Whodunit and Why?

Here’s the beginning of a novel.

A hunter in the Savage River State Forest raises his gun and kills the only nesting female goshawk in the state of Maryland, leaving her body on the forest floor and her three chicks to die in the nest. That part is not fiction. It happened this week.

The rest could be a novel. Even if the shooter is caught we may never fully understand the motive. It takes a heap of abuse or some radical thinking for a person to kill deliberately such an extremely rare and beautiful bird.

Farmers have been known to kill predators that endangered their livestock and thus their livelihoods. That could be understandable, though it’s hard to imagine that the only goshawk in Maryland did that much damage living in the midst of a 54,000-acre state forest.

Or did it attack and kill someone’s pet? That would be another story.

The Maryland Legislative Sportsmen's Foundation offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of this shooter. Persons with information about the crime are asked to call the Poacher Hot Line: 1-800-635-6124.

The Baltimore Sun's outdoor writer Candus Thomson wrote a detailed story in the paper of June 27. The earlier accounts can be found here and here.
This is a stunning story. Again I say it's worthy of a novel or nonfiction book.