I apparently have a neighbor that likes to shoot and kill deer. Not a hunter, not a sportsman, but a fucking sorry-ass bastard who kills for fun.
I have lived on this property off and on since 1968. Deer are plentiful and I like that deer and squirrels and rabbits and eagles and possums and all sorts of critters live on my property and around it. At least three of my neighbors have deer feeders on their proprty and some occasionally hand feed the deer. They come up to the garage when I come home, looking for a handout. It isn’t unusual for there to be a dozen or more deer grazing out on my front lawn. I like that. That is why I moved out of the stinkin’ city.
The only time you see a dead deer is when one has been hit by a car. Deer just don’t normally “die”, so seeing a dead one far off the road is unusual. This fall, I noticed a dead deer just ten feet from my fence on a neighbors property. I thought it ususual, since it wasn’t deer season, but with all the construction going on out here, I though maybe it had been injured somehow and managed to make it here before it died. Nature took its course, and over the next week or so, it was slowly consumed by the usual scavengers and was pretty much gone.
A month later, while walking back to my workshop, I noticed the smell of rotting animal. Looking around, I saw another dead deer about twenty feet over my fence, on another piece of property, but only about a hundred yards from where the first deer was. Couldn’t see what killed this one either, but I thought it very strange at the time. About a month later, not thirty feet from where this deer died, was a small dead deer, again about twenty feet from my fence line.
I haven’t heard any gunshots, in particular. You can hear gunshots out here occasionally and I don’t think it unusual because the area is still pretty country-like and there is a lot of wildlife that can cause problems. The banging of the trucks doing all the constuction also makes a lot of loud sounds, so you don’t always think to investigate every gunshot-like sound you hear.
Around New Years, I was working in my shop in the back of my property. I heard a loud bang that obviously sounded like it was coming from just off my land, so I stepped outside to check. I heard and saw nothing, so I went back inside to work. A minute or so later, I heard an identical sound. It didn’t have the crack of a high powered rifle or a small caliber handgun. It sounded like a large skyrocket does when launched - a deep muffled THUMP! I looked through a window to see a large buck writhing and thrashing on the ground about thirt feet from my shop. It started shaking and died by the time I got to it, and I could see the bullethole in the side of its belly. Although it didn’t bleed much, I followed the blood trail about thirty feet to my fence where it was obvious it came over. The same property as the second dead deer, and only about thirty feet from where it died. No one came looking for it because no one was hunting it.
IMO, whoever shot it, intended to to hurt it but not kill it right away. If you wanted to kill a deer out here, you could walk right up to it and shoot it point blank. There is no excude for a shot like that unless you mean to cause the deer pain. And you want it to run off and die somewhere else.
I called the county sherriff, not because I thought it was a huge crime to shoot the deer (it was in season), but because there are too many people living out here now to be shooting anything like that. If a bullet misses or goes through and animal, somebody or their property could be hit. Besides, it is illegal to hunt deer on property smaller than ten acres around here.
The sherriff didn’t care much. Didn’t even want to see the deer or have me point out the property it and the shot came from. They couldn’t do anything, really, but I wanted to report it because of the gunshot danger and I thought it was a stupid and cruel thing to do.
This morning, I noticed another dead deer on my lot, about twenty feet from the last one. Looks like it probably died a day or so ago, maybe more. Hard to tell with the cold weather we are having. I didn’t see a gunshot wound, but I didn’t want to move it or turn it over. This time I called the game warden. Nothing they can do unless they catch them in the act. Don’t even want to go over and question anybody. Oh, well.
I have nothing against hunting or shooting deer, even though I am not a hunter, but this is senseless killing. Beyond that, it is cruel and illegal. This isn’t even somebody who hates deer because they eat their plants or flowers, because they have a deer feeder just twenty feet from my fenceline, right where the deer (and the blood trail) come over my fence. No, I think this is some sick fuck who like to hurt and kill things.
So, FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING BASTARD!!! I hope the nest big buck you try to shoot gores your sorry ass.
Oh, and what’s with all the golf balls, all of a sudden? I find two just inside my property when I walk back to my shop last week, and I see at least three more just on your side of the fence, and that’s just the ones I can see. What the fuck is up with that?
::: This is my first thread-start in The Pit, so forgive me if it is not vitriol enough to even be a good rant. I just wanted to get this out of my system a bit and wanted to use a few words that would not have been appropriate for MPSIMS :::
