Quoted from the Bryan-College Station Eagle, October 30, 1990 for educational
purposes:
 
CALDWELL MAN KILLED BY DEER
 
By Fiona Soltes, Eagle Staff Writer
 
CALDWELL_A Caldwell man was killed Monday when an eight-point buck charged
and mauled him at the side of FM 975 near the city limits.
 
Charlie Jackson Coleman, 61, was pronounced dead at about 3 p.m.  An autopsy
determined that Coleman died from a crushed skull, but he suffered more than
100 hoof and puncture wounds to his back, stomach and face.
 
"It was the most unbelievable thing I've ever seen," said Burleson County
Chief Deputy Tom Randall.  "It was more of a massacre than an attack."
 
Coleman, an antique bottle collector, was looking for bottles in the area at
the time of the attack.  Several bottles had been thrown out of the roadside
thicket to the area nearer the road.
 
Randall said Coleman must have put up quite a fight, because a 15-by-15-foot
area was covered with clothing and blood.
 
A driver on FM 975 told sheriff's deputies that he saw a truck parked by the
side of the road at about 8 a.m. with the driver's side door open.  He
didn't think anything was odd until he saw the truck was still there at 3
p.m., with the keys in the ignition.
 
Officers called to the scene were met by the 160-pound buck, which charged at
them.  Coleman's body lay nearby, but officers were forced to shoot the buck
in order to get near him.
 
"He was really possessive of the body," Randall said.  "He must have stood
guard over it all day."
 
Randall said the deer had been seen in the area for six or seven years, and
that residents fed it often.
 
Don Steinbach, Texas Agricultural Extension Service wildlife and fisheries
specialist, said the case was "very unusual," but that deer are more likely
to become aggressive if they have been tamed.
 
"If deer have been domesticated and aren't afraid of people, they do get
aggressive when they come into rut," he said.  "Rut" is the term used for a
deer looking for a mate, and the mating season usually lasts from mid-October
to mid-November, he said.
 
Steinbach said in most cases, a deer will become scared and run when it sees
people.  Deer do attack each other over territorial boundaries, but if the
deer has not been confined or been around people, it is unlikely an attack
of this sort would occur, he said.
 
Steinbach said he recommends leaving deer alone, and warns especially against
trying to keep one for a pet.
 
"People should not try to keep deer in captivity," Steinbach said. 
"Eventually,
they will have problems that down the road they can't handle.
 
"It takes specialized equipment to handle a deer in captivity."
 
If someone is threatened by a buck, he should take aggressive action, he said.
 
"You need a stick or something," he said.  "A deer is not something you can
fight with your bare hands."
 
The buck's head and feet have been taken to the sheriff's department for
further investigation.  Coleman's body was taken to Strickland Funeral Home
in Caldwell, then transported to a Travis County medical examiner's office.
 
The current mating season has produced at least one other attack on humans.
 
Three surveyors with Inland Geophysical Services Inc. of Houston were charged
by a buck Friday morning in the remote woods near Beaumont.  None of them
were [sic] injured, but one of the men was pitched about 20 feet in the
air and thrown into a creek.  The men slit the buck's throat with a machete,
which is standard gear for surveyors.  The deer had been in the area for some
time, and had become a "semi-pet" to the owner of a private reserve there.
______________________________________-
In the midst of this tragedy I see lots of humor. (Since when is a machete
standard gear for surveyors?  If I see a surveyor approaching with a machete
you bet I'll pick up a stick or something!  Or maybe that's just in the "big
thicket" country where the brush is so dense lots of Confederate Army
deserters hid out.)
__________________________________________________________________________
Remember the old joke about the ship's captain who wrote something
nasty about the first mate in the ship's log book?
 
To get revenge, the first mate wrote in the log:
 
      The captain was sober today.
			

Jokes