Medicine Hat Media

Deer Injustly Killed?

Not only one, but two deer were euthanized or put down recently. The two deer, one of which was the mother and the other, the mother’s “injured” fawn. The fawn and a sibling have been seen hanging around outside the Riverview Care Centre for a couple weeks. The mother supposedly had a “badly-injured” leg, while the fawn was missing half of his leg with part of the bone protruding. It might sound like they were in bad shape; however, I have personally seen at least one of them, dating back to about a year ago (the pictures are below to prove it). The ultimate reason brought forth by Sustainable Resource and Development spokesperson Darcry Whiteside was that it was their policy to put down animals in distress and also noting human safety concerns. They were originally phoned in to the Fish and Game Conservation by a women looking to get treatment/help for the injured deer. The Fish and Game Conservation later put down both of the two deer in question on separate dates.

Here are the photos I took on December 24th, 2007. This may or may not be the mother in question; however, the fawn (shown younger in these pictures) is clearly the one in question. These pictures were taken at the Medicine Hat College.

Possibly the mother deer in question

Possibly the mother deer in question

Fawn missing half of its leg

Fawn missing half of its leg

Close up of the fawn's injury

Close up of the fawn's injury

This is pretty much bulls**t – I mean, they were not in distress, they weren’t actually sick, they were just previously injured. I seen them almost a year ago, and they were still alive (until yesterday) – they must have been doing pretty fine. A matter of human safety? Ya right, healthy deer that run in front of traffic, now that’s a matter of human safety, these two deer would never try to run anywhere, because they couldn’t. I’m not a huge animal activist or a practicing vegetarian but you don’t have to be to realize this kind of stuff is just wrong. They were a nuisance and an eye sore to some and instead of moving them to another location they were killed off, in my mind, injustly.

User Comments

3 Responses to “Deer Injustly Killed?”

  1. December 9th, 2008 at 9:17 PM


    Dusty says:

    How much of a man does a person have to be to put down a young deer with an injury who HAS overcome the challenges of nature and the environment. Had the deer been human, we would have praised its bravery and determination. That deer did not want to die, its accident did not happen a week ago, it was at least a year ago. It wasn’t going to die from infection, rather, it lived through that and then died by an absolutely idiotic judgment call.

    If we “put down people in distress” I would probably have a lot less taxes to pay. Maybe I don’t know all the information, but the information I did get from the newspaper made me very upset. When I saw that deer a year ago I was very proud of it, it had courage. I cannot believe this. This is ridiculous.

  2. December 9th, 2008 at 9:18 PM


    Sean says:

    I remember when this was a talked about subject at school. Some people were saying they saw a deer with one missing leg, which was about the same time as the cougar stories arose. Supposedly, there was a cougar prowling around the Kin Coulee, or in that golf course area that kind of connects with Kin Coulee. Alex said he saw “a big cat” once while he was running, and he promptly ran the other way, and then Kaylene brought in a deer hoof that she said she found outside of the Visual Communications buildings.

    Weird coincidences.

  3. January 9th, 2009 at 8:38 PM


    emily says:

    Maybe I’m just crazy, and paranoid but I’m just going to ignore all that crap about the animal health (because as u pointed out they seem to be just fine) and just assume that its medicine hat slow way to get rid of all the deer that live in the city. shame the deer was one of the first things I liked about this small little city.

Leave a Reply


Events

Community