Hunter Killed By Deer

[LDHunter]

Old school lessons......
approach any animal on far side of feet....
touch eyeball with gun barrel... if it moves or blinks shoot again...

Beat me to it... Perfect..

I shot down a 6pt buck running in front of the hounds about 25 years ago and when everyone arrived that had been involved with that race the buck was laying on it's side where he fell in the dirt forest road and had been there what was probably close to 10 minutes. One of the hunters grabbed the buck by the antler to cut his throat as several of us shouted NO and in just a fraction of a second the "dead" buck jumped up easily putting an antler tip through the guy's hand and promptly ran off into a very deep and thick cypress head. The trees and brush were so thick in there that it took a couple of small thin young kids about 15 minutes to find him and drag him out.

One of the other hunters took him to the ER to get his hand fixed and I later gave him the antlers that still had his blood on them. I ran into him a few years later and he told me he mounted those antlers on a plaque and kept it in his man cave to remind him that "dead wasn't always dead"... LOL

 

[memtb]

Reading LDHunter's post made me think of an incident that happened to me about 10 years ago.

A dead……as in 2 days dead, quartered, and beheaded (head still attached to the neck) antlered animal can still hurt you!

We brought a little 6 point bull home in the described condition, and I was dragging quarters (hair on) from the truck bed, onto a piece of 3/4" plywood for a thorough clean-up before hanging!

The last part removed from the truck was the head/neck. The antlers hit the board and bounced, a lot, toward me. As the antler on my side was quite rapidly approaching my face…..I instinctively brought my left hand up to block the "attack"! A tine hit right in the center of my palm ….. making a pretty deep puncture wound.

I've been in several pain inducing incidents in my life, motorcycle wrecks, tree stands collapsing from beneath me, one shot to the chest (air rifle)……just a short list of some of my little "bumps and bruises" in life. But nothing compared to the immediate, and high intensity of pain when that tine entered my palm.

As my doctor treated my "boo boo" (thoroughly flushing, inserting a drain-tube, and stitching) I asked him why the pain intensity. He explained that the tine hit a "nerve bundle" (my term), right where all of the nerves from the fingers gather!

So, a word of WARNING……a very dead animal can still hurt you! memtb

 

[Alibiiv]

True story about "belts" as a tourniquet. While working one day, we received a call of a car-pedestrian accident. The location was on a 4 lane divided highway, where there really was not much "pedestrian" traffic at all, and...we rarely ever had pedestrian accidents on this roadway. Upon reaching the scene we saw the high speed lane completely stopped and three men in the high speed lane, two men helping the third man whose leg was severed below the knee. The man was a jogger, he didn't see the car that was traveling "at least" 50 MPH and he ran out in front of that car. He was thrown/dragged at least 350 feet that we measured from where his sneakers were in the road to where he was being treated in the road. Blood was shooting across the entire high-speed lane of travel and actually coagulating on the pavement below him. The two men assisting the injured pedestrian were both doctors, one of them an ER doctor on his way home from work. They had two belts around his leg in different locations, to no avail and...this guy was bleeding out very quickly. My partner was an EMT, he assessed the situation and said, "We've got to find a tourniquet for this guy or he is going to bleed out!!!" At the time we had "basic" first aid kits, but nothing with a tourniquet in it. So...good old ingenuity kicked in. There was a water throw ring in the trunk that had 30 feet of 3/8ths inch nylon braid attached, and a traffic flag had an 1 1/4 inch wooden handle that was about 24 inches long. The braided nylon and the handle of the traffic flag saved that man's life. The last that I saw of that braided nylon and that traffic flag handle was it going to the hospital on the stretcher. And that jogger did in fact live. Based upon what I experienced on that day, in my opinion BELTS DO NOT MAKE GOOD TOURNIQUETS!!!

Many of the readers here on this forum climb ladders, trees, cliffs stomp through all sorts of dangerous, slippery terrain and expose themselves to many dangerous situations where they could easily get hurt. Oftentimes these exposures to dangerous situations are being done when we're alone or out of reach of phone service, or...both. I keep a small trauma first aid kit in my backpack. The kit contains a CAT tourniquet along with two clot bandages, all in a sealed in a sealed, plastic bag that measures about 6" X 8" X 3/4" thick; cost around $100. I got this kit from a hunter first aid course that our gun club put on. The cost for the training was $100 and that cost included the first aid kit. I also keep a CAT tourniquet (like $30) in one of the pockets on the cargo pants. It is always on my person instead of trying to locate something in my backpack. I know that there are carrying cases that fit on one's belt as well. When I gave a tourniquet to each of my hunting partners (I call them my two kids), they sort of poo-pooed the idea of a tourniquet, but....I have noticed that they both carry them when we go out. I am also a big supporter of the inReach Mini, that I would never hunt without. Where we hunt there is no phone service whatsoever and we are at least an hour's ride, on rough terrain roads to get to the main road to an ambulance where it is an hour's ride to the nearest hospital. I am 76, had two heart attacks at 53 years of age and I do not walk that well. When I first started using the inReach Mini, the kids didn't think too much about that one either. They thought that "for me" it was a good idea, but...not so much for them; but they are in their mid-fifties so not so much kids anymore either!!! On one of the trips out of the woods I mentioned to them that they too were vulnerable to getting hurt just as easily as I was and there was no phone service where they were. The next year they both were wearing inReach Minis when they went out. I'm not advertising or selling anything, here is a CAT tourniquet that I found online with a simple Google search. I also recommend getting oneself familiarized with it before taking it in the field, when you need one is not the time to figure out how to apply it:

www.amazon.com/North-American-Rescue-Application-Tourniquet/dp/B003IR4NLO/ref=sr_1_4?crid=20B2SN9AQM52K&keywords=cat+tourniquets+gen+8&qid=1698590368&sprefix=CAT+tourni%2Caps%2C81&sr=8-4

 

[Rosebud]

Yep,If their eyes are closed, They aren't dead.

 

[Rosebud]

True story about "belts" as a tourniquet. While working one day, we received a call of a car-pedestrian accident. The location was on a 4 lane divided highway, where there really was not much "pedestrian" traffic at all, and...we rarely ever had pedestrian accidents on this roadway. Upon reaching the scene we saw the high speed lane completely stopped and three men in the high speed lane, two men helping the third man whose leg was severed below the knee. The man was a jogger, he didn't see the car that was traveling "at least" 50 MPH and he ran out in front of that car. He was thrown/dragged at least 350 feet that we measured from where his sneakers were in the road to where he was being treated in the road. Blood was shooting across the entire high-speed lane of travel and actually coagulating on the pavement below him. The two men assisting the injured pedestrian were both doctors, one of them an ER doctor on his way home from work. They had two belts around his leg in different locations, to no avail and...this guy was bleeding out very quickly. My partner was an EMT, he assessed the situation and said, "We've got to find a tourniquet for this guy or he is going to bleed out!!!" At the time we had "basic" first aid kits, but nothing with a tourniquet in it. So...good old ingenuity kicked in. There was a water throw ring in the trunk that had 30 feet of 3/8ths inch nylon braid attached, and a traffic flag had an 1 1/4 inch wooden handle that was about 24 inches long. The braided nylon and the handle of the traffic flag saved that man's life. The last that I saw of that braided nylon and that traffic flag handle was it going to the hospital on the stretcher. And that jogger did in fact live. Based upon what I experienced on that day, in my opinion BELTS DO NOT MAKE GOOD TOURNIQUETS!!!

Many of the readers here on this forum climb ladders, trees, cliffs stomp through all sorts of dangerous, slippery terrain and expose themselves to many dangerous situations where they could easily get hurt. Oftentimes these exposures to dangerous situations are being done when we're alone or out of reach of phone service, or...both. I keep a small trauma first aid kit in my backpack. The kit contains a CAT tourniquet along with two clot bandages, all in a sealed in a sealed, plastic bag that measures about 6" X 8" X 3/4" thick; cost around $100. I got this kit from a hunter first aid course that our gun club put on. The cost for the training was $100 and that cost included the first aid kit. I also keep a CAT tourniquet (like $30) in one of the pockets on the cargo pants. It is always on my person instead of trying to locate something in my backpack. I know that there are carrying cases that fit on one's belt as well. When I gave a tourniquet to each of my hunting partners (I call them my two kids), they sort of poo-pooed the idea of a tourniquet, but....I have noticed that they both carry them when we go out. I am also a big supporter of the inReach Mini, that I would never hunt without. Where we hunt there is no phone service whatsoever and we are at least an hour's ride, on rough terrain roads to get to the main road to an ambulance where it is an hour's ride to the nearest hospital. I am 76, had two heart attacks at 53 years of age and I do not walk that well. When I first started using the inReach Mini, the kids didn't think too much about that one either. They thought that "for me" it was a good idea, but...not so much for them; but they are in their mid-fifties so not so much kids anymore either!!! On one of the trips out of the woods I mentioned to them that they too were vulnerable to getting hurt just as easily as I was and there was no phone service where they were. The next year they both were wearing inReach Minis when they went out. I'm not advertising or selling anything, here is a CAT tourniquet that I found online with a simple Google search. I also recommend getting oneself familiarized with it before taking it in the field, when you need one is not the time to figure out how to apply it:

www.amazon.com/North-American-Rescue-Application-Tourniquet/dp/B003IR4NLO/ref=sr_1_4?crid=20B2SN9AQM52K&keywords=cat+tourniquets+gen+8&qid=1698590368&sprefix=CAT+tourni%2Caps%2C81&sr=8-4

It takes amazing amounts of pressure to stop a deep leg artery from bleeding, once severed they retract inside the muscle groups. I've tried to find them and clamp them off without success.

 

[Hudge76]

When I was a kid, my dad had a guy in his hunting club gored to death by a whitetail buck. The guy had them as pets at his house though. One fall day he went to feed them as the rut was on. The Buck was trying to get at the doe as the gentleman was feeding them and the Buck took the man as a threat. Fired him a couple times in the stomach and it killed the gentleman. It's been at least 40 years ago, as my father died 30 years ago this December.

 

[Toecutter]

Slightly different example, but something that has always stuck with me.
Id guess this was over 40 yrs ago now, but my reloading mentor met up with a gent in the woods during hunting season. Exchanged a few pleasantries and the man said I bet youre wondering about this scar on my face. Naturally he couldnt be looking at much else since it was a deep scar that extended from his jaw, up under his eye, and over the bridge of his nose up his forehead.
Apparently he shot a doe and when he flipped her over to dress, the front hoof flew up. Dont remember if it was a last blast of nerves at the end or if she still had a little left in the tank.
Something that has always stuck with me through many, many dozens of deer. Might be helpful for a newer hunter to contemplate.

 

[Hudge76]

When I was a kid, my dad had a guy in his hunting club gored to death by a whitetail buck. The guy had them as pets at his house though. One fall day he went to feed them as the rut was on. The Buck was trying to get at the doe as the gentleman was feeding them and the Buck took the man as a threat. Fired him a couple times in the stomach and it killed the gentleman. It's been at least 40 years ago, as my father died 30 years ago this December.

That should be gored not fired. Silly autocorrect!

 

[sdakotaguy]

Sorry for the familys loss. Very unfortunate outcome. May we all learn & pass on the difficult lesson.

 

[del2les]

Usually, bullets are the cheapest part of my hunts, so I have no qualms shooting through the lungs again or using another arrow.

While rather rare, I have shot another arrow through the lungs of a buck while he was down from a spine hit and still alive, and I have shot a few game still kicking and trying to get back up. Some with a backup handgun, and some with rifle/shotgun. All "dangerous" game, which, depending on circumstances, can be most anything, always gets a double check before considered dead.

As a young hunter, I was taught by my uncle and older brother to never approach from the feet or hip end and to come in from the back with weapon ready, poke the eye and look and listen for life. If in doubt, shoot.

When I was a teen, my grandfather shot a large spike buck with his old Winchester model 12 and some old paper 00B shot-shells, the buck fell in tall grass and laid motionless. When grandad approached and saw the deer breathing but lying on its belly with head down, he pulled out his old fixed blade hunting/skinning knife and straddled the spike for the final "hog stick". As soon as he grabbed the spike head, it kicked hard and sprang to its feet sending grandad tumbling backwards and the knife flying. When he set back up, the spike was looking at him from a few feet, and he scrambled to locate his model 12 lying in the grass. Luckily, he was able to get another shot off as the spike was running off.

 

[Hard H2O]

So sad for the family.

The state of news media nowadays shows that they could not even source a whitetail deer picture for the article. They have a red stag.

 

[tysonmax]

My goodness, have you guys looked at the comment section?!?! Seems like every anti-hunting group felt the need to say something.

 

[marksman1941]

My grandpa at 76 shot a spike that turned out to not be dead, and had a 60 yard rodeo trying to cut its throat with his like 1.5" folding Buck skinning knife.

I have always approached slow gun ready, and tossed a stick at the deer to see if there's a flinch when it hits. Then touch the eye for final verification, then start in cutting.

As for med supplies, a tourniquet, some hemostatic bandages, and an Israeli bandage arent that heavy but they are certainly worth having. A TQ can keep you from bleeding out long enough to call for help if you have communication. A hemostatic bandage is basically gauze imbued with QuikClot, which helps stop bleeding while not burning horribly like the old QuikClot powder (and that stuff is supposedly annoying for EMS to clean out).
An Israeli bandage is about 4 feet of stretchy cloth like material with a clip on one end that works as a stand-alone pressure bandage and is ideal for extremity wounds.

So, a deep knife stab to the leg that doesn't sever the femoral artery (like someone mentioned in this thread) would be treatable with a hemostatic bandage shoved in the hole and an Israeli bandage wrapped tight as hell around the leg. Do it right and you can walk out of a bad spot while the bandage keeps pressure on the wound for you. It's seriously worth the minimal investment to buy a few survival aids like this.

 

[wvbearhunter]

When its your time....

My uncle had a doe he thought was deceased, kick him in the facw and split his eyebrow wide open. He loved telling people how he got the scar