BILLINGS — Mary Jackson woke up to a dead deer in her front yard in Billings Thursday morning that she believes was shot.
“It’s a nice quiet street," Jackson said of her North 14th Street neighborhood. "And to know that this is going on in your front yard, yeah, I’m not too happy about it.”
Jackson, known to many in Billings as Crazy Mary of Crazy Mary's Fish n' Chips, said someone knocked on her door to let her know about the deer in her front yard, and she was surprised to see it.
“This morning I get a construction crew from across the street, knocks on my door and says there’s a dead deer in my front yard,” she said.
Micah Olds was the first to find the deer in Jackson's yard. He said he noticed it as he was pulling onto the street to start work.
“So we called fish and game, and they came and had a look at it and determined that the deer was shot,” Olds said. “I think it’s a terrible thing to happen here in town, in any part of town, that there’s firearms being discharged inside of city limits.”
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks said Thursday that the agency is "investigating the situation and has no additional information at this time."
But Jackson insists that the deer was shot.
“Game wardens have shown up. They took evidence of possibilities of it being an air rifle,” Jackson said. "And as soon as (the game warden) flipped it over, we saw the one shot into the rib cage of this poor deer that was just having breakfast.”
She is happy that there is an investigation of the situation because she worries it may not be an isolated incident.
“It’s going to get out of control if we don’t say something. So, as long as we say something, it probably won’t,” she said.
