The state is testing deer DNA to match it with bloody arrows and a crossbow fitted with a night vision scope in a case against a pair of area men found hiding in the woods Friday night.

Game Warden Jeremy Judd said state police first got a call at 11 p.m. about a suspicious vehicle near a North Yarmouth subdivision. A trooper arrived to find steam rising off a dead deer in the back of a truck and two men in the woods with a night vision-scoped crossbow, surrounded by arrows and near another dead deer.

Judd said the men claimed to have shot the two deer at 4:30 p.m. and were just back to retrieve them.

Owen Thurston, 41, of New Gloucester, and Tanner Hawkes, 22, of Brunswick, were arrested and charged with hunting at night. After Hawkes gave police a former Gray address – and a subsequent search found the place had been cleaned out – he was also charged with violating bail conditions and illegal transportation of deer, Judd said.

When DNA results come back, more charges could result.

The arrests were a first for Maine’s first-ever crossbow deer hunting season, which ended Saturday.

“This was one of the fears of the department. … A crossbow and scope, when you put them together it’s really a lethal way to hunt deer and really gives these poachers a leg up,” Judd said. “A rifle at night, it makes a noise. With a crossbow, it’s silent. Nobody sees it and there’s no light” coming off it.

Wardens delivered fingerprint evidence to the Maine State Crime Lab on Monday. Deer blood is going to the Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife for testing Tuesday.