Not a pretty sight: an illegally-killed deer found November 5, 2009

Last evening, my hunting partner Ken and I went into our favorite woods to set up our deer hunting stands in preparation for the upcoming deer firearms season on November 14.

I moved my stand to a really nice tree that offers a great view of several heavily-traveled deer highways.

As I was preoccupied with not falling to my death while setting up the tree stand, Ken wandered away.  Moments later I heard him yell, “There’s a deer down over here!”

I walked over to Ken and examined the scene.  The deer was a large, mature doe that had only been dead for a day or two.  As the area is rife with coyotes, it couldn’t have been there long.

Looking over the deer, we were both aggravated to find the obvious cause of death: two gunshot wounds to the abdomen, likely from a 12 gauge shotgun.

The scenario is pretty easy to envision: a scumbag, or group (technically known as a ‘fluck of scumbags’), is driving around after midnight spotlighting deer and sees the doe standing near the roadway.  They fire two poorly placed shots and she runs off.  Mr. Scuzzball shooter obviously doesn’t want to trail the illegally-shot animal so they drive off, throwing beer cans into the ditch while burping wildly exaggerated stories about the size of certain bodily organs.   The deer finally expires, slowly and painfully, deep within our hunting property.

I’ll try to sugar-coat this as much as possible: I hate poachers.  I hate them more than Illinois Nazis, “progressives” and brussel sprouts rolled together.

Sure, there is the old stereotype of ‘someone just trying to feed his family’ but personally I’ve never run into this type of hard-luck, semi-noble lawbreaker.  All the people I have encountered or know to be chronic poachers are twisted, antisocial,  ignorant or some combination of all.

Basically, poachers are the scum of the earth in my book.  I am sorry if, by some weird coincidence of internet surfing, that the reader or a loved-one illegally kills deer.  Call me; I’ll be happy to meet you and discuss it in person.

I suppose you could consider it ironic that I’d also end up breaking the law- and something else, such as someone’s neck-during that meeting.

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