Couple outraged by police deer shooting

[The Straight Story]

FOREST LAKE, Minn., Jan. 17 (UPI) -- A Minnesota couple says they're outraged police shot and killed two deer that had been living in their yard for seven months.

Jeff Carpenter of Forest Lake, about 30 miles northeast of Minneapolis, said he and his wife, LeeAnn, had been caring for the deer and he was shocked Saturday when he went outside to investigate a loud noise and found police had killed the animals, the St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer-Press reported Tuesday.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources said the Carpenters had put collars on the deer, which marked them as domesticated and and made them a potential health threat to wild animals. Animals in captivity have a higher rate of disease, Capt. Greg Salo, regional supervisor for the DNR's enforcement division, told the newspaper.

Salo said there had been reports in recent weeks of two deer with collars roaming the area. Officials said local deer farms had not reported any missing animals.

http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2012/01/17/Couple-outraged-by-police-deer-shooting/UPI-31351326821925/?spt=hs&or=on

[Scuba]

1. They should get a clue...

... whitetail aren't meant to be domesticated.

[Liberal_in_LA]

8. so? no need to gun them down.

[TwilightGardener]

2. Sick. There was no evidence that they needed to be killed. Other than "policy", I suppose.

[kestrel91316]

3. Don't suppose the dumbasses ever thought the collars themselves could pose a

physical threat to the deer's safety, like getting caught on something.

WILDlife is called WILDlife for a reason.

[Sanity Claws]

4. I was ready to write something terrible about the cops

but then saw that the folks had put collars on the deer. Gee. These folks are stupid --- deer are wildlife.

I still don't like the fact that the cops shot the deer but the couple who put the collars on the deer share blame.

[MineralMan]

5. Interesting story. Right in my area.

The collars were the problem, really. They were sort of wild deer, but the couple had been feeding them since they were fawns, and collared them so they could tell them apart from all the other deer wandering around near their home. Very bad idea, that was. It's very sad that they were killed, but Minnesota has an overabundance of deer in suburban areas. They can't be hunted, so they multiply rapidly, and many suburban residents complicate the matter by feeding them, to boot.

Then, the deer get killed in highway accidents, often causing thousands of $$ in damage to vehicles and injuries to the drivers. It's a real problem, that overpopulation of deer around here.

I live in the city of Saint Paul. Deer wander through my backyard in an urban neighborhood. It's a hoot, and I love seeing them. It's illegal to feed deer in the city limits of Saint Paul, but lots of people just ignore that. We have wild turkeys in the neighborhood, too, a bunch of groundhogs or woodchucks, and more squirrels and rabbits than you can count. Suburbs and residential neighborhoods are the new habitat for lots of wild critters. Nobody hunts them and there's always food around.

Had this couple not decorated their semi-tame deer, they'd still be alive. A sad business all around.

[onethatcares]

7. should have branded them,

just kiddin

btw, it's the humans that have intruded on the wild spaces.

[Robb]

9. Agreed. I learned this lesson quite early.

You'll enjoy the story, I think.

We have relatives in small-town Texas, and my grandfather had just been to visit them. He returned bringing a horned toad in an egg carton for me to have as a pet. Already a fan of irony at a tender age, I named the excessively lethargic creature "Speedy Gonzalez."

I enjoyed the thing and cared for it as best I could, but it was uninterested in the grasshoppers I could catch for it -- and clearly it longed for its warmer climate. So I sent him back to Texas with a cousin who was headed there the next week.

My small-town Texas relatives were delighted about the big journeys this little lizard had taken, and decided to paint a red stripe on his back with nail polish, so as to be able to spot "Speedy" coming and going. As they set him free in the dust off their back porch, he scampered off faster than they had ever seen a horned toad move. And was picked off in about 20 yards by a hawk.

Moral: wild animals are wild, pets are pets, don't mix 'em up.

[onethatcares]

12. yep, that was appreciated

[WingDinger]

6. If I were a deer, I would wear an orange jacket.

[Brickbat]

10. Don't feed the deer. And if you're dumb enough to feed them, don't be dumb enought to put a collar

on them. Jeez.

[T S Justly]

11. Solution is to slaughter them? Take the bloody collars off and swat them on the tails ...

They'll hesitate coming back if feeding is discontinued, and they'll end the practice of coming around entirely in a couple of weeks, and the cops will feel deprived. Maybe the wildlife "lovers", too, lol.

[MineralMan]

13. Half-tame deer cause traffic accidents.

Wild deer tend to be more careful. Hand-fed wild deer lose their caution around humans, and tend to wander onto roads more than their wilder counterparts. Feeding deer is a bad, bad idea.

[T S Justly]

15. Any and all deer can cause traffic accidents. So, be careful, especially at night, all you deer. :)

[Enrique]

14. ...

[T S Justly]

16. !