Sick, senseless stupidity.

Bring em to justice, Waupaca:

“It is senseless. I don’t know how else to describe it,” Dremel said. “It is probably something they thought was fun or humorous at the time. They did purposely run over these deer. The tracks in the snow were in a circular manner, almost looking like they were chasing the deer back to other snowmobile partners.”

Randy Yorkson, who farms the land, said people cannot believe what happened.

“I am going to guess it is somebody who left a bar. They probably had been using that trail before, knowing the deer were out there,” he said. “This is just some yahoos who don’t have any common sense.”

Landowner Virginia Niemuth, 80, immediately shut off access to her property, closing five miles of the main snowmobile trail across Waupaca County.

“There’s sick people out there,” Niemuth said. “I used to love to snowmobile, but this is too much.”

Dremel believes three or four snowmobiles were involved in a roundup of deer in a moonlit alfalfa field where 30 to 40 animals were known to feed. Witnesses reported hearing snowmobiles in the area about 3:30 a.m., he said.

Three deer were found dead in the field. A snowmobile stopped atop one and ripped open its stomach, Dremel said. A fourth deer with broken legs was euthanized.

The fifth deer was dragged from the field and tied to a tree about 25 feet from a road. Investigators think someone may have planned to return for that deer, Dremel said.

“It looked like the deer wrapped itself around the tree and choked itself to death,” he said.

Dremel said he has never heard of this kind of “cowboy-style” attack on deer with snowmobiles.

“Usually, it is an accident — a deer standing in a trail and a snowmobiler can’t avoid it,” he said.

The dead deer included two bucks and three does. One was a fawn.

Investigators have no suspects. Some snowmobile clubs have offered $4,000 in rewards for information leading to arrests, Dremel said. Information can be phoned into the DNR’s tip line at (800) TIP-WDNR, or (800) 847-9367.

“This is not characteristic of the snowmobile community in Wisconsin,” DNR Chief Warden Randy Stark said in Madison. “Obviously, we are looking to get any public assistance we can in identifying who is responsible for this.”

PRO-LIFE means many things to many people. Is it me, or is our society raising more and more of our young people to turn their backs on human -- and animal -- suffering? Shameful, those who laugh at such atrocities ... and those who turn their heads and choose not to see.

MORE:

Snowmobile groups are contributing to a growing reward to find the snowmobilers who ran down and tortured five deer in Waupaca County.

The DNR says between two and four snowmobiles were involved in the attacks early Saturday morning. Some of the deer were found with broken legs and dragged behind a snowmobile. One was tied to a tree.

The current reward is around $4,000 for information leading to those responsible, in addition to a possible $1,000 from CrimeStoppers.

Area snowmobilers are worried the acts of a few will have lasting effects on the majority.

"Everybody is mad as hell about it. Everybody is just, everybody is upset about it," Tim Dwyer, president of the Scandinavia Viking Snowmobile Club, said.

In an area where snowmobiling is a way of life, a bad rap is something the sport can't afford.

"The snowmobiling community as a whole is probably more appalled about this than anyone else," Dwyer said. "It makes us all look bad. It makes us look bad in the public, it make us look bad with the landowners."


Local enthusiasts say it can take years to gain access to trails -- many of them run through private property -- and a single senseless act by a few irresponsible individuals has the potential to take that all away.

"Landowners aren't going to put up with it. They're going to shut their properties down and snowmobiling won't be around," snowmobiler John Nutter said. "It takes a few bad apples and it's going to ruin it for everybody."

Right now around 13 different groups invest thousands of hours caring for more than 400 miles of trails in Waupaca County.

"People are assigned certain sections of trail and they mark that section, they talk to landowners, they patrol in the wintertime. If a sign gets knocked over they replace them. If a tree branch is in the way they cut them," Dwyer said.

Snowmobilers hope these things are what people remember.

"You can ride anywhere, and this puts the whole trail network at risk," Dwyer said.

"Everybody wants these people caught," Nutter added.