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blizzard warnings - 13:52 , 03 October 2013

heelerless - 21:32 , 18 August 2013

Red Coat Inn in Fort McLeod - 11:38 , 23 June 2013

rushing into the waters - 09:53 , 21 June 2013

choosing a spot - 17:43 , 27 April 2013

29 July 2008 - 22:00

coup de gr�ce

I held him hard against my body with my left hand, while sliding my right hand up his front right leg. When I got up near his shoulder I felt and heard the familiar crunches of shattered bone, floating in a balloon of swollen tissue.

Damn. Damndamndamndamndamn.

It had taken me over an hour to find him. Even though I'd driven right past him.

Somebody apparently doesn't know the difference between 5 miles and 0.5 miles. It wasn't until after I'd given up, having covered the stretch from 3 miles to 7 miles four times, that I found him just a half mile north of town.

Just as the RP said: limping on the front right leg, unable to cross the right-of-way fence.

I'd found another pronghorn fawn dead in that same stretch of fence just this morning. He'd died last night, getting stuck trying to crawl under that damn woven-wire fence. Now here was this other fawn, trying to get west. Presumably to join the doe browsing peacefully less than 50 meters away.

There's a cattleguard that he may be able to jump and stumble across, just a couple hundred meters south. I start creeping along, driving on the shoulder, herding the little guy the right direction.

I can see his right shoulder is swollen.

But he's getting along pretty good. If I can get him across the fence, he deserves his chance at life.

Several vehicles slow to see what's going on. A few even turn around. But one fool parks in front of the fawn. I have to get out and haze the fawn hard on foot to get him past that vehicle.

I shout at the driver to stay behind me.

Not politely.

Eventually I get the fawn to the cattleguard, but he blows past it without a look. I pull ahead and cut him off.

He collapses in exhaustion.

Again I get out on foot, and try to herd him back to the gap in the fence. But in panic, he charges straight ahead, his head through a square of the fence. I see my opportunity and rush him, snatching him up easily. And carry him across the cattleguard.

And that is when I do my inspection of his injury.

The leg bone is in many pieces. I can feel the jagged edges as the fawn bawls in pain. No way he can recover, much less survive.

Once the decision is made, it is always best to carry it out as quickly as possible. I had the rifle out in case it was needed, but it's back in the truck. As is the heavy hammer I use for quieter, humane killings.

All I have here is my Leatherman tool. But it has worked before.

With one hand I pull it out, open it, and swing out the serrated blade. Barely long enough for this task.

I have never understood hunters and others who coup de gr�ce by cutting the throat. It is a horribly painful and slow way to die. A veterinarian taught me the quickest, and almost painless way of killing with a blade.

I lay the fawn on his side, and find the correct spot. One hard thrust and the blade is in. A quick circular motion, and it severs the vessels coming from the top of the heart.

The fawn passes out within seconds.

I hold him for a minute, maybe more. Until the shudders cease. There is no reflex when I touch the eyeball.

It is such a short drive home.

And so long.

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