By Gail Binkly

The Division of Wildlife is trying hard to find out who shot a deer in the Carpenter Natural Area north of Cortez on Dec. 11.

That’s not only because officers are concerned about the act of poaching — deer season is long over — but because the idea of someone firing a weapon in the popular hiking area is so unnerving.

Toward sunset last Saturday, DOW biologists Jim and Robin Olterman got a call from a man who had been hiking in the area and heard three shots fired. After hiking a little farther, the man came across the body of an adult doe, still bleeding, said Jim Olterman, senior biologist for western Colorado.

"He didn’t see anybody around, so he called us," Olterman said. "Robin and I went down right away and found the deer. She’d been dragged under the brush, but we saw the blood and found her."

They waited till dark, but no one showed up, so they took the carcass to Bane’s Custom Packing to be dressed and donated to charity. Now they are hoping someone will have a tip on who the shooter might have been.

"We’re hoping people may have seen somebody with a gun there other times or on that particular evening, something that could give us a lead," Olterman said.

"That Carpenter Natural Area is really close to town and people hike out there. It’s really bad news for people to be shooting out there. It’s not legal to be shooting in the city limits, anyway, and deer season is over."

In addition, by abandoning the carcass, the perpetrators opened themselves up to charges of willful destruction of wildlife, a felony, or at the very least, wasting wildlife, a misdemeanor, Olterman said.

The deer had been hit at least twice, he said, in the hindquarters and abdomen, and appeared to have been shot with a .22. From the position of the carcass, the shots appeared to have been fired toward the homes nearby on the south side of the preserve.

"We would really love to find out who did it and put a stop to it," Olterman said. "Nobody should even be out there plinking at rabbits. It’s just not a safe place. It’s maybe a hundred yards from all those apartments and houses out there."

The packers at Banes will preserve any bullets they find, he said, so it’s possible they could be matched to the weapon that fired them.