Arkansas Hunter Rescues Young Buck That Got Impaled By His Own Antlers

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Sean Redd

An Arkansas man came to the rescue of a 7-point buck that somehow managed to impale its leg with its own antler.

Sean Redd was overlooking a field on his 40-acre property last week. As usual, a group of deer was milling around the corn feeder when suddenly they started to run off. He figured something must have spooked them, but he couldn’t see anything from the porch or determine what it could have been.

Soon after, he started hearing what sounded like a buck grunting loudly and continuously from somewhere near the feeder.

He told Outdoor Life that he knew something was up by the sound of the unusual grunts.

“Buck grunting is normal, but this deer was grunting non-stop, so I figured I better check it out.”

When he checked it out, he found the young buck was on the ground, seemingly frozen in a contorted position. The buck was not moving at all, although it was grunting.

“I drove to within five yards of the buck. It was a young 7-pointer, about three years old that I’d seen several times previously on my place, and he was in a real bind.”

Somehow the deer had managed to get the right main beam of his antler wedged deep into the hide of his inner right hind leg.

Redd said the antler appeared to have penetrated several inches into the skin but miraculously missed hitting the muscle, which would have caused further damage and left the deer susceptible to infection.

The antler was wedged deep enough that the deer could not move at all. Redd snapped a few quick pictures of the stuck buck with his cell phone and then went to work trying to figure out how to untangle the deer safely.

“He was whipped, from I guess fighting to untangle the mess he got into. 

He wasn’t struggling when I got there, just lying there, looking at me. I don’t know how he got into that jam. Maybe it was from scratching himself with his antlers.”

As he stepped closer to the deer, he pushed the deer’s head down gently towards the ground, and by pressing on the rack, he relieved the pressure that was causing tension after the antler slid right out from its stuck position.

“He just jumped up and ran off into the woods. 

I didn’t think much of doing what I did. But afterward, I realized helping the buck could have been a little dangerous if he started thrashing around its legs or head.

But he didn’t, and it worked out good for him.”

He said he had seen the unstuck-buck back in his field several times, and it appears to be feeding and acting normally, so it seems it has recovered fully from the peculiar incident.

“It was just one of those weird things that sometimes happen to wildlife and deer.”

Never in my life have I seen this, sitting on my deck heard a deer keep grunting drove down to find a buck with a tine stuck in his leg. I was able to get to horn out (after a fight) and he ran off just fine.

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