blake
Life Member
NEWS!
Conn. Couple to Hunter: 'Leave Without Your Dead Deer'
10/20/2009
A couple in Redding, Conn. refuses to let a hunter retrieve his buck after shooting it with an arrow and tracking it to the couple’s property nearby on Oct. 2.
Mike and Lynn Gorfinkle said the deer is lying about 40 yards from their back deck on Fire Hill Road.
The hunter knocked on the Gorfinkle’s door and asked permission to remove the deer from their property, but the Gorfinkle couple turned the hunter away.
"My husband told him to just go away, he couldn't have the deer," Lynn said. "We don't think he should benefit from his lack of judgment ... shooting that close to a suburban back yard. I will never go out there 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. We wouldn't even have known he was hunting back there unless he'd come to the door."
"If someone's going to eat that deer, I want it to be natural predators," she continued. "Not some hunter."
The Gorfinkles have previously denied other hunters access from their driveway to a 270-acre tract of land off the Simpaug Turnpike where they believe the deer was shot. The couple said they’d heard gun shots come from the area before, and don’t like the idea of hunters near their home.
The couple was told the land is state-owned and hunting is allowed there.
Archery season began on Sept. 15 and runs through Jan. 31 on public lands. Unlike firearm hunters, bow hunters aren't required to stay a specific distance away from dwellings because arrows don't travel as far as bullets, The News Times reported.
Lynn, the CEO of Animal Rights Alliance in Redding, said she took photographs of the deer where it fell, flipped it over and took photographs to document the deer’s cause of death – a punctured lung.
"It was a crime scene, in my opinion, the minute that it was shot," she said.
"I've been here four years and have never heard of such a thing," Dennis Schain, DEP spokesman, said.
The DEP reports that the state's deer population has been rising for the past 50 years, and Fairfield County boasts the highest deer-density in the state at an average estimated 62 deer per square mile, with pockets of up to 100. This overabundance leads to more Lyme Disease, collisions with motor vehicles and overgrazing of native plants, according to the Fairfield County Municipal Deer Management Alliance, a consortium of 18 towns and cities, and The News Times.
Lynn does not know what she will do with the deer carcass. Underground burial, she said, is out of the question because the animal would require too large a hole, but one thing is certain, the hunter who shot it will not be allowed to retrieve the legally harvested deer since it found its way to Gorfinkle’s property.
"So it's in his best interest to keep his shots away from my land,” she said.
Conn. Couple to Hunter: 'Leave Without Your Dead Deer'
10/20/2009
A couple in Redding, Conn. refuses to let a hunter retrieve his buck after shooting it with an arrow and tracking it to the couple’s property nearby on Oct. 2.
Mike and Lynn Gorfinkle said the deer is lying about 40 yards from their back deck on Fire Hill Road.
The hunter knocked on the Gorfinkle’s door and asked permission to remove the deer from their property, but the Gorfinkle couple turned the hunter away.
"My husband told him to just go away, he couldn't have the deer," Lynn said. "We don't think he should benefit from his lack of judgment ... shooting that close to a suburban back yard. I will never go out there 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. We wouldn't even have known he was hunting back there unless he'd come to the door."
"If someone's going to eat that deer, I want it to be natural predators," she continued. "Not some hunter."
The Gorfinkles have previously denied other hunters access from their driveway to a 270-acre tract of land off the Simpaug Turnpike where they believe the deer was shot. The couple said they’d heard gun shots come from the area before, and don’t like the idea of hunters near their home.
The couple was told the land is state-owned and hunting is allowed there.
Archery season began on Sept. 15 and runs through Jan. 31 on public lands. Unlike firearm hunters, bow hunters aren't required to stay a specific distance away from dwellings because arrows don't travel as far as bullets, The News Times reported.
Lynn, the CEO of Animal Rights Alliance in Redding, said she took photographs of the deer where it fell, flipped it over and took photographs to document the deer’s cause of death – a punctured lung.
"It was a crime scene, in my opinion, the minute that it was shot," she said.
"I've been here four years and have never heard of such a thing," Dennis Schain, DEP spokesman, said.
The DEP reports that the state's deer population has been rising for the past 50 years, and Fairfield County boasts the highest deer-density in the state at an average estimated 62 deer per square mile, with pockets of up to 100. This overabundance leads to more Lyme Disease, collisions with motor vehicles and overgrazing of native plants, according to the Fairfield County Municipal Deer Management Alliance, a consortium of 18 towns and cities, and The News Times.
Lynn does not know what she will do with the deer carcass. Underground burial, she said, is out of the question because the animal would require too large a hole, but one thing is certain, the hunter who shot it will not be allowed to retrieve the legally harvested deer since it found its way to Gorfinkle’s property.
"So it's in his best interest to keep his shots away from my land,” she said.
Too bad all of that meat is going to waste.
