A deer wearing an orange collar, which indicated it was human-raised, gored a man in Franktown on Wednesday shortly after it chased a 10-year-old boy down a street, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
The attack happened about 4:50 p.m., when a couple spotted a deer they deemed friendly, according to Parks and Wildlife.
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The buck slipped through a break in a fence and became aggressive, bumping a woman and pinning her to a barbed-wire fence. As her husband tried to intervene, the deer knocked him to the ground and started dragging him around the yard. The 56-year-old man suffered injuries to his lower body from the buck’s antlers, the news release said.
A Franktown man was attacked by deer Wednesday & treated at a hospital. The buck was suspected to be hand-raised by people.
It is illegal to own or possess wildlife in Colorado. You cannot remove a wild animal from the woods & take it home.
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During the attack, the man’s wife ran inside and called 911. She grabbed a pellet gun and shot at the deer. The shots distracted the animal, and the man was able to get up and hide behind a boat in the yard, the release said.
A Douglas County sheriff’s deputy responding to the 911 call arrived. When the deer acted aggressively toward the deputy, the deer was killed, Parks and Wildlife said. The injured man was released from the hospital Wednesday evening.
Wildlife officials suspect the 2-year-old buck was hand-raised by people and recently was set free.
“Every indication we see points to this deer being raised by people,” from its collar and its behavior, said Wildlife Officer Casey Westbrook, in a news release. “We suspect somebody was raising it and released it after they couldn’t handle it anymore.”
Earlier Wednesday afternoon, a concerned resident contacted Parks and Wildlife about a Facebook post showing a man interacting with the collared deer on Saturday. Wildlife officers contacted that man, who said the buck had approached him while he was doing yard work in Elizabeth. The deer tried to push the man around with its antlers, he told investigators. He showed officers several photos of him fending off the buck, the news release said.
Parks and Wildlife also took a report Wednesday about the same buck chasing a 10-year-old boy near Tomichi and Caribou drives in Franktown. A driver separated the deer from the boy with his car, defusing the 4:45 p.m. attack, which was down the road from the attack on the couple in the yard.
“The behavior of any wild animal can be unpredictable, and the behavior of wildlife that get domesticated can be demanding and aggressive,” Westbrook said.
It’s illegal to own or possess wildlife in Colorado; people cannot remove a wild animal from the outdoors and take it home.
Anyone with information about people raising or domesticating wildlife is asked to call Parks and Wildlife at 303-291-7227 or call Operation Game Thief at 1-877-265-6648 or email game.thief@state.co.us.