Now, as to why the state police were at my house discussing firearm law, that’s a good story I haven’t shared in awhile. Maybe I’ll post it when I have a few free minutes later today.
Okay, story time. It was near noon on a Sunday in autumn 2017, when my wife came back to the wood lot where I was clearing leaves, and said there was an injured deer in the front yard. I went up to investigate, and found a nice sized buck walking in circles in front of our house, clearly having some equilibrium issues but showing no apparent limb injury.
After watching him a few minutes, it really appeared he had all the signs of rabies. Being a residential area with kids that actually play outdoors, I figured a full-grown buck with rabies might not be the safest thing to have running around the neighborhood, so I figured I'd better call it into the game commission office. But being a Sunday, there's no one there, and their voicemail instructs me to call 911 for any weekend game emergencies.
So, I call 911, who patches me thru to PA state police, who promptly tell me to call the game commission. I tell him, "they told me to call you." Several rounds of "who's on first" follow, with me being passed from one person to another around the state police barracks, before I get back to the guy who originally answers the phone.
He says to me, "can you put it down?" I say, "Safely? Yes. But legally? I think he's too close to neighboring houses for a legal shot, and I haven't gotten any hunting tags this year." He says, "hang on, I'll send an officer out."
So, I watch this stupid sick deer wander around my yard, tripping over stone walls, stumbling into trees, until a state police car pulls up my driveway maybe 20 minutes later. An officer gets out, takes one look at the deer, and says "wasting disease." I say, "huh?" He says, "it looks like it has wasting disease. The guys up toward the Poconos have been talking about this the last few years, I think it's made it down our way."
Then comes the point where everything turns wrong. This young officer looks at me and says, "d'ya think I should use the rifle or the pistol?" I spent my youth hunting, shooting trap, target... I know my way around a gun, I also know that nearly no matter what direction you shoot from my yard, there's going to be another house, public park, or building within the deadly range of a high power rifle. Stunned that every police cruiser isn't still equipped with the venerable Remington 870 Magnum shotgun I remember from years ago, I say, "well, if a rifle and a pistol is all you have, I guess you're going to have to use pistol."
About this time, I'm thinking I should just run down to my own gun safe and grab one of my own shotguns, when the cop pulls a hand canon of his hip. Not sure what the thing was (.45 auto mag?), but it was big bore, high tech, and had a real nice laser scope. He walks up to within a car length of the deer, who is having too many cognitive issues to notice him, and puts his laser scope right on the heart.
One squeeze of the trigger from no more than 20 feet away, and the deer goes down on its left hind leg. It's clear as day that the cop shot the deer in the ass. I honesty could have killed the deer with a brick from the distance he was firing, but somehow with his high tech laser scope, he was off his mark by a good 3 feet at seven paces' distance.
But the deer hops back up, and starts hobbling on three legs. At this point, I'm smart enough to duck behind the big tailgate of my landscape trailer, while the cop just stands there staring at the thing. The deer lowers his head and charges the guy, with a full rack of at least six points. Cop dives behind my trailer in just the nick of time to avoid getting skewered.
Now here's the most unfortunate part. I had just bought a new truck the week before, and it was parked in my driveway. After missing the cop, the deer slammed into my tailgate, and then slid under the truck. Two big dents and one crease in my new tailgate, and one dent in my new rear bumper. I had just installed a new semi-custom dual exhaust system, and the deer starts flailing around under there, trying to free himself.
Once the deer gets himself out from under my truck, cop takes a new stance from about 30 feet away, fires, misses. Deer starts running, and cop starts tracking him with the gun, blam, blam, blam, blam, blam! I counted at least seven shots before the cop was firing right at my neighbor's house. To his credit, I believe he landed one solid shot, and had a second that was a glancing blow, but if I hadn't started yelling and waving my arms at that point, he'd have filled my neighbor's house (and possibly his family) with holes.
The whole time I'm thinking, "I put down running deer with single shots at four times this distance using a .410 shutgun at age 12, how is this guy even allowed to carry a gun?" And, "next time, I'm just shooting the damn deer myself."
The deer ran off, and after he chased it around the neighborhood for a half hour in his cruiser, it eventually fell down an embankment into a creek, where he was able to put on bullet in the head and finish him off. After that, I got to explain to every person who saw my truck at work, why I had three new dents in the back of a brand new truck. I have a feeling each co-worker was telling the next, "hey, go ask him about this tailgate!"