I'm sure this is a question that keeps many of our loyal readers up late at night. Here is a story from the Thursday, Aug. 9
Grand Forks Herald that details one such encounter. Any thoughts on who came out on top?
Minnesota man pummeled by deer, but rifle ends hoof-fight
By:
Chuck Haga, Grand Forks Herald
FERTILE, Minn. — The way Mark Christianson tells it, in his lilting Old Country accent, the deer started the fight. “I
was going out to finish spraying the soybeans,” he said. “I stepped out
a side door, and we saw each other, and he started coming closer. He
was pummeling me, standing on his hind legs and hitting me with the
front ones. He hammered me good, rapid fire, and I thought, ‘Well, this
isn’t good.’ I wasn’t winning, so I grabbed him and tackled him and we
both went down on the ground.”
We don’t have the deer’s account because, after losing the
kick-boxing and wrestling portions of this North Woods triathlon,
Christianson shot the eight-point whitetail buck, which had brought
antlers and attitude and a strong left hoof to the fight but nothing to
match Christianson’s 30-06 rifle.
The confrontation, which left
Christianson, 66, with black eyes and pink-to-purple bruises over his
arms, shoulders and chest, occurred last Thursday as he stepped outside
his farm home about 10 miles southeast of Fertile.
Mark and his
wife, Judy, 65, had seen the deer days before, brazenly hanging out in
their yard, sampling Judy’s potted impatiens and ignoring all attempts
to shoo it away. “We sometimes have 17 or 18 deer in the yard
here, but we have a hard time getting a picture,” she said. “You open
the door a little and — phfft — they’re gone. They’re usually so
sensitive. But this one, I would stomp my feet and it wouldn’t go away.”
Banging antlers
Two days before the fight, Mark came upon the deer near a shed. “He
was 8 feet away, and instead of being scared he came right up to me. I
went inside, and he stuck his nose right up against the window. Then he
banged his antlers against the wall.”
As he left the shed and ran
toward the house, the deer followed, and Christianson ducked into the
back seat of a 1992 Bonneville that had been retired to a side yard. Later
that day, Judy stepped out to hang clothes on a line and turned around
to find the deer facing her. The next day, they watched as the buck
feasted on a flaming crabapple tree.
On the third day, last Thursday, Judy had been napping when she was startled to hear her husband hollering. “He got me!” he cried. “He got me!”
“Mark
was dripping blood all over, and his ear looked like it had been tore
off,” she said. “He was shaking and trying to load bullets into his gun.
I didn’t know what to think.”
The buck was still standing its ground. “I
gut-shot him where he was, then saw he went down at the edge of the
hill over there,” he said, gesturing through a thick stand of old oaks.
“I got him a couple more times there.”
Carcass sent to Twin Cities lab
The
deer had sounded “wheezy” and sick, Christianson said, so he had
contacted the Norman County Sheriff’s Office and the Minnesota
Department of Natural Resources even before the animal picked a fight. Blane
Klemek, wildlife supervisor for the DNR’s Detroit Lakes area, said the
deer carcass was sent to the University of Minnesota Veterinary
Diagnostic Laboratory in St. Paul. Disease specialists there have ruled
out rabies but continue to check for other diseases, such as chronic
wasting disease or Lyme disease.
He said the deer had no tags or other indications that it was a domestically raised deer. “It
did have a fair number of liver flukes (parasites) in its liver,” he
said, but it’s unclear whether that would explain the animal’s unusual
behavior.
“It is an odd one,” Klemek said. “Deer normally are
afraid of people. We don’t know why this one would attack this guy. But
it’s always a concern when we get calls from the public about an animal
acting strangely.”
Pie eases pain
Friends “have given
me some grief about it all,” Christianson said Wednesday. “They said
they don’t believe my story. They say, ‘It’s the wife.’”
An Amish
family lives close by with three small children who often play outside,
and Judy had gone over to sound a warning about the deer. After Mark’s
bout with the buck, the family brought over a lemon pie, Mark’s
favorite, and a card. The children — Magdalena, 4, Sylvia, 2½, and
Perry, 11 months — signed the card with hand prints. “So sorry you got hurt,” the card read.
Christianson
said he was too sore to sleep the first two nights after the attack.
Blows near his eyes caused blackening about the sockets and bent his
glasses, but he said he’s grateful the deer didn’t damage his eyesight. The
sorest bruise was to his right shoulder, probably due to his sudden
take-down move, and couldn’t raise his right arm for days. “Friday
morning, he had a bowl of Cheerios in front of him,” Judy said. “He just
sat there, holding the spoon. I said, ‘You’d better use your left
hand.’”
And how would Mark respond if another bellicose buck showed up and tried to pick a fight?
“I wouldn’t wait three days to get my rifle.”
