An Okotoks resident is sounding a warning after finding evidence of large scavenger animals in town.
After a deer was killed in the Crystal Green area late last year, it wasn’t long before scavengers dismembered the animal, said resident Mike Kilik.
“All that was left in 12 hours was a rib cage, backbone and one hindquarter,” Kilik said.
“Whether (the deer) was hit by a car or whether it was taken down by a coyote, I'm not sure,” he said.
The carcass was removed, but recent warm weather caused remnants of the deer to reappear. As snow melted, bone and tufts of hair became visible in a neighbour's garden.
Kilik said he dug a leg out of a flower bed.
“I think people need to know that there are animals in town big enough to dismember deer and drag legs away,” he said.
When it snowed again later, he said that whatever buried the leg in the neighbour's yard came looking for it.
“Her yard was loaded with tracks of it trying to dig in there, trying to find the bone,” he said.
Kilik rides his bike through Okotoks often and sees about one deer per kilometre of trail, he said.
“With the deer population the way it is, we have predators,” he said. “If you have predators, you're going to draw large scavengers as well.”
He thinks the scavengers were coyotes or foxes and added that he didn’t see any cougar tracks.
“But to dismember it, it takes a fairly powerful animal,” he said.
