Til Death Do Us Part- A Deer Poaching Story

Sometimes I just plain don't understand people. This little, elderly, balding man fell into that category. All I know, is by the time I heard my neighboring officer fill me in on "Bob's" (fake name to protect the idiot)background, I REALLY wanted to pinch him for spotlighting.

Turn's out that Bob found himself in a bit of hot water about five years ago. At that time my neighboring officer cited him for killing a deer over bait (illegal in this state). My neighbor (I will call him "Scott") received a tip from Bob's WIFE that Bob had poached a deer.

When Scott was telling me this story, I was a little surprised that Bob's wife had turned him in. Ex-wives and  ex-girlfriends make pretty good witnesses, but rarely current wives. So I asked Scott if Bob and his wife ("Nancy") were still married. Scott replied, "Nope. Nancy died 3 weeks after she turned him in."

Now I was interested.

Here is the story:

The one thing that Nancy took pleasure in was feeding "her deer" a bucket-full of corn every day. She filled her bucket, took it out to the backyard and scattered it around. The deer would come into the yard every day and devour the corn while she watched from the kitchen window. She LOVED the deer. But especially loved a small doe that she had nicknamed "Sweety". Sweety was especially trusting, and was never spooked if Nancy decided to step out onto the back porch to watch her eat the corn.

One day Bob decided that he wanted to kill a deer. He is the type of guy who always obtained the really cheap "landowner" licenses. And he was known to spotlight deer at night by driving around his cornfield and shining a beam out the window. My neighbor Scott had been working on him ever since receiving a call from one of his neighbors a few years back, but so far hadn't had luck catching him hunting by artificial light.

I'm sure you have guessed the end of the story by now, so I will cut to the chase. Bob decided to step out onto the back porch one day while Sweety was partaking of Nancy's corn, and put a slug through her head. Nancy was walking into the kitchen when she heard the shot. She was upset (to say the least) and called Scott to report the poaching.

Scott arrived at the house to find Sweety hanging from the tree in the front yard with Bob's landowner tag attached to her leg. He went to the door and found a haggard, gaunt, tired-looking woman with tears in her eyes. She led Scott to the attic where she had hidden Bob's still-loaded Remington 870. She handed it over to him and told him the details of the incident.

Nancy went on to tell Scott that she had been diagnosed three months prior with terminal cancer. The doctors had given her just a few months to live. Feeding Sweety and the other deer was truly the one thing she lived for each day. Her husband took away the one pleasure she had left in life.

Turns out the doctors were right. She died from cancer three weeks after the poaching incident.

After Scott told me told me this story I started to think a lot about marriage, love and human decency. What could have been so wrong, that this man would kill his dying wife's "pet" deer. It is one of the saddest things I have ever heard. And it seems to run much deeper than my husband "Red's" assessment that "He must not have liked her much."

Scott and I sat on top of a hill overlooking Bob's cornfield and watched him pull out of his driveway and slowly drive around the field. We could see his head crane from side to side, obviously on the lookout for deer. But, it was still light enough that he didn't break out the spotlight, and didn't kill a deer. Scott assured me that it is just a matter of time before he catches him. I just hope I am there when he does.

I just don't get it.