Very sad to hear this.
This happen in our neck of the wood.
The hunting season is on.








Family's beloved dog found shot to death in woods

Photo by Bryan Thomas / Monitor staff
At her home in Canterbury, NH on November 5, 2010, Christine Jeas begins to cry as she talks about her family's recently deceased dog, Scarlett. On Thanksgiving Day, the Jeas's let Scarlett outside only to have her never return. Several days later, the Jeas family discovered that their beloved Scarlett had been shot and killed. Since, they've struggled with who and why someone would shot a dog that meant so much to them.Purchase photo reprints at At her home in Canterbury, NH on November 5, 2010, Katherine Jeas holds the dog tag of her recently deceased dog, Scarlett. Since her dog's death, she's turned the dog's tags into a necklace that she wears constantly. On Thanksgiving Day, the Jeas's let Scarlett outside only to have her never return. Several days later, the Jeas family discovered that their beloved Scarlett had been shot and killed. Since, they've struggled with who and why someone would shot a dog that meant so much to them.
Purchase photo reprints at PhotoExtra ».By the time they got the call, Dean and Christine Jeas were almost relieved to learn their beloved coonhound Scarlett had been found shot to death in the Canterbury woods.

Ever since they moved in the spring of 2009 to an old white house near the Shaker Village, the Jeases have opened the back door each morning to let their three dogs run. The dogs, all coonhounds, ran the valley for hours at a time, returning when they were tired or hungry, Dean Jeas said.

Scarlett, a floppy-eared redbone hound he had given their daughter as a puppy for Christmas five years ago, was the leader of the pack, a perfect namesake for the Gone With the Wind heroine, Jeas said.

"She was a Scarlett," Jeas said. "She was clever, sneaky, obstinate, loving. She was a very complex, very intelligent dog who knew what she wanted and wouldn't take no for an answer."

On Thanksgiving, Dean Jeas had nearly finished preparing the holiday dinner when the other two dogs, Rhett and Zeke, once a Monitor pet-of-the-week, arrived home from their run. There was no sign of Scarlett, but the Jeases figured the dog was happily tracking some scent through the forest, and they ate their meal.

By nighttime, they were worried. The next morning, Christine Jeas went

looking but returned without Scarlett. She said she kept envisioning a scene she had stumbled upon 25 years earlier, when she was walking in a Massachusetts forest and found a puppy tied to a tree, a noose around its neck and a pile of biscuits just out of reach.

Last Sunday, the police called. A hunter and his stepson had found a dog, dead from a gunshot wound, whose tag carried the Jeases address and phone number. Dean Jeas spoke with the man on the phone, and when they learned that the boy attends Belmont Middle School with Katherine, the Jeases' 13-year-old daughter, the boy and hunter went out again into the woods to try to find the dog.

They didn't find her before dark but did leave good directions for the Jeases. The following day, Dean and Christine Jeas drove their pickup truck down the road and trekked 700 yards into a frozen swamp, where they found Scarlett.

The only sign of harm was the path a bullet left through her head.

It took Dean, who was disabled by a surgery to treat cancer and becomes easily winded, and Christine, a petite woman, an 1½ hours to carry the 80-pound stiffened dog uphill to their truck, they said.

An officer with the Fish and Game Department later told them the wound appeared to come from a hunting rifle, shot at close range from ground level, the Jeases said. He told them Scarlett likely died before she heard the gunshot.

Mike Matson, a conservation officer with the department, confirmed that the officer who examined the dog concluded it had died at once. Matson noted that hunters on Thanksgiving were only allowed to take buck deer, who would have noticeable antlers, and he said the officer who visited the Jeases observed that Scarlett did not look like a coyote.

Matson said it is unlawful for any hunter to kill a dog. In rare instances, law enforcement officers are allowed to shoot a dog chasing deer, but Matson said that has not happened in recent years.

Dean Jeas said he is more upset with the shooter for failing to notify the family than for killing the dog in the first place. He thinks it's unlikely, but not impossible, that the dog could have been mistaken for another animal. But once it was shot, Jeas said it should have been clear from Scarlett's collar and tags, as well as her soft red coat, that she was a family pet. At the very least, he said, the person could have let the family know the dog was dead.

"That's our biggest thing," Jeas said. "This dog was left there to rot. Nobody had enough caring to throw the collar in the mail, throw it at the police station. That would have been everything for us." (next page »)