Chad Steven Henneman, a 45-year-old White/Caucasian male, headed into the Lincoln National Forest near Ruidoso on April 25, 2021, for a spring turkey hunt with his fiancée, Marcena Flynn, and a friend from Las Cruces. The trio worked the ridges off New Mexico Highway 37, listening for gobbles in the mountain timber. At some point, Henneman and Flynn returned to their truck while their companion remained higher on the slope. When a turkey sounded again, Henneman started back toward his friend.
A single shot followed. Moments later, Flynn arrived to find the friend administering chest compressions as deputies converged on the scene. Henneman had suffered a shotgun wound to the chest and was pronounced dead where he fell.
Investigators with the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office treated the incident as an accidental shooting during a turkey hunt, a scenario not unheard of in that landscape of dense cover and broken sightlines. Reports released by the sheriff’s office later described the sequence: the gobble, the shot, the rushed attempt to save him. No charges were filed. Coverage at the time identified Henneman by name and age and noted that he was an active-duty federal agent based in Las Cruces; memorial pages and gun-violence records also placed his death in the Ruidoso area on April 25, 2021.
There were no arrests, and authorities did not name any suspects. The case was closed as an accidental hunting death, with law enforcement and local reporting indicating that the shooting occurred among friends in the field and did not involve criminal intent. In the aftermath, his obituary remembered a man raised in Washington State who loved the outdoors, which had drawn him to the spring woods that morning.
