Scott Swanson
For The New Era
A Sweet Home couple and their neighbor are offering a $1,300 reward for the arrest of the person(s) responsible for shooting seven of their young Boer goats on their property midway up Crescent Hill road on Aug. 28.
Randy Schoonover, 43, said his wife Tami discovered the goats Aug. 29 when she went to check on them where they were put out to pasture on their neighbor Sherman Weld’s property, which borders their small 15-acre farm.
Schoonover said he and his wife and 3-year-old son checked the goats on Saturday night and they were fine. He said Weld likes to have the goats on his property to keep the blackberry bushes down.
“We were playing with them,” he said of the herd.
When his wife found the goats, she called him at the end of his 12-hour shift at Pope and Talbot mill in Halsey, he said.
The dead goats were spread over four acres. Schoonover said that the killer may have been a hunter and that it appeared the goats, which had all been shot through the neck, were shot with a small-caliber rifle.
He said it appears that the shooter followed the herd, which had apparently scattered after the first goat was shot.
“We were able to follow this trail of death down to their bedding area,” he said. “Three were shot in the bedding area.”
The Schoonovers started their herd three years ago with seven goats and were up to 54 before the killings occurred, Randy Schoonover said. He said it would cost about $350 to $400 each to replace the goats, who ranged from 5 to 9 months old. Boers are a South African meat goat breed that are white with a reddish-brown patch.
“They don’t look like a deer,” Schoonover said. “No one can say they mistook them for a baby deer.”
The goats killed in the bedding area died about 200 yards from the Schoonovers’ front door, he said, but Tami Schoonover didn’t hear anything amiss. He said one goat was still alive when they found it, but it was paralyzed and had to be put down.
Schoonover said Sheriff’s Deputy Bruce Davis came out to investigate, but evidence has been hard to find in the dense underbrush.
“This wasn’t anyone who would have shot them from the road,” Schoonover said. “This was someone who had to walk a ways to do this.”
The Schoonovers have received considerable community support since a news report appeared last week about the incident. Several people have pledged money to boost the original $500 reward offered by Weld and the Schoonovers to the current level.
“I think it’s important that people think we need to care about each other,” Schoonover said. “We need to get back our sense of community. This is someone who obviously doesn’t care about other people.”