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

Fawn missing half of its leg

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.