Hunter Told to Leave Without His Deer

(Redding, Connecticut) A local woman, Lynn Gorfinkle, found a dead deer in her back yard that had been shot with a fatal arrow through the lung. Gorfinkle said the deer would remain in her back yard indefinitely.

The carcass of the young spike buck could have gone home with the hunter, who shot it on nearby property and tracked it to the Gorfinkles' 3.5 acres on Fire Hill Road, but Mike and Lynn Gorfinkle were having none of that.

"If someone's going to eat that deer, I want it to be natural predators," she said. "Not some hunter."

The hunter knocked on the door and asked permission to remove the deer from the property, where it had finally collapsed, she said.

"My husband told him to just go away, he couldn't have the deer," she said. [...]

Gorfinkle, the CEO of Animal Rights Alliance in Redding, said she snapped photographs of the deer where it fell as it died, then flipped it over and took more to document the cause of death: a lethal lung puncture.

"It was a crime scene, in my opinion, the minute that it was shot," she said.

Rather than consider hunters as criminals, the state Department of Environmental Protection relies on hunters to control a burgeoning deer population carrying Lyme disease and colliding with motor vehicles. Ironically, the Gorfinkles live in the area of Connecticut with the highest deer density and, therefore, would benefit the most from hunting.

Gorfinkle told her story about the deer that died on her land to people at last Monday night's meeting of the Fairfield Deer Management Committee.

Fairfield resident Nancy Rice, outreach coordinator of the nonprofit Friends of Animals, listened sympathetically.

Rice wondered, what will Gorfinkle do with the deer?

Gorfinkle said she is uncertain. She may just wait for other animals to feast on the carcass, or she may cover it with dirt.

So, she's going to let the deer carcass decompose in her back yard and stink up the neighborhood and, if the prevailing breeze is right, her house. Why? Well, I believe it's being done for spite. Her actions are benefitting nobody.