Buddy, the gate was wide open…
Sometimes you have to wonder what an animal is thinking.
Deer aren’t known as one of the most intelligent species, but given they need to avoid all sorts of natural predators, cars, and hunters, you think they’d at least have some semblance of common sense to stay alive. While that may be true for many of them, there’s certainly a few that need to thank their lucky stars they’ve made it to this point.
Admittedly, it’s got to be tough for deer to comprehend all of the weird things humans build all over their homes and it seems fences are really a tough one for deer to understand. We’ve seen some full on sprint into a fence, other get all sorts of tangled up in one, and now another video is getting traction online of a deer trying to go over one instead of through it.
Somehow, it would have ended better if he just ran into it…
The video starts with the deer running in a soccer field while some kids play nearby and what I assume to be a mom gets her phone out and starts filming. As the deer passes her by and get to the fence behind her, it has two options.
One, go through the wide open gate.
Two, try to show off and leap over it.
This deer went with option two and boy was that a mistake. While the takeoff was nice, it didn’t get enough height and clipped its hindlegs on the top, sending it’s backside flying upwards as it soared through the air. Spine first, the deer crashed right into the trunk with a shiver inducing crunch before collapsing to the ground in a heap.
It’s pretty clear that it broke its spine, which caused its hind legs to stop working. Either fish and game would have come to put it out of its misery or some of the local predators like coyotes and black bears would have gotten it.
A tragic end for this whitetail buck, but maybe a good lesson for us all. Don’t show off if you don’t have to. Just use the gate instead of leaping the fence…
