Man killed by deer at Texas hunting ranch

Wow.

I got head butted by a doe once. We was at Royal Gorge near Canyon City and there is a large herd of tame(ish) potato chip fed deer there. They have a shop that sells food pellets and we bought a few bags and were hand feeding the deer getting some awesome pics. Well I was feedin' a doe and ran out of food and the dang thing got antsy and head butted me! Not wanting the deer to become confused about who was dominant, I immediately smacked the crap out of it in the face and stepped towards it as it backed off a little and took stock of what just happened. It decided that I was more of a badass than she was and wandered off in search of humans who weren't so violent and could be pushed around!:D

I'm not sure how I would handle an antlered deer...
 
I worked scores of deer/car wrecks as a Paramedic in central Georgia.
I never saw a person injured by hitting a deer.
In these collisions, people get hurt when they swerve to miss the deer and hit the oak tree. I saw some people hurt badly this way, including one guy who was paralyzed from the waist down.

Central Georgia has some of the highest deer popluation in the US.There are deer hunting clubs all over the place. Also, go 20 miles down any country road and you will see a deer butcher shop. These shops only operate during deer season. Deer hunting is an industry in central Georgia.
As a deer hunter, naturally, I often talked about deer/human run ins with Paramedics in other counties, as well as with DNR Rangers. So, I knew all about what was going on with deer/human conflicts over a ten-county area.
In 14 years of being in this environment, I never heard of a deer attacking a hunter, much less killing him.
I doubt that very many humans are killed by being gored by deer.

If somebody can come up with the annual kill I would like to read it, I doubt it is 5 dead humans per year in the US.
 
The story of two asses....

Once my 2nd ex-wife and I were in a petting zoo just for kicks, before we had any kids. She had a bag of some sort of food she was handing out to the goats and turkeys and such. A donkey came up for a handout but the bag was empty. She turned away from the donkey without giving it any food, whereupon he nipped her pretty hard right on her butt. In an instant she whirled around and center-punched him right on his nose with a real "roundhouse". He made sort of a squawk and jumped back; the keepers gave a hard look at what was happening but didn't otherwise react. She had a pretty nasty bruise on her posterior when we got back to our hotel.

Later on I thought smacking the donkey like that wasn't fair- the guys where she worked never got punched as the donkey had, for such behavior.
 
By Mark Lisheron
AMERICAN-STATEMAN STAFF

Thursday, October 08, 2009

A rare deer known for its full, sharply pointed antler rack gored to death a 27-year-old game manager last week at the Y.O. Ranch, a nationally known exotic game hunting ranch about 100 miles west of Austin.

Brandon Buchi, 27, of Mountain Home suffered puncture wounds to the side and thigh when the barasingha attacked after Buchi removed it from a trailer Oct. 1, Kerr County Sheriff Rusty Hierholzer said Wednesday. A volunteer firefighter who witnessed the goring attempted CPR unsuccessfully, Hierholzer said.

The barasingha died from the exertion of the attack, not an uncommon response among deer and some other exotic species, Hierholzer said.

"They can be very aggressive," Hierholzer said. "This was very unfortunate."

Hierholzer said that in at least 30 years he could not remember a fatal attack like it in Kerr County, which has developed a reputation for its game ranches.

The Y.O. Ranch, founded in 1880, is one of the best known. The ranch has a reputation for attracting private celebrity hunting parties, Hierholzer said. From Dec. 10-14, the Y.O. Ranch is hosting, at a cost of $3,500 a hunter, the Y.O. Birthday Huntbash with Ted Nugent.

The ranch stocks rare species from around the world, including yak, wildebeest and 17 different kinds of antelope. A barasingha is a deer native to India and Nepal. The barasingha, which looks like a small elk, has thrived on American exotic game ranches where operators fetch thousands of dollars from people to hunt them.
 
Old Man Charles Schreiner took up about a half-million acres, originally. A lot of it went away during the Depression. By the time Charley III had it, it was down toward its present size. Kerrville has the Schreiner Bank, and maybe still has the Schreiner Hardware store. I graduated from high school at the Schreiner Institute in 1951, a military boarding school.

I used to go up there during the 1970s, visiting friends who were guides for Charley III; the ranch foreman was a Kerrville local who'd been in high school when I was. The YO was one of the first ranches to get into the exotic animal hunting business. They bred and sold quite a few blackbuck antelope. Sally the Eland was a local favorite. About horse-size; that long black tongue would wrap around a slice of bread in a heartbeat. :)

Back then, the combination to the gate lock was changed monthly. It began at 25-20 and "grew" monthly to 45-70. :) Recent years have seen sell-offs of land, in high-priced parcels around 50 to 100 acres, IIRC.

Charley III brought about the series of 1,000 "Texas Ranger Commemorative Pistol" collectibles. SAA with 7-1/2" barrels. #1-#200 were engraved and silver plated; #201-1,000 were finished in a near-black coating. All came in a presentation box with a pictorial history of the Rangers.

Neat place...
 
Partial quotes

To those who responded to my earlier post with all the vehicle comments, please bear in mind that I was only partially quoted. The original statement was:

that deer lead pretty much all animals in the US except dogs, when it comes to killing humans.

Not sure if those stats include vehicular accidents.
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JohnKSA, in my old neck of the woods (Maine), deer coming through the windshield were very uncommon. Moose were the critters that came through windshields in collisions, due to their height. Bodies are higher than the hoods of most personal vehicles. Deer tended to get tossed more.
 
jughead2 said:
i have read that if one shoots an animal and it is lying there with its eyes shut chances are it AINT dead. any truth to that. if so it would simplify the sometimes problem.
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That is true, universally I believe, for deer type animals at least. I have never seen an exception. If the eyes are closed then it is not dead.
 
What a way to go. I know of one hunter that was chased by a crazy 4 point buck. The hunter climbed up on a outdoor table at his deer camp and unfortunately he had no guns on him. After yelling and screaming for a few minutes one of his hunting buddies came to his rescue and killed the buck with a pistol. When the guy first told it, I thought it was funny, but to him it was no laughing matter. Ol bucky was out for his blood. From now on that hunter packs firepower around deer camp no matter what he is doing.
 
I once had a picture were a doe got hit by a SUV going about 75 miles per hour. She went thru the front window and ended up back in the cargo area. I don't know if the driver was killed or not but it was one big bloody mess. There was blood all over the interior of that truck. I'm sure the driver had to have some major injuries based on the pics. I always approach a downed deer from the rear with gun loaded.
 
Many years ago in central Pennsylvania a woman was killed by a deer she hit when it came through the windscreen on her VW Beetle.
 
Several years ago, I had broken the back of a small forked horn buck with a shot from my .243. by the time I got closer to him, he was pretty well jammed up in a brush pile and I decided to stick him in the throat with my knife rather than shoot him again. He seemed pretty well "out of it" until the point of my knife touched his throat, at which time he snapped his head back nearly poking my eye out with one of his horns. We struggled for a few seconds, until I got the job done, and then I got scared about what might have happened.

That could have cost me one or both of my eyes, or my life if he had got me in the throat. I respect them a little more now. jd
 
Had a boss get killed in the city in Clear Lake, TX area when a deer crashed through the windshield of his Explorer. Cops said the impact knocked him unconscious, then the vehicle smashed into an oak tree on the side of the road.

So not sure which one actually killed him, but the deer was a contributing factor...

With regards to the eyes... Thinking back, all the deer I've killed have ended up with their eyes open. Will be something to keep in mind to check.
 
Deer through windshields

are not surprising with a beetle, given the shape of its hood, or with low-slung cars like a 'vette or a prelude.

I'm pretty surprised by the Explorer, though; would guess that deer was hit in mid-leap, but maybe it was just extra tall.

Still, as a percentage of deer hit by cars, most don't go through windshields.
 
My pop once stopped on I-75 in michigan at a broke down car. It had front and rear windows broke out and it looked like someone had splashed a gallon of barn paint inside... Later we learned it was a woman and her child, when she hit the deer she instinctively ducked which also mashed the kid down. The deer went in the front and out the back glass.:eek: Was a small compact of the mid 70's era IIRC.
Brent
 
my brother kneecapped a cow with his toyota corolla. splashed guts from the front to the trunk, and pretty well flattened the roof.
he walked away but the car was trashed.
 
When people in cars get killed by trees it's almost invariably because someone drives a car off the road and into a tree.
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Everything I've heard from police and paramedic friends is to "HIT THE ____ DEER!"

Chances are they won't go through the windshield of most vehicles, though it has been known to happen. However, when people swerve to miss the deer they tend to hit trees which don't give or to roll the car, risking much more severe injury.

I've hit a couple myself but by the time of impact I had slowed considerably and no damage was done to my vehicle or me, and only minimal damage to the deer apparently.

Years ago in high school a friend of mine rolled his Mustang avoiding hitting a dog in the road. A few days later he's hobbling around the school on crutches with a cast all the way to one hip. We had a guest speaker in our AP Calculus class who was a Naval nuclear engineer. He asked my friend what happened and listened to the story. At the end of it he looked my friend dead in the eye and said, "Son, every sentient being on this Earth has choices in life. When that dog stepped into the road, he made his........"

I've remembered that to this day :D.
 
I've probably worked 100+ car crashes involving deer here in Texas. Probably twice that many with people trying to avoid the collision and either striking a tree or rolling the car. Of all the crashes I've worked involving deer, I've only worked one where a deer actually went through the windshield. It was a young girl following her parents. The deer hit the side of the parents van, spun around in the air and went through her front windshield and out the back window. Luckly it hit right in the middle and went in between the driver and passenger. My recommendation, if a deer runs out in front of you, hit the breaks and don't swerve. If you hit it, then that's what insurance is for. I've never worked a crash where someone hit a deer and was seriously injured. On the other hand, some of the crashes that I've worked that drivers swerved to miss it have not walked away. Now if it's a horse or in some of your neck of the woods, elk or moose, you better take your chances swerving to miss it. I've seen a couple of people lose a head from hitting a horse and having it take the top of a car off.
 
Realize that not all critters have read my book, "What Critters Do".

But, generally, a deer knows that safety is where it used to be. So, you're better off in a controlled veer toward the direction the deer was going, not behind the deer. "Controlled veer," I said. :)

Danged old cow won't want to be headed off from where she wants to go, so in general the controlled veer toward her hind end is better.

A horse? Doesn't matter what you do. Horses are suicidal, and will work to stay in front of you no matter which way you veer.

Large hogs? A lot like running over a boulder. Try not to do it.
 
ive found that aiming AT the deer works fairly well, no matter which way they go, its not where they were. unless they just stand there of course! lol
 
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