Full Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA _______________ No. 25-0677 Filed October 7, 2026 _______________ State of Iowa, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Frank Hugo Welte II, Defendant–Appellant. _______________ Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Woodbury County, The Honorable James N. Daane, Judge. _______________ AFFIRMED _______________ Robert B. Deck (argued) and Randy Hisey (until withdrawal), Sioux City, attorneys for appellant. Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Zachary Miller (argued), Assistant Attorney General, attorneys for appellee. W. Charles Smithson, West Des Moines, attorney for Amicus Curiae. _______________ Heard at oral argument by Badding, P.J., and Chicchelly and Langholz, JJ. Opinion by Badding, P.J. 1 BADDING, Presiding Judge. During deer season in December 2022, a conservation officer overheard a radio transmission from a voice she recognized as Frank Welte’s. He was communicating with his hunting party. As the officer would later recall, Welte told the group that a pair of bucks had “got up” and were “running” into another field. By the time the officer got to the field, Welte and five other hunters were circled around a truck with two bucks in the back. Welte admitted that he shot both of them. The conservation officer concluded that Welte had violated the “fair chase law” by using his radio and vehicle to run down the deer. She issued him a citation under Iowa Code section 481A.24 (2022), which prohibits using a radio transmitter “to communicate the location or direction” of deer or “to coordinate the movement of other hunters.” She also cited him for illegally taking a deer by using a motor vehicle in violation of section 481A.38 and Iowa Administrative Code rule 571-106.11(5).1 A magistrate found Welte guilty of both charges. Welte appealed the motor vehicle conviction to the district court. See Iowa R. Crim. P. 2.72(1), (4)(f ). The court found “the magistrate’s order lacked sufficient facts to convict Welte” and remanded the case to the magistrate “for further specificity of the facts that justified” the guilty verdict. On remand, the magistrate again found Welte guilty, determining that Welte used “his pickup to find and shoot the deer.” Welte appealed that ruling, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence. The district court affirmed the conviction. Welte applied for discretionary review, which the supreme court granted before transferring the case to our court. 1 This rule was previously numbered 571-106.7(6). 2 Welte raises three issues, but only one is preserved for our review— whether sufficient evidence supported his conviction. The other two issues, which challenge the district court’s authority to remand the case to the magistrate in Welte’s first district court appeal and the constitutionality of section 481A.38, were neither raised in nor decided by the district court. As a result, we cannot address them on discretionary review. See Meier v. Senecaut, 641 N.W.2d 532, 537 (Iowa 2002) (“It is a fundamental doctrine of appellate review that issues must ordinarily be both raised and decided by the district court before we will decide them on appeal.”); State v. Chamberlain, No. 24-1221, 2025 WL 3022844, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App. Oct. 29, 2025) (finding the defendant failed to preserve error on the issue she raised on discretionary review because she never called the alleged error to the district court’s attention). Turning to the only preserved issue, our review of sufficiency-of-the- evidence claims is for the correction of errors at law. State v. Bower, 725 N.W.2d 435, 440–41 (Iowa 2006). Under Iowa Rule of Criminal Procedure 2.72(4)(g), a magistrate’s “[f ]indings of fact . . . shall be binding on the judge deciding the appeal if supported by substantial evidence.” “Evidence is substantial if a rational trier of fact could be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty of the charged crime.” Bower, 725 N.W.2d at 444. To prove Welte guilty of violating Iowa Code section 481A.38, the State needed to establish that he took a deer in violation of “the terms, conditions, limitations, and restrictions” set out in the code and 3 accompanying administrative rules. 2 Iowa Administrative Code rule 571- 106.11(5) prohibits the use of automobiles “or any mechanical conveyance or device” in the taking of game. And section 481A.1(32) defines “take” or “taking” as “any pursuing, or any hunting, fishing, killing, trapping, snaring, netting, searching for or shooting at, or stalking or lying in wait” for protected game. Welte argues that he did not “pursue,” “ensnare,” “take,” or “kill the deer with a motor vehicle.” Instead, he contends that based on his years of hunting in the area, he “presumed where the deer may be heading” and “then drove his vehicle to the site where he thought it may go.” He questions, “How else can a person arrive at their hunting location other than driving there?” That is one explanation of the facts in the record. But “[i]n reviewing a sufficiency-of-the-evidence claim, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the State.” Bower, 725 N.W.2d at 444 (citation omitted). And when viewed through that lens, the evidence shows that Welte was doing more than simply driving to a hunting location. The conservation officer testified that while she was on routine patrol, she heard Welte and another member of his hunting group on her radio 2 The full text of the statute provides: It is unlawful for a person to take, pursue, kill, trap or ensnare, buy, sell, possess, transport, or attempt to so take, pursue, kill, trap or ensnare, buy, sell, possess, or transport any game, protected nongame animals, fur- bearing animals or fur or skin of such animals, mussels, frogs, spawn or fish or any part thereof, except upon the terms, conditions, limitations, and restrictions set forth herein, and administrative rules necessary to carry out the purposes set out in section 481A.39, or as provided by the Code. Iowa Code § 481A.38. Section 481A.1(21)(h) defines “game” to include “elk or deer, other than farm deer.” 4 scanner talking about “where they usually see deer, and just kind of chitchatting where they should hunt next.” The officer explained that “because it’s illegal to use radios during deer season,” she contacted other officers who were in the area to help her find the hunters. While the officer was doing that, she heard Welte say “that a buck had got up and then another buck got up and they were running into” a nearby field. As the officer was making her way to the hunters, she heard more radio traffic about the deer, suggesting “one was down for sure” and the other was “in the timber.” The officer testified there was “talk about kind of surrounding this timber” to “make sure that the other buck didn’t get away.” When she got to the field about twenty minutes later, the hunters were standing around a truck that belonged to someone else in Welte’s group with “two full bucks in the back.” Welte’s truck was parked behind a fence line. When questioned about the bucks, Welte admitted that he shot them both. Despite that admission, Welte denied using his truck to pursue the deer, testifying: “none of our pickups chased a deer, pursued a deer. We used the pickups to ride around in.” He explained that he drove to a field with another hunter and “had stepped out, grabbed [his] walkie-talkie, and up jumped these two bucks.” Welte admitted that he announced to the group that the bucks were on the move toward a neighboring field. He said that when the officers arrived at the other field, his truck was parked about fifty yards away. Welte maintained that he simply “shot a couple bucks that came into the field where we were at.” The magistrate found the conservation officer more credible than Welte and ruled that Welte “plann[ed] the hunting of these deer using his radio device and his pickup to find and shoot the deer.” The district court 5 determined the magistrate’s factual findings were supported by substantial evidence, reasoning: It is clear from a review of the magistrate’s . . . opinions that he concluded from the testimony of the witnesses that the law enforcement officers’ collective assessment—that [Welte] and his group of pickup and radio-equipped “hunters” were using radios to maneuver their pickups to locations where the deer they eventually killed were in the process of moving—was true. The court concluded, “It is not hunting to drive to the place toward which you know the game are running.” We agree that the magistrate could have reasonably inferred that Welte pursued the deer by using his truck to overtake and shoot them. See State v. Brimmer, 983 N.W.2d 247, 256 (Iowa 2022) (affording the State “all legitimate inferences and presumptions that may fairly and reasonably be deduced from the record evidence” in reviewing the sufficiency of evidence (cleaned up)). Welte counters that to be in pursuit of deer, he “would have to be driving his truck after the deer.” According to Welte, because “he was parked and out of his truck before he saw the deer” emerge in the second field, “he could not have been pursuing them with his truck.” We disagree with this narrow construction of the statute. Although the statute does not define the word “pursue,” we can “look to the context in which the term appears and give it its ordinary and common meaning.” State v. Rhodes, 6 N.W.3d 741, 746 (Iowa 2024) (citation omitted). Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines “pursue” as “to follow . . . in order to overtake, catch, kill, or defeat.” Webster’s Third New Int’l Dictionary 1848 (unabr. ed. 2002); see also State v. Schmid, 859 N.W.2d 816, 824 (Minn. 2015) (defining “pursue” as used in Minnesota’s game and fish laws to mean its generic dictionary definition of “[t]o follow in an effort to overtake or 6 capture” (quoting The American Heritage Dictionary 1431 (5th ed. 2011)). That is exactly what Welte did here. The record shows that after Welte saw the deer in the first field, he followed the deer by driving his truck to the field they were running towards. But for the use of his vehicle, Welte would not have been able to catch up to the deer. The district court was correct in concluding substantial evidence supported the magistrate’s finding that Welte used a vehicle “to directly find and shoot deer.” And so we affirm his conviction under Iowa Code section 481A.38. AFFIRMED. 7