Behind the Badge - Locked Together
Locked Together
District Game Warden Alan Howard
In mid-September before waterfowl season, I took a call about two adult bucks locked together in a field. The individuals who called said they would not be able to stick around because they were on their way to work. A pin on a map was sent to me indicating where the deer were last located. It was in a standing soybean field, and they were about 250 yards off the roadway along a clump of trees.
The caller said that one of the deer was dead and the other could still drag the carcass around. Knowing they wouldn’t be far from that area, my supervisor and I responded to the location. Upon arrival about an hour later, nothing could be seen out in the field. We knew we were in the correct location because of the GPS location, vehicle tracks on the roadway where people had pulled over, and the photo that was taken of the area that was sent to me.
My supervisor grabbed the shotgun, and I grabbed the rifle from my truck. We followed the deer trail out to the location. This wasn’t my first attempt to separate two deer locked together, while trying not to injure or kill the deer that was alive. The intent was to shoot the antlers off the deer to disconnect them. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.
We found the two deer. The live one was extremely motivated to stay away from humans and drug the dead deer around, which had been half-eaten by coyotes. The live deer dragged the dead one into the tree row where we could not get a shot at the antlers. Eventually, the buck worked his way into the open, moving towards my work truck. Every once in a while, the deer would pause and I was able to get a couple of shots off at the antlers trying not to hit the live one. The deer was moving around quite a bit; it was hard to see and hit the antlers because of the standing soybeans and movement.
Both of their heads were quite close to the ground. The live deer had dragged the dead one within 20 yards of my pickup parked on the edge of the road. My supervisor had taken a few shots with the shotgun loaded with slugs as well but no luck. Finally, the deer stopped moving long enough and I was able to rest my rifle on a haybale, taking three more shots. After the 11th shot, the live deer’s head came up by itself without the dead one. Missing some antler, he shook his head, wobbled a little and ran off. It was a successful ending. It turned out that I’d hit the dead deer’s antlers five times without breaking them, and the other deer’s antlers at least once when they came apart.
Just another day in the field, but one I will remember.