Photo by Skip Lawrence Hannah Truitt, 9, and her aunt, Sue Ellen Stottlemyer, comfort their horse, Sheila, in the field in the 13000 block of Loy Wolfe Road where Sheila’s equine companion, Prince, was shot and killed on Saturday.

In the darkness of Saturday evening, Stottlemyer, his wife and his sister-in-law soon found out why Sheila was so agitated.

On the ground, their horse Prince lay dead with a bullet hole in its stomach.

"My wife, it's been really tough for her," Stottlemyer said. "(Prince) was part of the family."

His wife and niece enjoyed riding the 12-year-old paint horse, he said.

But he doesn't think Prince was intentionally gunned down at the Loy Wolfe Road farm where both horses were kept.

Instead it may have been a hunter peering through the thick woods near the property who mistook the gelding for a deer, Stottlemyer said.

It was clear a high powered rifle had delivered the bullet because it entered and exited the horse's mid-section, he said.

Throughout the day on Saturday, Stottlemyer said, he heard dozens of shots in the woods. He lives about two miles from the farm on the same road at the bottom of the east slope of South Mountain.

The first day of deer season sent droves of hunters into the woods looking for trophy bucks.

"I don't think anyone intentionally shot the horse out of spite," he said.

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources Police and a Frederick County Sheriff's deputy responded to the incident, he said.

Neither agency could be reached for comment Sunday.

If a hunter was responsible, Stottlemyer said, Prince would not have been killed if proper safety precautions were followed.

"I'm a hunter," he said. "We're not anti-hunter at all É our whole family hunts."