recent LEO story, want your comments

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Commander Guineapig

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greetings all (and happy new year),


The following happened to me over the Christmas weekend.
My folks run a summer camp up in the CO mountains and were
coming back from a vacation in Hawaii. My little brother was also back from college, so we headed up to my folks place a bit early to get things ready for them when they pulled in.
On our drive up there, not far from Delta, CO, I was flashed by an oncoming truck. In our neck of the woods, that means there is either a cop, or a deer/elk near the road. We come around the corner, and sure enough, there's a doe in the road...only she's not dead. This is the first live one I've seen...for...yeesh...lotsa dead ones. So I pull over and get out, and ironically a buddy of mine had pulled over behind me. The deer was not struggling, just sitting there with her legs all busted up. She seemed to know she was done for, but still very much alive. I asked my buddy if he was packing, but all he had was a .22 rifle. I had my new Sig P228 with hollowpoints, my wife's Christmas present .380, and my 10/22. However there was a TON of holiday traffic on this little 2-lane highway, and the LAST thing I wanted to do was pull out a handgun and pop this thing in the head. The OTHER last thing I wanted to do was drive away and leave it suffering...I'm no animal rights freak, I'll pop prairie dogs with the next guy, but I hate that kind of suffering. Well fortunately, I didn't have to decide, a State Patrol pulls up lights and all, and hollers if she's still alive. I holler back that she was. So he gets out and ...pulls out a shotgun. My buddy and I get some cars out of the way, and the officer walks to about 8 feet in front of her and shoots her...in the boiler room. She doesn't hardly twitch, she just sits there...breathing as if nothing had happened.
At this point we packed up and left...not much more we could have done.
My question is: Should the officer have used that shotgun, and why the boiler room? I was going to slip my barrel round back of her neck right at the top vertebrae and pop her, knowing she'd go down instantly. I'm not sure if the officer was using buckshot or slugs, but...I don't know. Isn't the head a much better option?
I might add, the areas BEHIND the deer where the bullet would end up weren't the best, but they certainly weren't the worst. This was fairly rural.
thanks,


GP
 
finishing a deer (in that situation) is best done with a shot to the medula, like you suggested. mind you, the trooper may not have been an expert in anatomy, or a hunter. was there any conversation before the shot?
 
very little, he seemed confident in what he was doing...I imagine he's done this a lot, but I don't think that means he necessarily knew HOW to do it.
I don't really want to bash an LEO, but I just think there might have been a better way to do it? if not, please say so!
GP
 
Hard to do so without talking to the LEO. My guess would be.
If this was out on a busy highway with lots of traffic he thought it wise to keep his shot low. A "shot to boiler" is how lots of deer are killed.
 
We have a book by a veternarian that among a lots of other information, details the proper way to put down a horse with a firearm. The author described drawing an imaginary X between the eyes and the base of the ears and putting the bullet straight into the middle.

I don't suppose the anatomy of a deer head is all that different from a horse.

Just curious: were you headed up to Grand Mesa or up towards Paonia/Hotchkiss ?
 
My brother lives up by the George Washington Pass and he puts down deer all the time with an old Marlin .22, after he has called it in. I think the .22 to the head would have been the safest means of putting the doe down, but as you said little was discussed before the incident.
 
Sounds good to me. Not the quickest means of a put down, but a safe shot. I'm sure some buck shot at close range will have the necessary effect in short order.
 
It sounds like you handled the situation well enough. If there's a lot of traffic and people around I'm not sure I'd want to be shooting either. A shotgun to the boiler may not be the quickest but probably the surest and safest method as far as bullets flying where you may not want them.
 
Was not there, but I personally finish deer off w/ head shots. Still, a heart/lung shot is far preferable to letting it linger for hours. I have found that w/ small caliber pistol rounds (.32acp) you cannot even see an entrance wound if you are worried about messing up the hide on a trophy buck. If you angle it right, there is no exit wound.
 
I've read of deer put down by some local police in TN after being struck by traffic being sent to places that butcher them and distribute the meat to poor families.

I don't know the details but I figure that some families that relish the venison sign up for this.
Personally I've lost my taste for venison after reading of the parasites that often infect Deer in Tennessee, I no longer allow my dogs to eat leftovers from other peoples kills either. Though I wouldn't think twice about it it the meat scraps were properly cooked.
One old Plot/Pitbull mix I owned till he died of old age could eat about half a deer in four days, finishing off a hind quarter in a couple of hours bones and all. He was a real monster and a dyed in the wool eating machine.
He ate an entire Cow's backbone including all the connective tissue and spinal cord in two sittings. He first bit the spinal column in half at a point where the vertabrae were as thick as a softball or larger. Most powerful animal I've seen outside of a zoo.

I suppose the Officer was hoping for a heart shot, and unfortunately the deer has a vascular mechanism that actually isolates its brain and nervous system from the heart when in flight mode. The blood vessels constrict to force more blood to the areas where needed and a stopped or even destroyed heart won't always show immediate effects.
A cousin blew a 90lb doe's heart completely out of its body using a .338 magnum, and the deer still bounded about 30 yards with a hole in its ribcage you could see daylight through.
 
Hey Tallpine, I was headed up towards Paonia/Hotchkiss.

I am glad HE did SOMETHING about it, I am just questioning
a boiler room shot vs a headshot at that range.
I would never take a headshot in the field, at range, but the circumstances here are different.
I have to agree tho, the thought of a bullet going a long ways did cross my mind.
GP
 
I used to be a LEO and watched a partner put down a horse that had been hit by a car. He placed one round from his .357 dead between the eyes and was promptly covered with gunk from head to toe.That did the job quickly, but traumatized the cop for a long time after. Bottom line is that animals that are gravely injured are too stupid to know it. I think nature also kills their pain and they are really not suffering as much as we think. A human thinks and as a result mentally suffers.
 
Either a bad shot or he was not thinking about it. He has probably seen a dozen or more since hunting season began and they started moving.
 
Was it in the grass or on the road? I could see someone possibly being worried about ricochet with buckshot on pavement. Not sure how big a deers' head is, as I've never really seen one in person LOL
 
My hats off to you.

Did he have his hat on?...Bwhahahahahahaha

Only another trooper would pose that question... :D

They have a mindset all their own....:)

Happy New Year - ISP 2605.

12-34hom.
 
There are several reasons why the cop may have chosen a heart/lung shot rather than a brain shot.

First, a shotgun slug is very soft lead and it quite possibly could have ricocheted off the deer's skull if the entry angle weren't almost perfectly perpendicular to the surface of the skull at the point of entry.

Second, it may not have been easy or safe to get to the proper angle to shoot the deer in the brain so that the shotgun slug wouldn't ricochet.

Third, the brain is a much smaller target and there is certainly a chance that he might miss it even at close range. The cop probably didn't want to risk missing with the first shot and having to shoot it again...... and again.

Fourth, as Crankshop1000 pointed out, if you get close enough to make sure you won't miss the brain and also have the proper angle, you are probably going to get a bath of deer blood and deer brains all over your uniform. I can understand the cop's reluctance to get splashed with deer "splatter" all over his uniform.

Fifth, a shot to the heart/lungs can be done with little chance of missing and with much less chance of being splattered with deer brains/blood/eyeballs/etc. Also, the heart/lung shot is just as deadly even if it may take a while longer to achieve the desired result.

And finally, the cop may have been concerned with what the other motorists nearby would see when he shot the deer. If there were a couple of kids in a car nearby, I would rather they see "Bambi" shot in the chest/shoulder area with little apparent tissue damage than have them see Bambi's head blown half-way off and her brains/blood splattered all over the roadway/cars/etc.

Under the circumstances, I think I would have done exactly what the cop did. Good job, cop. At least you didn't just drive off and leave the deer there to suffer.
 
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