He’s even returning one that Swan saw on eBay and claimed as his.

Said Swan: “We’re just a group of nice, honest people.”

Evidently.

Barb Ickes can be contacted at (563) 383-2316 or bickes@qctimes.com.