For the Ladds, hunting is their life. Henry Ladd Sr. said he uses only traditional methods of tracking deer by looking for footprints and other evidence of movement. He sees deer as a great foe because, he said, they are smart enough to know when they are being hunted.

After the kill, Henry Ladd Sr. said, he eats the deer's heart before anything else.

"If you don't pull that trigger, you aren't going to wound it and you aren't going to eat that night," he said.

Ladd retired from Blue Seal Feeds, where he hauled bags of grain for most of his life. He and his wife, Rena, primarily survive off of what they hunt, the couple said.

"We live on wild meat," Rena Ladd said. "Once in a while, chicken tastes good, but we usually eat moose meat or deer meat, one way or the other."

Ladd said he can count on hundreds of pounds of meat every year.

If his luck isn't good in a particular year, he can count on cousins and nephews to bring over meat. He does the same for them.

"They used to tell you you can only freeze (venison) for six months," he said. "That's crap. It's good for a year."

None of the Ladds faults the police for coming to question them - they are friends with officers and understand they have a job to do. Their concern is about the changing social landscape in the town where they were born.

"I can understand a lot of people don't like it, but a lot of people do," Henry Ladd Jr. said.

While they took the deer down this time, they have no plans to stop hanging deer, or any other animal, from trees. After all, it makes the meat more tender, they said.

"It makes it a lot easier before we cut the animal," Henry Ladd Jr. said. "A lot less of mess."

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