Watch ‘Bambi’ Monthly in Jail, Judge Orders Man in Deer Poaching Case

In the 1942 Disney movie “Bambi,” the little fawn is wobbling on stick-thin legs as it runs through the forest, urged on ahead of its mother after she hears a gunshot. Eventually, Bambi stops and turns around. “We made it!” Bambi says.

But the fawn is alone in the desolate landscape. Its mother has been felled by a hunter.

The tear-jerking power of the scene from the classic animated film, which has both touched and charmed children over the decades, went this month from screens to a Missouri courtroom, where it has become central to what officials are calling the largest case of deer poaching in the state.

On Dec. 6, a judge in circuit court ordered that a Missouri man, David H. Berry Jr., 29, must watch “Bambi” once a month while serving a one-year sentence for his role in a poaching operation believed to have killed hundreds of deer, officials said.

“The judge is hoping there will be some kind of emotional reaction,” Don Trotter, a prosecutor who worked on the case, said in an interview on Tuesday.