My daughter JUST had a drive by SHOOTING!!
 

My daughter called, she said there was a drive by shooting!! At 8PM at night.

Her husband looks out, a 4 door car is stopped, there is a dead deer in the front of their house!!

Their house is over 50 yards from the road. We do live in a rural area.

They call 911 (keeping us informed of the events on the other phone!)

The sheriff's office says they will send somebody right out!!

5 minutes later the sheriff's office calls back, they just had a deputy shoot a deer that he had hit, the location matched my daughters house.

Am I allowed to shoot a deer that I hit?

Should that deputy have knocked on my daughters door??

Just drive off??

Ive shot deer that have been hit, but never in somones yard. If the cop shot it he should have told them and hauled into a ditch or had the county come pick it up in the morning.

To tell you the truth, I get nervous if I dont hear gun shots toward evning and all weekend long. Everyone around me shoots, me too.

It was probably against the law for the deputy to shoot the deer. Game animals belong to the state and are under state regulation (not the county). If you shoot a deer, even if you hit it with a car, out of season and without a hunting permit, or if you shoot "onto, from, or across any roadway", you are in violation of state game laws in most states and can be cited. You could also be cited for shooting a firearm in close proximity to an inhabited building. What you are supposed to do if you hit a deer is to call the state game and fish department or county animal control and have them handle it. A deputy sheriff can shoot legally just about anywhere, but he has no authority to kill a game animal without a hunting license and in the proper season.

Reality, on the other hand, is that almost certainly nobody is going to prosecute a deputy sheriff for putting a deer out of its misery. They make those laws and enforce them because if they didn't, there are folks who would poach deer and bear from roadways and claim they had hit it with their car and were just putting it down.

The deer is still in the ditch, it should attract the buzzards any day now!!

Yes Tony, I agree with you, there should be no shooting, the deputy did not report the shooting until after my daughter had called the sheriffs office. :bigeyes:

Here in WI law can dispatch an animal hit by a car, but the public can not.

Cop kills deer
 

I live in a suburban neighbor hood here in Georgia that has a lot of deer traffic. They have trails that existed before houses were built and they still use them. In front of my home one was hit by an auto and left on the side of the road in agony with two broken legs and bleeding from the mouth and nose. I called the cops and a female officer showed up. I asked her to dispatch the poor critter as soon as she could. She had to call in to headquarters to ask permission to fire her weapon. She then pulled out her Glock and proceeded to miss from 2 feet away. On the second shot she got it below his ear. I was surprised 1., that she had to request permission to shoot and 2., how bad a shot she was.