As Predicted, Wounded Deer Recovers Poacher’S Arrow Falls Out Of Doe’S Shoulder

For weeks, Virginia Clark watched and waited.

A doe, struck by a poacher’s arrow, limped through her back yard, nibbled on the corn Clark set out, and limped on.

She called the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. She called the media.

The arrow remained.

Last week, her story found a happy ending. The arrow fell out. The whitetail seems to be recovering.

The drawback: Clark had to admit that Idaho Fish and Game was right.

“Now Fish and Game can tell me they told me so,” Clark said.

The retired woman had lambasted the agency for letting the doe suffer. Fish and Game told her the arrow probably would come out on its own, and that any attempt to remove it might make the situation worse.

“You have to realize, these critters are tough,” said Mark Taylor, a Department of Fish and Game spokesman.

About 10 years ago, Taylor said, a woman called the department asking it to put down a doe with an injured front leg. The department let nature take its course.

“(The doe) showed up next year with twin fawns,” Taylor said. “That testifies to their ability to survive.”

Still, after a good amount of public pressure, regional conservation officer Craig Walker went to Clark’s Hayden Estates home and tried to tranquilize the deer, but couldn’t get close enough.

Future attempts could be dangerous, Walker explained, because if the dart stuck but the deer escaped, a hunter later could shoot it and eat the tainted meat.

Clark didn’t like that explanation, nor the possibility that the arrow could fall out on its own. When she saw the doe’s two fawns licking their mother’s wound, it made her sad.

And angry.

She’s still sticking to her guns.

“It just was awful to see her, walking around with this arrow,” she said.

“On Saturday night, a woman in Washington called. She said she just had to know what happened to the deer.”

Clark, seasoned by the barrage of phone calls she’s gotten since the media picked up her story, relayed the good news.

“She said, `Well now I can sleep tonight.”

But there’s a new wrinkle:

A buck hobbled through her back yard just a few days ago, with a bloody wound on its left shoulder.

There’s no way to tell for sure, but Clark thinks this one was shot.

“He was back last night, feeding,” she said. “He can hardly put any pressure on that foot at all.

“It’s a beautiful animal.”

Will she call the Department of Fish and Game this time?

“Oh, heavens no,” Clark said. “Why would I?

“What did they do for the doe? What are they going to do to help a buck with a gunshot wound? I didn’t get much results from the last time.”

It’s a different injury, although it’s not as hard to look at. She said if the buck looks like it needs to be put down, she might call the department.

But the real problem still is the same: hunters who don’t finish what they start.

“This is twice, right here in this little area,” Clark said. “How many times does this happen in the woods?”

Cut in the Spokane edition.

Staff writer Thomas Clouse contributed to this report.