Diehl, you are buy far a without a shadow of a doudt a very disturbed person if you think this lady did the right thing. It also makes me cringe that what ever staet you live in allows a person so mest up in the head as you to carry a gun. Get some help man.

Mike Diehl, I usually enjoy your posts, but I think this time you are painting a little too widely with your "Liberal nanny state" brush.

I think there are two issues here, legality and morality.

legality,
last I checked, poaching was defined as illegally killing an animal, not just illegally killing an animal for sporting purposes. It was out of season, AND she didn't have a license, sorry folks, that's poaching.

If I used my bow to shoot a 12 point buck out of season because it was bedding in suburban flower garden, would you stand up so strongly and say I wasn't poaching? I was just trying to protect my flowers!

She probably isn't guilty of animal abuse, I doubt there was any Mike Vick style sadistic intent involved.

Morality,
When we take an animal while hunting, we do it to feed our families. The loss in justified because it is necessary for our families to live. The same is true when we harvest lettuce for a salad or pull a trout out of the river to grill.

This is a very different thing, that rose garden is nowhere near necessary for her to live. She wants it. Just like that fawn wants a sheltered place to take a nap. Her want is no important than the fawns, and while she would be justified in shoo-ing it away or putting up a fence, she is by no means justified in slowly bludgeoning it to death.

Without a doubt she should pay the maximum fine. I don't know if I'd throw an old lady in jail but something has to be done because beating a fawn to death ranks on my list as one of the lowliest things a person could do. Scaring off deer with a broomstick is one thing but killing a fawn with a shovel is just plain ridiculous.

I would not throw her in jail due to her age, but she should have to pay the full fine.

Anyone bludgenoning a baby fawn to death with a showel to protect some damn garden flower should be locked in a mental institution if u ask me.. if its somewhere u dont want it to be then just pick it up and move it somewhere else.. they arenth dangerous at all to anyone able to walk upright.. whats next? bludgeoning a baby that crawls into your driveway??
CLEAR case of animal cruelty..
lock the old biddy up!!!!!

Poaching is POACHING ! and she SHOULD be charged.
As for the method of kill. Alright Mr. Diehl, scince you feel so strongly abouy this how about this sesson you hunt with a shovel and see what the Wildlife Officers in your state have to say about your "method of harvest". Let us know please, after the trial of course.

lets be clear here,

Those of us saying saying that this lady did something wrong, are NOT saying that farmers shouldn't be able to protect their crops from deer.

We ARE saying that when a fawn, so young it has never eaten a single plant, is bedding in your garden... slowly bludgeoning it to death is probably not an appropriate response. Especially since it is illegal in this case.

Also, I don't see how Disney or any other source of anthropomorphising has anything to do with it. Quote me one case where anyone ascribed a human quality to the fawn?

Respecting life is not the same thing as thinking that a fawn cries when it's mother dies.

Ken my comment about Disney was thrown in as a general afterthought and was not directed towards anyone's comments here. Anthropomorphism, IMHO, is one of the many reasons animal rights activists are able to sway public feeling toward their cause. (and yes I do assign some of the blame to Disney.)

A deer living amongst the suburbs or over-populations on farms have moved into the gray area between sporting game and nuisance pest. If you happened to take one out before it gets to maturity and has the chance to procreate you have done a service to an area that is overpopulated. A little old lady with a shovel takes out one fawn; do you have any idea how many fawns get taken out by bush-hogs, hay rakes, and balers every year?
Now I would say this is very different than the case reported on FS a few weeks ago about teens kicking a fawn to death. This woman motivation appears to be removing a perceived pest from her garden. A group of teenagers kicking a fawn to death would seem to be motivated by malice and something just off in the head.

Pagan,
Thank you for very succinctly putting into words what I have been struggling to say in the other similar post.

Well done.

If the wants of human beings are not more important than the wants or even the needs of animals, then PETA is already here. I don't need a garage, I want it, but if mice need a home and they choose my garage, I will kill them. I won't enjoy it, but that's what I'll do, and I won't eat them or use their hides for clothing. Call me a "speciesist."

she should be charged with her towns penaltys for animal cruelty

No mike this was indeed illegal cos deer is regulated as game animals.. pest animals are not! she didnt have a license to kill it, it wasnt the right season and i haven heard of a "showel repeatedly to the head" season..
ANY breaking of the laws considering game animals should be persecuted along with poachers alike..
besides pest control regs are for protecting food/income generating crops and having flowers in the garden isnt crops if u dont breed them for retail and thusly didnt affect her livelihood in any way..
She just bludgeoned a small frigtened little baby animal that didnt know it was doing any wrong to "warn off and make an example" out of something so fierce that it could probably shiver and suck your thumb.. just that such and old lady was able to get near enough to tells me it was as close to newbourne as it could be since it couldnt run away from the nasty old biddy.. its mother was probably gonna come get it in a wee bit as soon as the old bird went inside.. cos deer mommas move theire newbourne around alot to avoid harm to come to theire little ones.. she could have just waited and the trouble would have gone away by itself..
Hunting regulations are in place to protect certain species of animals from nasty old people who think they have the right to go out and kill anything they want at any time, and if they r not enforced even on old ladies then all hell breaks loose..
mike and armchair, dont u have a heart??
its not our ability to kill any other species that makes us special, its our ability for compassion not only towards member of our own species but also to species completely different to us.. if animals could percieve us as we do ourselves they would see US as gods, do u really wanna be gods of death and senseless destruction??
Or the gods that helps scared little animals that poses no threath to them when theire life is in jeopardy..?
think about it dont just spout more "this is what i think so im gonna justify it by ANY means!" propaganda..
Thats what the nazis did...

I will try not to post again on this topic because I think we've about "beaten it to death" if you'll excuse a very bad pun. I just want to clarify that I would not have killed the fawn myself, with a shovel or otherwise. I think it's highly likely that the doe was nearby and that she would have moved the fawn anyway, particularly if I went near it and then went back inside. To say that I would not have done it, however, is not the same as saying that I think this lady should go to jail for it or even be fined. Here we go with questions of morality versus questions of legality. Legality is, or should be, objective. If it's illegal, there's a penalty, and you pay it if you are caught. Morality is subjective by nature. Of necessity, morality takes into account the circumstances and limitations of the individual. I doubt that this lady knows much about deer or fawns. If she was frightened, as she claimed, or she just plain didn't know what else to do, then her actions were not immoral. If, on the other hand, she hates the deer for ruining her garden and she enjoyed the opportunity to smash one for what she perceived as a slight, that's an immoral act to me. If she saw the deer population as a nuisance, and she was reducing the population by one when she had the chance by the most humane means at her disposal, that's somewhere in between. I can't judge the morality of her actions, because I don't have enough information, leaving aside the question of whether I have the moral authority to judge her.

If this was anyone but a young kid or a little old lady then great they over reacted and they deserve the fine. but my neighbor is 74 and she loves them i have seen her throw boiling water on bunnies and shoot squirrels to protect her flowers.

Well said Ken.

"Let's see how old you are if you remember that."

@ Jim in MO.

"Hey Rockeeey. Watch me pull a rabbit out of this hat!"
"What? Again?"

"Hey, that's no rabbit!"
"Now here's something you'll *really* like."

She should be put in a straight jacket and running into padded walls, seriously, she needs to be institutionalized.

What a dispicable act by this ol' lady. I kill garden pests too but a spotted fawn? She must be heartless. Somehow the media will make this about cruel hunters, i'm sure.

In the Beach Boy's words, "go granny, go granny, go granny, go.

Would everyone's reaction be the same if it were a raccoon in her garden? A mole? A snake? Fawns are cute and all. I get it; save your comments, but this is the type of Disney anthropomorphism that we rant about every day on this site. Mike Diehl, as usual, has a good point. A cute, cuddly animal, in the wrong place, is a pest. How does the fact of using a shovel make it cruelty? A shovel is pretty quick if wielded correctly. It's a graphic image, but is that really what's bothering everyone, form over substance? How about a .30-06 at point blank range? Any discussion of hunting ethics in this situation is misplaced because this lady was not hunting, either for food or for sport. It's not what I would do, but any anti-hunter would make the same argument concerning what I plan to do on opening day.

Now that you mention age you bring up an interesting point. At 75 y.o. and given that she actually has an interest in gardening, she is of an age set of Americans for whom this sort of thing would not have cause a kerfuffle. She was likely raised to be independent enough to solve her own problems, especially when they are as relatively minor in the Grand Scheme of Things as removing a pest. It's only more recent generations that have been trained that every act must be regulated and scrutinized. It's like there's a bunch of saggy old Code Pink types seeking to infiltrate every facet of conduct and public discourse.

"Why not just get a cat?"

Why is buying a cat to rip up the mice in your barn preferable to killing the mice yourself?

"but I'll bet I can come up with a solution to any reasonable situation you propose that doesn't involve the needless loss of life."

Perhaps, but I doubt that you could come up with a reaonsable solution to a situation.

Jeez. "Needless loss of life." Get real. In nature life and death occur all the time and often as not there's nothing needful about death; that sort of "circle of life" holism is strictly Disney stuff. Ever see that video of the Argentinian coastal Orca playing with its food? Ever actually watch a cat stalk, capture, and smack around its prey before it kills? Ever wonder how much "need" was involved when a Mountain lion kills every single animal in a petting zoo's menagerie?

And I shudder when I think about alleged "outdoorsmen" or hunters on an F&S blog making "need" the standard to justify the death of a game animal. Few of us who hunt NEED to do so. There's always chicken and beef from the grocery store. In my view NEED has nothing to do with the conversation. If it did, we'd all have to quit hunting tomorrow.

I'm with Armchair Outfitter on this. Call me a species-ist if you will, but Homo sapiens is at the top of the food chain (most of the time) and that's why we get to call the shots (most of the time).

"All sorts of things happen in nature that are immoral, surely everyone knows this. As perhaps the first animals with brains complex enough to comprehend morality, Shouldn't we choose to hold ourselves to a higher standard than the others?"

Nothing that happens in nature is "immoral." Morality is a human sentiment, and the standards have varied among cultures and within cultures through time. I don't see that the old lady in question did anything that approaches "immorality." I do wonder about the morality of people who want her (by recall from this thread) imprisoned, or fined to the maximum extent of the law, or charged with animal cruelty (because in my view there's no evidence she was being cruel) or charged with "poaching." In my view, the anger directed at her is symptomatic of a far greater threat to society than one little old lady killing a garden pest without involving the bureaucracy prior to doing it.

"However, I offer it as my humble opinion that the morality I mentioned earlier should govern this killing."

OK. We just disagree. Her property rights trump the deer's privilege to exist in her backyard, IMO. I don't concede that some subjective standard involving "need" needs to be debated. The deer were damaging her property. That's an open and shut case of justified pest removal as I see it.

How about she be kept in jail just long enough for her precious flowers to die.

armchair take a stand against mike cos he is obviously a bit of a nutter.. withouth a heart at all..
And no i dont hold with the whackjobs in peta etc. im a hunter since 13 and have a degree in biology, zoology, bothany, chemistry etc.. basically educated as a highlvl. state gamewarden.. and i have a big soft heart for frigtened little things that isnt hurting your property a bit by being there (the only reason why the baby deer didnt run away was that it was so newbourne that it couldnt walk well yet and so therefore wasnt weened of milk.. not eating any plants in the garden but just hiding there )
Peace out..

Mike, you scare the pants off me. You may be a caveman, but I appreciate the brain function granted to me. As an evolved being I value my moral compass. Beating animals to death is a no-no.

Did you forget this little tidbit? "Female deer leave their fawns in secluded spots while they forage for food. The fawns avoid being eaten by predators by remaining still until their mothers return. Young fawns are still nursing and do not eat flowers and other foliage"(an obvious behavior recognized by any sportsman)

I have no interest in arguing with you or anyone else, I have said all that I wanted.

And yes I hunt and fish, why else would I be here?

Out of season, no licence, with an "illegal" weapon. IS POACHING no matter where you live. I NEVER said "animal cruelty", but she killed it with a SHOVEL ! Why did she not just try to "run it off", with said shovel. Then she would'nt be in this mess to begin with.

Mike all I have to say is you are a bitter, worthless piece of crap who thinks to highly of themselves and I just hope one day you get what is coming to you.

Fawns get smoked on the highways by automobiles every day. Fawns get ate by predators every day. If granny killed a fawn because it was in her roses what other than being a story for folks to talk about does it really matter. Granny has made it to 75 years of age, leave her alone.

Wildlife have adapted and much of it is now surburban. She broke the law no matter how you bend and twist this story, and could of just as easily contacted the state Dept. of Fish & Wildlife for assistance. The fawn was to young to be feeding on her flowers, otherwise it would have ran off when she approached it. That was cold behaviour on her part. A fine and probation would be appropriate.

And to the others who've given me some support here, you have my thanks. It's nice to know that there are still some people with their feet on the ground.

"no mike i said that the way u justify your twisted worldwiew with any means possible is what the nazis did.."

It was and continues to be an absurdly ridiculous analogy and an utterly meritless bit of hyperbole that contributes nothing to the discussion.

"If i was the djuge in this case id make her pay 500 bukkos in fine and spend a week in jail so she would learn that it was the wrong thing to do.."

And that is precisely the sort of over-the-top hyper-reactionary radical solution of the sort to which I object. I think she'll "learn a lesson" with a warning and a politely worded request.

"but mike your a relic in this outdated worlwiev.. hope"

I think, judging by the reaction in the other blog and in another one that I started, that it is the "Hang her" types (I do recall you calling her a "nasty old biddy") that my world view isn't so unpopular or outdated as you would want me to believe. It may be that there are some people with absolutely no sense of scale of the offense (including the prosecutor) but in the end all I can say is I suspect that most of these charges will be dropped as soon as someone who ISN'T a PC radical steps in and takes charge of the investigation.

"I don't know if your braggin' or complainin' about your age but you got it."

Both maybe. ;)

I would have liked to see her use a better weapon but what can you do. It's done. I shot a racoon living under my house last month. Oh well. People, we need to realize that animals do not get the same rights that we do. I would think that the shovel is probably one of the worst ways to do this and I think that is why so many are upset over this. Chances are, as I see them from the text, that this lady lives in an area where the deer are coming into an urban or suburban area. Animals have to be controlled and this is the price we pay as we move into the places they inhabit. It was better that she did it herself rather than have some pest removal service come and take it away. As soon as they did that the fawn would have turned out one of two ways. 1-dead- no mother. 2-tame-which would cost taxpayer money and take away from what that animal was meant to be.

"Hey mike im holding up my hand palm inwards.. READ BETWEEN THE LINES!"

That's a novel way of broadcasting your IQ.

Armchair,

Why not just get a cat?

My cat loves eating the mice out of my barn

I barely ever have to feed her.

"Mike, you scare the pants off me. You may be a caveman, but I appreciate the brain function granted to me. As an evolved being I value my moral compass. Beating animals to death is a no-no."

You're easily scared. The real world may not be for you. I recommend that you spend more time with Nintendo.

"All this woman had to do is call the F@G to come get the fawn no her life was not in danger and what she did was against the law and she should be punished to the fullest extent of the law."

Obviously I don't agree. I can think of a thousand more important violations of the law that happen daily and are more worthy of investigation or prosecution. The woman's offense doesn't rise to the harm committed when someone illegally parks in a handicap parking space.

Mike I think you're an instigator but this has produce more laughs than I had for a long time. Thank you all, idiot and sensible alike.
In my neighborhood most animals bigger than a mouse are "game animals" and can only be killed legally in season and by approved tools.
There is no proper means to deal with unwanted wildlife, I can't legally live trap and move a raccoon that wants my garage as his own.
For that matter I can't legally feed squirrels in my own yard.
To remove an unwanted critter I must ask animal control for a live trap, I can set it and then call animal control to remove the critter for me. Given the time between a call and a response this would be animal cruelty in my opinion.
Like the old lady I've resorted to more efficient methods, however altho I'm just as illegal I'm much sneakier.

I think we all agree, Ken, that we would not handle it this way. I think you're reading alot into the story when you add adverbs like "slowly." It makes it sound like you agree with the nutbags who think she has "rage issues" and ought to be institutionalized.

My view is that rather than throwing in the charge of animal cruelty (which I suspect won't stand, because there's a world of difference between the people who just like to harm animals a la Michael Vick and this old lady), the correct LAW ENFORCEMENT response is something like this:

"Uh, hello miss. Listen, that's probably how they handled cases like this when you were a child but we'd prefer that you call animal control. Seeing an animal killed can be upsetting to the neighbors. Please don't do anything like this again."

But, as I have noted before in this thread, there seem to be LOTS of people who are now part of the culture of the perpetually enraged. Between the dork, and another fellow who implied that siding with her puts one in league with the nazis, I'd say that SANITY (judging by the company kept) is on my side of the argument.

But carry on. It's a big world with plenty of room for opinions.

Thanks armchair OU. I suspect that liberal wussies and Big Gov't Nanny State intrusive busybodies are gonna continue to express their outrage by providing negative feedback. They are, of course, playing PETA's and HSUS "every animal is just like a person" card and ultimately the sportsmen going after her are just playing into the hands of anti-hunters who'd argue any form of deer death other than at the hands of wolves is "animal cruelty."

I'd take this old lady for a nieghbor any day over any of the self-righteous prigs hammering at her.

She should have dragged it into the house, beat it to death in there and then butchered it for the meat. Hell, how much does a Granny make in social security payments? And she's probably on food stamps. She spends her money on nice flowers to make her property look good for the neighborhood and this doe has the nerve bed down and probably eat her flowers? Oh hell no. To penalize her for protecting her property??? You all who sided with the doe have really effed up priorities. What if it was YOUR grandma who is going to jail and fined $1000 (that she can't pay)? Who do you think she's going to try to hit up for that money?

The DEC is a joke, who can barge into your home without a search warrant and arrest you if you have untagged game meat in your freezer. What a big effing load of government intrusion into our lives.

My thanks go out to Miike Diehl and Rascal on this one, I feel the same way. My tomato plants and flower beds ar in shambels from the deer in my hood.

I just fell a little bit in love with Mike Diehl.
My farming Grandma drove out varmits any way she needed to. When a neighbors pit bull jumped my fence and threatened me and my dog I let that neighbor know (and the HOA "mgmt" company) that if it EVER happened again I'd be pulling out and using my 40 caliber. Is that the same as a baby fawn? A pest is a pest, and a threat is a threat.

"bludgeoning a baby that crawls into your driveway??"

That's the problem with nanny state big gov people. No sense of proportionality or scale. You're making a moral equivalence between offing a garden pest and a human being. That simply affirms in my view that the people outraged over this have the intelligence of a bivalve.

I think she should get a commendation and a blue ribbon from the 4H club and the American Horticultural Society for innovative use of nonchemical pest control.

"Animal abuse" is one of the stupidist leftwingnut PC freakshow arenas of intrusive big nanny state power expansion of the last couple decades. I won't be surprised when I hear about some poor damned yankee charged with animal cruelty for boiling a lobster, or some louisianan for eating a raw oyster with some kind of cocktail sauce.