Mess with the deer, you get the horns.
To be frank, people who visit national parks and other outdoor sites from… let’s just say more urban areas, generally have no idea how to interact with wild animals. Here’s a clue for those that aren’t sure how to act around wildlife – you interact with them by not interacting with them at all.
The National Park Service advises tourists to stay 25 yards away from animals that are deemed “non-violent,” like bison, elk, and other creatures that tend to be relatively docile. When it comes to bears, wolves, and other apex predators, the NPS warns park goers to keep a football-field-distance (100 yards for non-sports-fans) between them and the animals.
I feel as though I sound like a broken record saying that, because anytime one of these videos pops up, I include a variation of that message above. I’m doing so in hopes that my words will reach one of the people that may not be informed on how to act around wild animals… but then again, I do enjoy covering these idiotic videos.
And strangely enough, all of those guidelines that I just laid don’t necessarily apply to this video.
This clip is believed to be taken at the Nara Deer Park in Nara, Japan, which actually encourages visitors to interact with the animals that are on the property. The deer that roam the park are called Sika deer, and those that go to the property can pay for “deer crackers” that they can then use to feed the deer population. How has that gone, you might be wondering?
Well, it’s believed that there are around 1,200 to 1,500 deer living in the 1,200 acre park, and from 2017 to 2018, there were 164 human injuries reported. Most of the incidents originated from people trying to feed the deer. Shocking, right? It’s almost as if getting close to wild animals, and training them to be fed by humans, is a bad thing.
Despite the somewhat-violent history of deer in Nara Park when food gets involved, from what we can tell in this video below, the pair of tourists weren’t trying to feed the animals. They were instead occupied with taking pictures of one another in front of the scenic pond, and two bucks that were nearby evidently didn’t like the angle (in reality, they probably didn’t like that the tourists had gotten close to the doe in the water).
So one of the male deer put its head down and charged full speed ahead, landing its antlers right in the buttocks of the poor person that was holding the camera. It sure looked like the deer got the person air born with its antlers – and kept them there for a few seconds. And to make matters worse, the other buck came in after the camera person hit the ground and jabbed its antlers right into their back, just for good measure.
The woman that had been posing for the picture rushed to the side of her fallen friend, all while the bucks turned their attention to each other and started clanking antlers with one another. All I know is that the one tourist is really going to feel that antler attack in the morning, and the pair will likely think twice before they get that close to deer again.
Check it out:
