POCATELLO — The Portneuf Animal Welfare Society is offering a $5,000 reward to anyone with information on who wrapped a leash around a deer’s neck, which resulted in its death recently in the Gibson Jack area near Pocatello.
“The reward is going to be offered to the person who helps us locate the person who did this horrible thing,” Jo Lynn Anderson, founder of PAWS, said on Saturday.
On Wednesday, Gibson Jack resident Steve Leaman received a call from a neighbor about the dead yearling buck. When he went down to investigate, he discovered the leash.
“When I got down there, I walked over to it and saw this harness around its neck,” Leaman said. “When walking, the deer had stepped through the loop of the leash, so every time it tried to walk it would pull its head down. It was one of the craziest cases I’ve seen with wildlife.”
Leaman, who has watched over and fed deer for nearly 40 years, mentioned that he’d heard of a deer around the area with an object around its neck this past winter.
He kept on high alert, as did officials with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, who managed to find it and attempted to tranquilize it on several occasions. However, they were unsuccessful due to difficult circumstances.
Anderson hopes that the reward will give incentive to the community so they can find out more about the situation regarding the dead deer.
“We just want to find out who did this,” Anderson said.
Anyone with information regarding who leashed the deer is asked to contact the Portneuf Animal Welfare Society at 208-406-3904.
