Circle of Death
The Circle of Death
District Game Warden Daniel Hoenke
Some things you can count on happening every year in North Dakota.
It will get cold in the winter, some corn and sunflowers will be standing during deer gun season, and at the end of deer season deer will be dumped on the outskirts of every town and city.
I call it the circle of death!
Now, always and never are strong words but in my career as a warden I have never had a year that someone didn’t call me about a deer carcass being dumped around town after deer gun season.
Often, it’s multiple calls.
It is a shameful experience for me being a hunter myself and having to listen to the reporting party curse the hunter that left the carcass there.
I have found the perpetrator in some cases and others I have not been so lucky.
Now this has changed for the worse due to chronic wasting disease becoming more prevalent on the landscape.
Each one of these dumping sites can now be a starting point for a CWD infection.
I have disposed of every one of my deer carcasses in a way that has not caused a complaint or issue for my entire hunting career and with far less effort than loading it back up into a truck and dumping it at some random spot.
In the end it is everyone’s decision to do right or do wrong, but cutting up the carcass and disposing it in a landfill is a simple legal solution.
Hunter responsibility goes a long way in keeping our deer herds healthy and maintaining good public perception.
I guess if the decision is the wrong one, I hope we get a chance to meet….