When Mary Griffin woke up early Wednesday morning, she found four dead animal carcasses dumped in the road near her home.

Griffin said she found two deer carcasses and two dog carcasses with one of the dogs mutilated and the other dog with both a collar and flea collar on indicating to her the dogs had been pets.

Griffin said she was unable to identify what breed the dogs were but one resembled a pit bull and the other looked like a golden retriever.

“It was horrific,” Griffin said. “I have no idea who did something like this and I would like to get to the bottom of it.”

Griffin lives on County Road 123 in Jemison and said this is the second time someone has dumped dead animals near her property.

“It is frustrating because when they are dumped I don’t know what to do with them and the animals end up stinking,” Griffin said. “I live in an area that is rural and I think whoever is doing this thinks they are dumping the animals near a place where no one will see them and that is not the case.”

Chief of Enforcement with Alabama Wildlife Fisheries, a division of the Alabama Department of Conservation, Kevin Dodd said dumping of dead animal carcasses is a common problem his agency is faced with but it is often difficult to address the issue.

“It is an elusive problem and locating the culprit is often labor intensive because you end up having to wait in the bushes to catch the person dumping and they often won’t dump in the same location twice,” Dodd said. “We try to tackle it with our agency because unfortunately it gives deer hunting a bad name, but other than setting up motion sensor cameras it is really difficult to catch those responsible.”

Dodd said anyone dumping animals is classified as criminal littering and treatment of the charge varies from county to county.

“There are some judges who are really strict about sticking it to the person and making them deal with the punishment for the crime,” Dodd said. “There are other judges who just give the culprit a slap on the wrist and move on.”

Dodd said his agency encourages hunters to properly dispose of their carcasses in provided locations for compost.

“The main problems we tend to see these days are the people who have their deer processing units at home,” Dodd said. “They will process the animals and then get rid of the remains somewhere else because they don’t want them at home. They don’t think about it being a pain for someone else to have to deal with.”

Griffin said she went to the Chilton County Sheriff’s department and was told to set up a camera and try to get a picture of a license or tag number but as far as cleaning up the animals there was nothing they could do.

Sheriff Kevin Davis was unable to be reached for comment as of press time on Friday.

“On Thursday night we had more than 40 vultures roosting in the trees on the other side of our lake,” Griffin said. “It is just really bad and I am at a loss as to what I should do.”