I thought I posted this awhile ago but couldn't find it so I will post it again & there is a update to the story in the 2nd half of the post.
This is local to me!
Part 1: Earlier this hunting season.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/outpost ... hable.html
Animal activist refuses to let bow-hunter retrieve deer
October 20, 2009 | 4:07 pm
A bow-hunter who thought he was doing everything by the book instead went home empty-handed, reports the Connecticut Post.
After mortally wounding a deer, he tracked it -- as responsible hunters should -- until it collapsed and died.
Realizing the animal had ended up on someone's private property, he went to the door to ask permission to retrieve the buck.
"My husband told him to just go away, he couldn't have the deer," homeowner Lynn Gorfinkle said.
Gorfinkle went out into her yard and took photos of the deer. "It was a crime scene, in my opinion, the minute that it was shot," she said.
Turns out, Gorfinkle is the CEO of Animal Rights Alliance in Redding, Conn.
The state's bow-hunting season began mid-September at Bennett's Pond State Park, where hunting is allowed by the Department of Environmental Protection, though the Gorfinkles believe that the whitetail deer came from a closer tract of land.
"I will never go out [in the backyard] so casually again. It impairs the enjoyment of your own property when you feel you have to look over your shoulder or wear fluorescent orange or something," Gorfinkle said.
DEP communications director Dennis Schain said that hunting accidents by bow-hunters are rare. "I've been here four years and have never heard of such a thing," he said.
The controversy between hunting enthusiasts and animal-rights activists is nothing new in the area. Earlier this year, a deer hunt on city property in Stamford was ended early because of complaints, and even death threats, according to a city official. And nearby Fairfield is meeting opposition to their effort to open some town-owned land to deer hunting.
The DEP reports that Fairfield County, where Stamford and Fairfield are located, has the highest deer density in the state, with an estimated average of 62 animals per square mile.
The Fairfield County Municipal Deer Management Alliance still backs the culling as a way to prevent the spread of Lyme disease, over-browsing of native vegetation and deer collisions with automobiles.
Lynn and other animal-rights proponents argue that killing the deer is not the answer and that nature should be allowed to take its course to control deer numbers.
So the carcass remains in the Gorfinkles' yard, where it has been since Oct. 2. Lynn hopes that other animals will eat it because it is too big to bury.
"If someone's going to eat that deer, I want it to be natural predators, not some hunter," she said.
Her actions, meanwhile, may mean the death of another deer. "Since the hunter did not recover the deer, he did not need to tag it and it doesn't count toward his bag limit," Dennis Schain told Outposts.
--Kelly Burgess
Now for Part 2:
http://www.connpost.com/ci_13781007?source=email
Dead deer vanishes from animal lover's land
By Noelle Frampton
STAFF WRITER
Updated: 11/13/2009 02:29:32 PM EST
REDDING -- The dead deer decomposing beyond Lynn Gorfinkle's back deck after her husband sent away a hunter without his trophy last month has mysteriously disappeared.
Slightly more than two weeks after the bow hunter shot the buck, tracked it onto the Gorfinkles' land and knocked on the door to ask permission to collect the animal carcass, Gorfinkle went out to look for the animal's body with a television news crew and found nothing but tufts of hair where the carcass had been.
Her husband, Michael, had turned away the hunter because the Gorfinkles are animal-rights activists, who believe that archery hunting near suburban homes is unsafe and irresponsible.
"Some days after the deer was killed, someone trespassed on our property and stole the deer, thereby obstructing further inquiry into this incident," the Fire Hill Road resident wrote in a Nov. 5 letter published by the Redding Pilot weekly newspaper.
Technically, the deer belonged to the Gorfinkles because it died on their property, said Dennis Schain, state Department of Environmental Protection spokesman.
The couple felt an investigation was warranted as to where the deer was shot in the first place. Surmising the animal had been shot on a nearly 49-acre tract owned by the state Department of Transportation nearby, the Gorfinkles were pleased with an Oct. 28 response from the DOT promising to post "no hunting" signs there.
But there are several DEP-approved bow hunting areas in the area, as well.
The deer carcass issue arose in the midst of a growing practice among Fairfield County towns, including Redding, that allow hunting as a way to cull overgrown deer populations. That, however, has sparked opposition from animal lovers.
Because the deer carcass was roughly 40 yards from the Gorfinkle home, in a wooded area beyond her lawn, Lynn Gorfinkle said she didn't check on it regularly. Therefore, she wasn't sure exactly when it was swiped. The deer died on her property Oct. 2, and she later took photographs of the carcass.
"The first that I knew the deer had been taken was on the morning of Oct. 19," Gorfinkle wrote in a Thursday e-mail. "The only evidence left was a liberal scattering of white hair on the spot where he died. No other part of the animal was left. It was definitely a human who made this buck disappear, not an animal. There were no drag marks, and believe me there are no animals in my woods large enough to have moved this buck, except for human ones."
As mysterious as the Case of the Missing Dead Deer may be, police do not plan to investigate, said Redding Police Chief Douglas Fuchs.
"There's no larceny complaint with the Redding Police Department for a whole host of reasons," Fuchs said. "As to whether or not a human being would actually take that deer ... my experience is, two weeks after an animal's been deceased it's in no shape that any human being would want to go near it. This is certainly not a criminal investigation. Other wild animals come and eat the remains, that's what happens in the wild."
Schain agreed.
"Definitely a coyote would take a deer carcass like that away," he said. A a single coyote, he said, would be strong enough to move it. "That happens all the time ... the coyote would likely dismember it on site and then take it away."
Schain was unsure whether there have been coyote sitings in the area near the Gorfinkle home.
If Fuchs and Schain are correct, Gorfinkle may have been granted an earlier wish.
When interviewed by the Connecticut Post in mid-October, she said, "If someone's going to eat that deer, I want it to be natural predators, not some hunter."
