https://www.newsobserver.com/news/state/south-carolina/article230184034.html

BY SAMMY FRETWELL

MAY 08, 2019 06:37 PM, UPDATED MAY 08, 2019 06:38 PM

The Tom Yawkey Wildlife Center near Georgetown, S.C. was left to the state as a sanctuary for birds and other animals in the will of the late Boston Red Sox owner, who died in the mid 1970s. PHOTO BY SAMMY FRETWELL/THE STATE

COLUMBIA

State Sen. Stephen L. Goldfinch Jr. says he was looking out for the public when he pushed legislation that would keep wildlife officers from enforcing hunting laws on part of the Yawkey wildlife sanctuary, a 24,000-acre coastal preserve near Georgetown where hunting is illegal.

But Goldfinch, a Murrells Inlet Republican, isn’t saying much about a run-in his father had with state wildlife agents on the Yawkey preserve six years ago.

In 2013, the state Department of Natural Resources fined Stephen L. Goldfinch of Aynor $470 for illegally hunting an alligator at South Island on…