A Halifax County man says he was upset when a deer that walked into his parents' backyard in Spryfield on Tuesday afternoon was found to have an arrow protruding from its side.
Tony Balzan said the buck was eating from a bird feeder at about 2 p.m., but it wasn't until after he looked at a photo he took with his phone that he noticed the arrow sticking from the animal's left side, about halfway between its front and back legs.
He kept tossing apples into the back yard to feed the deer and try to keep in there while he called Halifax Regional Police, who in turn called the provincial Department of Lands and Forestry.
But the deer wasn't going far. It limped into the front yard and lay down.
“I thought they might be able to save it, but they came out and said no, it was a fatal shot and they would have to put it down,” Balzan said. “It was awful.”
He said he and his parents had to call his 90-year old neighbour to let her know she would hear a shot and not to worry, as well as staff at the nearby Sobeys store.
He said the deer probably came from the area in or around Long Lake provincial park.
He said there is a wooded green area between his parents' home and neighbouring streets.
He said the conservation officers told him that the arrow was one meant for target shooting, not hunting. That meant that it penetrated the deer's flesh, but wasn't designed to kill it instantly.
There was a second wound next to the arrow but that shaft had broken off with a piece still inside the deer, Balzan said.
He said his father has seen the same deer – which was a frequent visitor – three days ago, and it wasn't injured then.
"It sounds to me that possibly somebody saw it as an opportunity and just took whatever they had at hand. . . . It's a damn shame."
- Mile Pollard, president of the Nova Scotia Federation of Anglers and Hunters
As a former hunter, Balzan said his issue wasn't that someone was hunting, if that was the case, but that someone shot at the deer with arrows that were not meant to kill. He said he also thinks it was someone in a house in the area, and not a situation of the animal being hit a distance away and wandering into the neighbourhood.
Mile Pollard, the president of the Nova Scotia Federation of Anglers and Hunters, said incidents like this aren't good for the deer or the reputation of people who hunt legally.
“Generally speaking, hunters if they're hunting with (bows) know that you can't kill a deer efficiently with a field point. It just doesn't work like a tip designed for downing a deer and killing it.”
He said the person who fired the arrow “firstly... wouldn't have been very well-informed, and secondly wasn't hunting under the law because, I believe, the law states you have to use proper equipment.”
He said deer “are a wonderful resource that we have, and anyone out trying to harvest one should take the time to understand them and know what they're doing and use the proper equipment.
“They weren't doing anything properly,” he said. “They shouldn't be in the field with the wrong equipment, and they should know the capability of the bow and their own capabilities so they're not wounding an animal and leaving it to wander around.”
But, he added, “it sounds to me that possibly somebody saw it as an opportunity and just took whatever they had at hand. . . . It's a damn shame and showing irresponsible actions.”
Those actions also include not tracking the animal after the fact.
He said the Spryfield area has many young children, and it's not ideal to have an injured animal wandering around a populated area because they become unpredictable.
No one from Lands and Forestry was available Wednesday afternoon to talk about the incident.
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