Petition: They Stomped a Wounded Deer and Filmed It. They Could Still Hunt Again.

The video was hard to watch and impossible to forget. A wounded deer, shot but still alive, lay on the ground in Jefferson County, Pennsylvania while two teenagers kicked it, stood on its legs, laughed, and wrenched at its antlers — then posted the footage to social media themselves. The Pennsylvania Game Commission called their actions reprehensible and filed felony charges, including aggravated animal cruelty. In the end, the felonies were dropped. The older teen, Alexander Brock Smith, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor cruelty charge and received probation, community service, and a 15-year hunting license suspension imposed through his plea agreement. The juvenile’s case was resolved in a court whose records are sealed. And here is the gap that case exposed: the Game Commission itself still has no clear, reliable authority to revoke or deny a hunting license because someone was convicted of cruelty to an animal. Absent a judge writing it into a plea deal, a person can torture wildlife, be convicted, and hold a valid license the following season. Please sign the petition urging Pennsylvania lawmakers to close it.

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State Senator Lisa Boscola has introduced legislation that would give the Game Commission explicit power to revoke or deny hunting licenses for people convicted of animal cruelty. It is a narrow, practical fix, and it is worth being clear about what it is not: it is not a restriction on hunting, and it does not touch anyone who follows the law. It applies to people a court has already convicted of cruelty — which is precisely why hunting organizations have little reason to oppose it. Responsible hunters have arguably the strongest interest of anyone in keeping the small number of people who treat a wounded animal as entertainment out of the field, because those are the videos that come to define the practice in the public mind. Prevention costs a signature; the alternative is waiting for the next clip to surface. One Green Planet has examined the wider question of how seriously the law treats this behavior in Should Animal Abuse Be Considered a Violent Crime?, and the reporting on how the deer case ended is available via CBS News Pittsburgh.

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