“I was walking with my dog this morning and found this,” said Payant during a phone interview November 26.

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“This” as seen in a photo that his son, Nicolas, took soon after his father returned home, was a pile of dead animals from what must have been a past hunting trip that someone had dumped into the ditch alongside Pago Road.

Payant examined the animal remains from the road side. He could identify what looked like the gutted carcass of a mule deer, several ducks, and a couple of Canada geese. All the birds seemed to be intact, according to Payant, as he could see no signs that any of the feathers had been plucked  or the heads removed.

The 70-year-old retiree has lived in the Pago Road neighbourhood for eight years and he and his neighbours have had a problem every year with someone dumping the remains of their hunting trips in the ditch along the road or somewhere else in the area. No one ever sees who does it, or knows whether the dumping happens at night or early morning or at some other time of the day.

“It’s terrible,” said Payant. “Every year I phone the city and then they (town employees) come and pick it all up.”

One concern for Payant and the other homeowners along Pago Road is that whoever is dumping the remains is creating a risk of attracting scavenging predators to their neighbourhood.

Anyone who knows anything about the illegal dumping is asked to contact the OPP, the city, or the Ministry of Natural Resources.