LITTLE ROCK (AP) — An Alabama man cited for misdemeanor federal hunting-related violations was found guilty of a felony for trying to get wildlife officers to believe he was an IRS agent who would audit them.

Patrick Clete Blankenship, 36, of Decatur, Ala., was hunting in Poinsett County in northeast Arkansas on Jan. 16 when state Game and Fish Commission officers approached his blind.

The officers found he had six white fronted speckled-belly geese when the limit was two, and they cited him for allegedly using lead shot and luring the geese with an illegal electronic calling device — all misdemeanors.

Blankenship told a federal jury Monday that he produced a fake business card that identified him as an Internal Revenue Service agent.

"I made insinuations that I would audit them," Blankenship said while on the witness stand. He said he got the idea from a talk radio show.

The cards were "a pretty good imitation," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff LaVicka said.

After two hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Blankenship of three misdemeanor hunting violations, a misdemeanor charge of possessing a fake identification card and a felony charge of impersonating an IRS official. Had he not engaged in the ruse, he could have faced only fines for the hunting violations.

Blankenship, a civil engineer, is a state employee in Alabama, and the felony conviction jeopardizes his engineering license, said his attorney, Richard L. Hughes of Little Rock.

Sentencing is pending by U.S. District Judge James M. Moody; Blankenship faces as much as three years in prison.

"You've got to ask yourself, when did it become a federal crime to try to talk your way out of a ticket?" Hughes said in his closing argument.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Adair said Blankenship's actions weren't innocent. "Impersonating a federal officer is serious," he said.