On Friday, volunteers removed a dozen deer carcasses, one of them with an apparent bullet hole in the back of its neck, from Crooked Creek in Sugar Grove Township.

The volunteers said it remains a mystery how the carcasses ended up in the creek -- and why seven volunteers, not the state Game Commission -- removed the deer from the water.

The carcasses were discovered about a month ago on land along KO Road that has since flooded, said Maria Kerekes, office manager of the Greenville Municipal Authority and one of the volunteers.

The water authority got involved because the creek empties into the Little Shenango River; the Little Shenango connects with the Shenango River, from which the water authority treatment plant draws its water.

"It’s not a threat to Greenville water in that we have an adequate treatment plant to reduce the fecal contamination. What I’m concerned about is that it could leak into ground water and cause problems for (township) people who do not treat their water," William Brady, superintendent of the water authority, said earlier this week.

"It had to be taken care of," Brady said Friday.

After being notified about the carcasses, the Game Commission reportedly investigated the site and determined the situation was "out of their jurisdiction" because none of the deer were poached, the volunteers said.

"It’s pretty hard to miss a giant hole in the back of a skull," responded Mrs. Kerekes after the cleanup.

Rather than quibble over jurisdiction, earlier this week the water authority began looking for volunteers to help remove the deer from the creek.

The response was resounding, Brady said.

Phil Smith was perhaps the most valuable volunteer. A professional kayaker, Smith easily zipped around the shallow creek for several hours -- probing under water with his oars for submerged deer, and dragging ones that floated on the water’s surface by a rope to shore. Smith, a state Department of Environmental Protection worker, volunteered as "a concerned citizen not a DEP representative," Mrs. Kerekes said.

"He used his day off to help out. You don’t see that much anymore," Brady said.

The Greenville Fire Department took a truck to the site. After Smith dragged the carcasses to shore, Fire Chief Walter C. "Chad" Sankey lifted the deer out of the water in an air-lift basket connected to the truck’s movable ladder and dumped them into a backhoe bucket. Each time a carcass was lifted out of the water, the stench ruined every appetite within hundreds of yards.

When the bucket filled with several carcasses, the backhoe -- supplied by Micsky Excavations of Delaware Township -- carried them to a dump truck that had been left by the Game Commission Friday morning. "They (the commission) said they would take the deer away when we were done and get rid of them," Brady said. "They parked the truck on the side of the road and left."

Pringle Supply & Equipment and Hurlbert’s Hardware, both of Greenville, and Wal-Mart in Hempfield Township donated ropes, bright yellow safe-suits, gloves and masks. Screamin’ Meme’s in Hempfield Township and Sheetz of Greenville supplied coffee. Sheetz also donated sandwiches, but according to volunteer Bryan Linton as another carcass was hoisted out of the water: "I don’t think anyone’s very hungry."

Donald Chabin, district conservation manager for northwestern Pennsylvania, was unavailable for comment Friday afternoon. An office worker, however, said he did not consider the dozen carcasses unusual. Animals that are ready to die often flock to water, he said.