Sgt Eamon McArthur of the BC conservation officer service told CTV News he did not want to speculate on how the jacket ended up on the cervid, although he noted: “Deer are not predisposed to wearing clothes.”
This quote is amazing. I laughed so hard. The real captain obvious for sure.
Unfortunately, I'm willing to bet that it's not "you can't put a jacket on wildlife" as much as it is something generic like "you can't handle or touch non-domestic animals"
We had a neighbor that had a pet moose names Baby. They spray painted her sides with big fluorescent X's to let hunters know to not shoot her. That lasted 2 seasons until she disappeared. In hindsight, maybe big X's weren't the best idea.
Which is probably for the best, because if she thought you had marshmallows, she was getting big enough to stomp you to death for them. She frickin' loved marshmallows and was becoming a hazard during campfire nights.
Feeding wildlife, even one treated as a "pet", is a death sentence for them just as surely as if you had fired the gun yourself. Your neighbor killed that moose.
Other prime examples include: feeding alligators (now you've created a danger to others as well, so you've not just killed the animal, which will need to be destroyed by officials, you've potentially maimed or killed a person); feeding ducks and geese (I once has a neighbor that would feed ducks in the parking island adjacent to the main entry to our apartment complex, no surprise to me that we saw many near misses and a few dead ducks in our driveway); bears (this one should be obvious, same scenario as the gators except bears are faster, climb trees, and are probably smarter than the average person they are going to encounter when they leave the woods looking for human food).
Undomesticated animals (wildlife/wild animals) are not pets. They're never going to be pets. They've just learned to manipulate some humans for food or shelter. Maybe you'll get along for a little while with them, but that relationship has poisoned the fear keeping them safe for and from other humans.
Mom had abandoned it in a field and neighbor had ran a coyote pack off a few times that were going after it and had torn it up a bit. He finally took it home and patched it up. It would hang around the yard but he never really fed it or encouraged it to stay. But it loved people and stayed near.
I know people like to get on their high horse about this, but moose, like reindeer, have been domesticated in the past. And he wasn't even trying to do that, he just saved an animal and it hung around. So, yes, I agree that they don't make great pets, but this moose was going to die that night, and it lived a couple years longer for his efforts.
I'm responsible. And I'll do it again if that deer takes it off. I'm tired of it smoking on the side of the road at night and having to swerve to avoid it.