One Abbotsford, B.C. woman experienced an interesting welcome to the neighbourhood when she found three severed elk heads on the gravel road near her home.
But they weren’t intended for her. Instead, a hunter had placed them there to ward off partiers and thieves.
Julia Power had just moved into a subdivision that backs onto Farina Road, and was driving on it Friday morning when she spotted what looked like a horse head on the roadside.
Intrigued yet horrified, she got out of her car to look closer, she told The Huffington Post Canada.
Warning: The photo below may be disturbing.
”I’m thinking, ‘Is this normal? Is this something that hunters do on the regular?'” she said.
She called the B.C. Conservation Officer Service, who quickly dispatched an officer to figure out what had happened.
“They were helpful, but very weirded out at first,” she said.
Conservation officer Don Stahl told HuffPost the service panicked at first that the heads could be that of a protected group of animals that live on a nearby mountain.
"We thought a poacher had just wiped out half our herd," he said.
But the true story was a lot weirder.
Hunter 'apologized profusely' when confronted
The animals had been hunted by three people up in northern B.C. as part of a draw for those with hunting licences, Stahl told the Abbotsford News.
One of the hunters, who Power told HuffPost lives in her subdivision, was tired of people doing drugs, partying and dumping their garbage on Farina Road, so he left the bounty there as a message, Stahl told the publication.
He also told HuffPost the man was angry about a number of break-and-enters in the neighbourhood.
"It wasn’t really a good idea on his part to place the heads there like that,” Stahl told the Vancouver Sun.
"I gave him a written warning, he apologized profusely and he removed the heads."
"Not how I'd go about getting rid of teenagers, that’s for sure."
Believe it or not, the man had a good reason for keeping the heads. Stahl told HuffPost hunters use them to prove that any meat they transport came from a female elk.
Power said she did notice a lot of garbage on Farina Road, including an abandoned mattress in the trees. But she still disapproves of this form of justice.
"It’s very disturbing. Not how I’d go about getting rid of teenagers, that’s for sure."
This isn't the first instance of a B.C. resident using a dead animal as a deterrent. Dead buzzards were spotted strung up on a property in Wardner, near Cranbrook in 2010. HuffPost Canada Editor Michelle Butterfield said the birds were meant to keep people away and to show the homeowners' opposition to a proposed area development.
