A story from last year...
Twelve-year-old Lindsey Duffield of Browns Valley, Minn., loves horses, and Saturday morning -- the opening of deer season -- she was riding one of her favorites, a white 9-year-old mare named Princess.
Striding along the driveway of her grandfather's farm on the edge of town, Lindsey and Princess trailed behind them a dark bay gelding, its halter fixed to a lead rope that Lindsey was holding. Lindsey and the two horses were traveling toward her parents' farm a short distance away.
When a shot rang out, Princess startled. But Lindsey didn't know anything was wrong until, minutes later, her leg drew cold with blood.
She hadn't been hit. But Princess had taken a 12-gauge slug in her front shoulder, Traverse County Sheriff Don Montonye said, fired by an 89-year-old neighbor sitting in a chair 200 yards away.
Lindsey turned the mare loose in a nearby pasture, where the horse immediately lay down. Then she ran home, crying and telling her father, "They shot my horse!"
Dave Duffield, 47, called 911 and also phoned his veterinarian. Then he returned with Lindsey to check on Princess.
When the two arrived, the hunter, who first chased whitetails in 1926, was still in his chair. But Lindsey didn't know whether it was he or someone else who had shot Princess.
After Dave Duffield had checked on the horse, he walked to where the neighbor sat. "I said, 'Someone shot Lindsey's horse while she was on it,' " Duffield said. "He said, 'I fired that shot. I thought it was a deer.' "
A slug fired from a 12-gauge will drop about 6 feet from its aiming point at 200 yards, ammunition manufacturers say, meaning the neighbor might have aimed that far above Princess to hit the mare in the shoulder.
No charges have been filed. The slug remains in the horse. "Princess might survive," Dave Duffield said. "We don't know."
