DWR tracks down hunter who killed famous Logan deer

If you ask Logan locals, they can tell you about The Greenville Buck, a semi-tame deer who has spent most of its life wandering the city.

The buck would often sleep in people's backyards for a night or two at a time.

Until someone brought its head into Al's Sporting Goods for the big buck contest in mid-August, several days after the opening weekend of an archery hunt.

"That obviously tipped [off] and concerned a lot of people… [the deer] was so well-known and so high-profile," said Division of Wildlife Resource Conservation Officer Chris Schulze on Tuesday.

The DWR fielded a lot of complaints from locals, as well as other hunters, who were upset that someone had hunted within city limits, Schulze said. "He was almost like a pet."

Investigators eventually tracked the hunter down and determined he had shot the deer with a bow and arrow on Aug. 18, the Sunday of the hunt.

But he had allegedly done so by trespassing onto private land at the mouth of Green Canyon, by breaking a North Logan ordinance by firing the bow within its city limits, as well as breaking state regulations for the type of bow he used, Schulze said.

Schulze expects the DWR to file charges against the hunter in the North Logan Justice Court. The hunter is a local who was familiar with the deer, Schulze said.

A smaller deer that had been seen frequently walking around Logan with the buck also was shot a short time later during the same archery hunt, Schulze said. But it was bad shot, and the deer wandered the city for several days with a festering wound until DWR officers caught up with it and put it down.

At this point, investigators do not suspect the same hunter shot the second deer.

The DWR is still seeking information about the second deer's injury.

mmcfall@sltrib.com

Twitter: @mikeypanda