Wounded Doe Upsets Hayden Deer Lovers

In these peaceful days of Virginia and Walter Clark’s retirement, there’s little that pleases them more than watching quiet, unassuming white-tailed deer stroll through their Hayden Estates back yard.

Imagine Virginia Clark’s surprise as she walked through that back yard four days ago and spotted an arrow sticking out of a doe’s shoulder.

“It just broke my heart,” she said.

Luckily, Clark thought, the arrow wasn’t in too deep. There had to be a chance the animal could survive.

So Clark called the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.

“They said `Well, it’s nature’s course,”’ Clark said. “Forget it, it’s no big deal.”

Clark knows better than anyone that deer are as common out here as pigeons on a statue. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be helped, she says.

Craig Walker of Fish and Game’s Coeur d’Alene office said his policy is to leave animals alone and see if they can survive. If an animal is really struggling, officials will generally kill it.

Walker fielded a complaint about the same deer Sunday, from a different woman in the neighborhood. He said he told the woman to keep an eye on the doe and let the department know if the animal’s condition worsened.

“There’s not really much we can do,” Walker said. “White-tailed deer suffer the unfortunate luxury of being a common animal.”

Virginia Clark said she has been keeping an eye on the doe, and that it has steadily gotten worse.

The first day, the doe seemed fine, despite the two-foot arrow sticking out of its shoulder. Then, the next morning, the doe came back. On Tuesday, it spent a good part of the morning and afternoon in the Clarks’ back yard.

By late afternoon, the doe was in bad shape. It walked on three legs, with a bloody patch about 4 to 6 inches wide on the wounded shoulder, Virginia Clark said. Though it was with eight or 10 other animals, the deer were grazing slowly, and the wounded doe didn’t look in any shape to run.

On its flanks at all times are two fawns.

“I was shocked,” said Dorothy Cincotta, who also lives in the neighborhood. “Had it been a real hunter, he would have tracked it down and finished it.

“If you’re going to hunt game, you don’t maim it.”

Cincotta said she called her neighbor, who called Fish and Game, then picked up the phone herself.

She got the same response. “They said they probably would not do anything,” Cincotta said. Virginia Clark and Cincotta said they think the animal should be tranquilized so the arrow can be removed. Clark says she was told that’s not an option.

But Fish and Game’s Walker said that in some circumstances, he will try just that.

“If it looked like it was really going downhill and it would let me get within 20 yards of it, in an area safe to use a dart gun,” Walker said, “I would definitely consider it before killing it.

“I’d like to take every step I can.”

That news elated Virginia Clark, though those circumstances, Walker warned, are fairly rare.

“There’s no money for that type of thing,” he said. “We all got into this business because we care about critters, but financially it’s just not feasible.”

To Clark, this doe has become more than just any wild animal. She and her husband feed the deer daily - a practice frowned upon by Fish and Game - and have grown attached to the creatures. “We have a clientele that comes by every day or so, morning and afternoon,” Clark said. “This arrow thing just blew my mind.”