By Allison Espiritu

Staff Reporter

When four gunshots broke the air Monday morning, Oct. 12, at the Sroufe residence near Snoqualmie, farmhand Amy Burcal rushed to the pasture.

She found Hinke, a black star-rated Friesian mare, spurting blood out of the femoral artery in her front leg, with two wounds in her right rump. Diva, an appaloosa also kept in the field, had been injured in the left side of her rump.

When owners Liz and Tom Sroufe arrived, Burcal came running up the driveway to tell them what happened. While Liz called the King County Sheriff’s Department, Tom Sroufe and Burcal bandaged the animals.

Located beneath Mount Si on 428th Avenue, the Sroufe’s home is directly adjacent to Three Forks Park, a county facility. The Sroufes wondered whether the shots came from Three Forks.

“We absolutely don’t know what caused it,” Liz Sroufe told the Valley Record. “What we do know is it wasn’t their environment.”

Sheriff’s reports stated that it is hard to tell if the wounds were caused by gunfire. The deputy sheriff at the scene stated that most of the injuries were not clearly visible, and speculated that they may have been caused by pellets from a shotgun.

However, the horses could have been spooked by the noise, causing them to hit each other or run into a fence, Sheriff’s Spokesman John Urquhart said.

The wounds were not life-threatening, and the horses are expected to make a full recovery.

Veterinarian Hank Greenwald, who accompanied the deputy, did not find any bullets or pellets.

“What we got was sort of circumstantial evidence of hearing a gunshot, an injured horse and strange looking wounds,” he said.

Wounds weren’t deep, just through the skin, “but did not look like normal punctures or lacerations that a horse would get if they ran into something,” Greenwald said.

Burcal said that she and the Sroufes have heard gunshots at least once a week, if not more, during the hunting season. In summer, they hear shots two or three times a month.

The Sroufes said that they have witnessed a number of hunters at Three Forks Park, and wonder if Hinke and Diva were somehow struck harmed due to shots by a hunter.

“Hunters can only hunt off private land,” said Jason Capelli, a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife officer. “They can’t hunt in county parks or natural areas.”

“Hunting and horses have a real tricky time, if you’re not shooting on a regular basis,” Liz Sroufe said. “Horses can’t get use to loud noises when you have all this quiet.”

Accident or not, Sroufe and Burcal were upset that the incident ever happened.

Liz Sroufe said her horses have been safe on the farm for years. The Sroufe farm is considered a farm of merit by the King County Conservation District, she said.

“You work hard to provide good food, a healthy environment, and do all the stuff that you do,” Sroufe said. “To come out and see your horse completely wounded is just wrong.”