KOTZEBUE -- In August 2008, Godfrey Tuckfield faced felony charges for the importation of alcohol to his village of Point Hope, a "dry" community in Northwest Alaska. At the same time, Alaska State Troopers were in the early stages of investigating a group of Point Hope hunters accused of indiscriminately shooting dozens of caribou, leaving some of the meat to rot on the tundra.

Troopers needed his help with their case, Tuckfield was looking for a break, and thus an alliance was born between investigators and the 34-year-old.

At the state courthouse in Kotzebue, filings in the Point Hope caribou case reveal new details on how state troopers pursued their investigation. Among their tactics, troopers used Tuckfield as an informant by secretly listening and recording calls between him and suspects.

Eight men are scheduled to stand trial Nov. 30 in Point Hope on state charges that they intentionally wasted the meat of 37 caribou they killed in summer 2008. Some of the hunters claim they didn't salvage the meat during their subsistence hunt because some of the animals were sick or had been wounded earlier by other hunters. Troopers spent more than a year investigating the allegations, including enlisting Tuckfield.

On Aug. 6, 2008, in a conference room at the Alaska Department of Law in Anchorage, Tuckfield called his stepbrother, Chester Koonuk, in Point Hope. When Koonuk answered, he was unaware a trooper and an assistant Attorney General were listening. According to a trooper's description of the call, Koonuk told Tuckfield that he and two other men during the July 2008 hunt left two caribou carcasses without salvaging the meat because one had a spot on its liver and the other appeared to have been wounded previously by other hunters.

Based on that call, the state successfully sought warrants to allow investigators to secretly record more calls Tuckfield made to Koonuk and another suspect. By last spring, Koonuk and two other Point Hope men -- Aqquiluk Hank and Roy Miller -- were criminally charged. Five other men from the village were also accused of similar crimes in a separate case related to the caribou hunt.

A description of the caribou investigation filed by prosecutors shows that in exchange for helping troopers with the undercover investigation, Tuckfield was rewarded with a reduced sentence in his alcohol importation case. A search of state court records online shows that the case closed in February. Prosecutors dismissed two felony charges and allowed Tuckfield to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, even though that charge had been previously dismissed well before the caribou hunt ever took place. A judge sentenced Tuckfield to 270 days in jail, but he never served the time as part of his deal with the state, said attorney Jon Buchholdt, who represents Aqquiluk Hank, among the accused hunters Tuckfield called while investigators listened.

Buchholdt believes Tuckfield's initial call last year was unconstitutional. Bucholdt argues that the trooper who sat in on the first call needed a search warrant. He is pushing to have statements made during that call, and during the recorded calls that followed, thrown out from the case. His motion to suppress the evidence is now one of several issues Superior Court Judge Richard Erlich must decide before the trials begin in Point Hope late next month.

Too close to home?