Shooting of white deer under investigation

The shooting death Sunday of a white deer in Jakway Park has incensed Aurora resident Kim Wessels, an admirer of the legally protected animal.

“I pretty much freaked out on” the shooter after discovering that he had killed the white antlerless deer that she had been regularly visiting, Wessels said.

Wessels reported the shooting to Mike Van Raden, the ranger at Jakway Park about two miles south of Aurora. He relayed the information to Department of Natural Resources Conservation Officer Scott Kinseth.

Kinseth said Monday that the deer, which the DNR confiscated, appears to meet the Iowa Code description of a “predominantly white deer” that is protected under Iowa law.

As of Monday afternoon, he said, charges had not been filed against the shooter, whose name won't be released unless and until charges are filed.

Wessels, 37, who often visited and photographed the deer, said she was in awe of the deer's beauty and amazed at its calmness in her presence. It was always in the same spot and would not run from her, she said.

“It is the most amazing and relaxing experience I have ever had, and I feel lucky to have experienced it,” she said.

The deer's tameness suggests that it may have been an escapee from one of several captive deer herds in Buchanan County, according to Jim Jansen, the DNR's northeast Iowa district wildlife supervisor.

Though Jansen had not seen the deer, he said he had received information that it may have had scar tissue in its ear suggesting that it had once worn the tag of a captive deer.

With captive deer, the DNR is especially concerned with the transmission of disease to wild deer, Jansen said. Accordingly, he said, the white deer will be tested for the fatal chronic wasting disease, a contagious nervous system ailment that has killed hundreds of deer in Wisconsin and Illinois, but which has yet to be discovered in Iowa.

The Legislature outlawed the shooting of white deer in the early 1980s at the urging of residents of St. Ansgar, who wanted to protect a specific white doe who resided near the Mitchell County town. That deer's remains are enshrined within a glass-enclosed gazebo.

Both albinism and melanism (excessive darkening of an animal's exterior) make animals more visible and vulnerable to predators, according to Jansen.

They are recessive traits for a reason -- in the process of natural selection, they reduce an animal's chance of survival, he said.

Jansen said the state law artificially protects white deer. “Nature would take them out,” he said.