Interesting day and a first at the wood pile.

Spoiler, no pics!

Might not be the place fir his thread, but... Getting ready to head to the wood pile to cut some trees and my wife sees a deer laying in the field by the wood stack. We normally have deer but this one was laying all alone and covered in new snow. She was here for over an hour when I decided to walk out to it. As I went out it was obvious it was unable to get up, no use of it's back legs.

I figured it was hit by a car and going to die. I called the wardens to see if they could come look at it. He was too far away and said to go ahead and shoot it and use it give away the meat.

Of course yesterday my FIL who is recently retired and bored called to say bring over my guns and he'll clean them for me. So here I am with no rifle.

I decided to drive over and get one when my wife said to just walk next door and borrow my Dad's pistol.

I was to sure of how close I could get to the deer as my pistol aim sucks. But I didn't want to deer to run off and suffer either.

I ended up getting the pistol and walking out to it. As I got closer I noticed no trauma, but it still couldn't walk.

Then I remembered just yesterday before the snow, my kids were playing in the same place on glare ice. I realized the deer just couldn't get it's footing.

So for the first time in my life I picked up a wild white tail and carried over under some white pines where there was some grass. After a few moments it got up on its own and bounced off using all four legs.

Hopefully she reunites with the heard and recovers.

My mom was too sad to watch cause she thought I was shooting it, and my wife was distracting the kiddos so they wouldn't have to watch. So nobody got pictures or saw it!

So after I went and cut trees feeling better than if I had to kill it. So I'l l post a picture of the trees just to reward you for reading this long story.

 

Nice. Karma will come back to you four fold.

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It would have been dinner at my house!

 

She was less than a year old I think,and hopefully will produce more meat later in life!

 

Great story and good for you on doing what had to be done, thankfully no drastic measures needed

 

I think you did the right thing.
Here's a remorseless hunter!

 

Today's sandwich is next years roast.

 

Who knows....It may have done the splits with the back legs while on ice and needed some recoup time.

Seeing a deer bedded down with snow on it is not a cause for concern.....their winter hides are excellent insulators!

 

Reminds me of an incident a few years ago on July 4th about 9 or 10 am....My doberman was acting funny and he really wanted to go into the back yard. I could tell by the way he was acting that I better leave him in the house while I went out to investigate. A fawn (still with spots) got into my fenced back yard. As I approached it it would run full speed into the fence, from one in of the yard to the other. I wanted to help it but didn't want it to hurt itself. I opened all the gates hoping it would find its way out, but it didn't. Soon I came back out and cornered it and caught it. It had a few small scrapes on its head from running into the fence. She was panting and obviously scared. I carried it outside of the fence and it took off into the woods. I can only hope the mom was still near by. I later read that the mom's will typically stick around for a couple days when their fawns are trapped or injured.

On a related note, we have a doe that we've been watching for several years on our property. These photos were from a few years ago and shes a lot bigger now. I had to look it up, but the white markings label them as calico or piebald deer. My wife and I have named her Splotchy.

 

I copy that, either way it would have been. take her out of her misery or help her up. good job...and thanks for the reward at the end. i feel like a dog now!

 

I think I would call her "do" - because she's a deer, a female deer.

 

Partial lack of pigment is called Luecism. A while back we had a junco show up at our bird feeder in February a few years in a row that was more white than grey.

Leucism - Wikipedia

 

Great story.

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Several years ago my wife notced a young deer laying in a field with a German Shepherd laying close by. She called me and I drove over to see what I could do. I was reluctant to walk out too close to the dog not knowing his temperament but I slowly went out to investigate and found that apparently the dog had run the deer to the point of exhaustion and it didn't want to go. It didn’t look like it had been injured so I got between them and nudged the deer a little at a time moving it towards the road and woods on the other side and at the same time keeping the dog at bay. When we got close to the road two "rednecks" pulled up and said they needed to kill the deer because it wouldn't survive. My wife and I wouldn't allow it and called the local marshal. We were able to hold off the rednecks long enough to run the deer into the woods and see it walk up the ravine and disappear and hopefully survive.
As it turned out the dog was a sweetheart, very friendly and gentle and when the marshal arrived we loaded the dog in his car and he was going to keep him if he couldn't locate the owner.

 

Good judgment call.

 

Very cool story! Sometimes an itchy trigger finger is best left unscratched.

 

herd

 

My daughter would have named it and started rattling off reasons why we have to keep it...... she's 17 ..... Every bunny,bird,dog.........a opossum. I'm not a hunter so putting that down would have torn me up.