by Hal Walter
Out for a run one afternoon in October, I was negotiating a burro down a steep trail that cuts from one cul-de-sac to another in a nearby subdivision. Downhill and to my right I saw a doe deer literally flopping down the hill through the trees. The animal appeared unable to gain its balance or to stand up.
I stopped and watched as the deer came to a rest, then I tied my burro to a tree and walked down to get a closer look. The doe flopped over a couple more times then lay still. I looked her over as closely as possible. I could see no broken legs or apparent gunshot wounds — which was my first guess since the first big game rifle season had opened the previous day.
In fact, I couldn’t see anything majorly wrong with this deer other than it could not stand up. So I continued on home and called Alex, the homeowners’ association chief, to see what he thought should be done. We decided to meet so he could get a look at the deer.
A few weeks previously there had been a major flap in this same subdivision over an archery hunter who killed a deer on a lot there without permission. Before it was over about everyone in the neighborhood had participated in the “bust,” with some residents even taking pictures of the tire tracks and “crime scene” and others helping to piece together information to identify and contact the hunter.
I live adjacent to this subdivision and often run on its roads. The morning of the deer-poaching incident, I had been outside on my deck and saw the suspected hunter’s vehicle bouncing up a road to a vacant house on the hill above my property. So when Alex showed up a couple hours later with the tale of the bleeding deer and a neighborhood in an uproar, I was not surprised.
Actually, just seeing that truck bounce along the road that morning had really pissed me off because I knew nobody had permission to hunt there. You see, I grew up in a hunting family, and as a young outdoorsman read the sporting magazines of the day. Even then these rags apparently had figured out that hunters as a group didn’t have the best image in the world. I suppose it occurred to these publishing wizards that if blood sports were outlawed, there would definitely be an adverse effect on advertising revenue. So there were efforts to promote ethics. It was suddenly very uncool to do things like hunt under the influence of alcohol, strap dead game over the hood of your vehicle, and hunt on private land without permission. That sort of thing.
There was a mantra that “A few slob hunters were spoiling it for the rest of us.”
I still do occasionally hunt for meat myself, but after living several years in an area with hunting on adjoining and nearby properties I’m beginning to believe in another mantra. There are a lot of slob hunters out there spoiling it for just a very few of us who still have tremendous respect for the natural world and the animals that live in it.
The number of slob hunters is evidenced by the wave of discarded alcohol bottles, cigarette butts and other garbage that arrive each October, not to mention the blood trails of wounded animals that are shot but never found.
Last year during one of the rifle seasons a wounded deer wandered onto my land and I found it through binoculars while two orange-clad men combed a neighboring lot where they did not have permission to be. I finally went over to point out their wounded deer and how to get a shot at it on my land, but they botched what should have been access to an easy shot. I watched that buck limp up and over the hill where to my knowledge he was never found.
Some years ago I looked up from breakfast to see a hunter in my pasture less than 100 yards from my house. When I walked out to have a stern chat with this man in orange he greeted me with a friendly “Seen anything?”
“Only you,” I replied. “And you’re trespassing on my property.”
The more recent neighborhood uproar over the poached deer during archery season led to an investigation by Colorado Division of Wildlife District Wildlife Manager Zach Holder. He contacted the owner of the lot where the deer had actually died and began the process of getting the owner to press charges.
And now here was a deer flopping around in the same general area. We had heard some shots the previous morning but it was foggy and difficult to tell where they were coming from.
After looking it over we decided to call Zach. I drove back home to use the phone and Alex stayed with the deer. My call to Zach interrupted his investigation of a poached bull elk. After hearing the story over the phone Zach asked if we could put the deer down since she was obviously incapacitated and likely in pain.
So I drove back over to tell Alex, who had come prepared with a rifle.
After the deer was still, Alex and I inspected her carefully for wounds but could find none. I ran my fingers through the doe’s hair forward and backward looking for a bullet hole or broken arrow. I was startled when I received a jolt of static electricity right through the fingertip of my leather glove, a strange machination of cold, dry air and hollow hair. Both Alex and I suspected some sort of neurological problem with the deer.
I reported all this back to Zach, who said he would try to get out the following morning to retrieve the deer’s head for chronic wasting disease testing. He said with only one confirmed case of chronic wasting in this game management unit, fewer that one percent of the deer in the area are believed to be carrying the disease. Perhaps testing would explain why an otherwise healthy-looking deer could not gain its feet.
The only hitch was, Zach was hoping to fit this into his morning, because he had to drive to Colorado Springs the next afternoon to deliver a citation to, ironically, the guy who had illegally shot the deer on this subdivision a few weeks prior.
Hunting season being what it is for a wildlife officer, it turned out that the trip did not fit into his morning. By the time he made it out two days later, the carcass had been eaten by scavengers, and the head, as evidenced by tracks, had apparently been carried away by a bear.
Did the deer merely take a fall and injure itself? Was there some wound we could not see? Or did it have some disease like chronic wasting?
Thanks partly to a hunter not following the rules, we’ll never know.
Hal Walter writes and edits from the Wet Mountains. You can keep up with him regularly at his blog: www.hardscrabbletimes.com
