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Wildlife officer fires one shot and saves the lives of two deer
Why kill two birds with one stone when you can save two bucks with one bullet? 🦌🦌🤯
Jonathan Maes
10.15.20

If there’s someone mingling with wildlife armed with a rifle, we automatically assume the worst, and for good reasons.

There is still a drastic amount of animals that are being chased away from their natural habitat or simply hunted down – either for money or for pleasure. However, this single shot fired by a wildlife officer didn’t hurt anyone.

In fact, this shot saved the lives of two deer, and it was the only thing left to do.

Pixabay
Source:
Pixabay

Russ Wright from Calgary, Canada, a passerby who witnessed the entire thing, still recalls how everything went down.

While he was driving on his way home in Alberta, he suddenly encountered something remarkable out in a rather snowy field.

Simon Matzinger - Pexels
Source:
Simon Matzinger - Pexels

Driving through snowy roads definitely isn’t new to the Canadian man, and it’s also true that you never really know what you’ll find on the road.

This encounter, however, left Russ shocked.

At a first glance, he just spotted two deer in the field. Of course, it’s definitely not uncommon to spot deer on the side of the road, but this time was very, very different.

Annika Thierfeld - Pexels
Source:
Annika Thierfeld - Pexels

Both of them seemed to be entwined together, and they couldn’t get loose!

From a distance, Russ had already noticed that these two deer were acting quite strangely.

In fact, the man had already seen his fair share of these animals in his life, but he’s never witnessed two adults acting like this.

Right away, the man decided to park his car and take a closer look at what exactly was going on.

LadyLioness - Pixabay
Source:
LadyLioness - Pixabay

After looking at them from a shorter distance, he figured out why they were acting so strange.

It turns out that these two adult deer actually weren’t the best of friends. In fact, they got entangled in quite the fight and were exchanging headbutts in the field.

However, during their fight, they managed to get stuck together at their antlers. Both of them were quite long, and once they got locked in they just couldn’t get out of it anymore.

Tejas Prajapati - Pexels
Source:
Tejas Prajapati - Pexels

“I stopped and realized these deer had locked antlers,” the man said to Global News. “That’s crazy because you just don’t see that. They were locked tight.”

Reportedly, these two deer were already trying for hours just to get away from each other.

Because they panicked and were scared, it’s possible that they actually made things a lot worse.

It’s definitely not unheard of that bucks start fighting with each other in the wild, often to assert dominance or superiority. Because of the structure and shape of the antlers, a deer-on-deer fight can often end up in a tough struggle to get free.

Reddit - BirdPlan
Source:
Reddit - BirdPlan

Russ did the right thing and called for back-up. He rang Fish and Wildlife to ask for on-site help.

One of the people from the organization, Scott Kallweit, arrived on the scene not much later. However, he didn’t really know what to do at first either.

It’d be pretty impossible to get closeby to the animals, they were too much in panic and could potentially hurt Scott during his rescue attempt. Normally, a tranquilizer would be a good option, but Scott didn’t want to go for this route either.

The two adult deer were likely full of adrenaline, taking sedative shots out of the equation.

Reddit - BirdPlan
Source:
Reddit - BirdPlan

“It was pretty dynamic in terms of them moving around and bouncing around,” he mentioned. “I knew they had a lot of energy. It was a good possibility that they were probably not going to get separated by themselves.”

After a while, Scott had a potential plan.

Even though it was risky and perhaps even a little crazy, it was the best he could come up with.

Reddit - BirdPlan
Source:
Reddit - BirdPlan

He took out his 12-gauge shotgun from out of his truck and tried to get as close to the bucks as possible with regard for his own safety.

He waited patiently until the deer seemed a little bit peaceful and accustomed to his presence, and then held his breath to make the shot.

Reddit - BirdPlan
Source:
Reddit - BirdPlan

He shot a single round, right between the two antlers. The two deer were unharmed and were freed instantly.

Reddit - BirdPlan
Source:
Reddit - BirdPlan

They did stumble around for a little while and were probably quite shocked and surprised about what just transpired, but their struggle which seemed to last like forever was finally over.

What a shot! People have even been calling this ranger the ‘shotgun surgeon’ for his impeccable shot.

Be sure to check out this remarkable rescue video below!

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