Sightings of deer wearing high-vis jacket raise questions, quips and concerns in B.C. village

Andrea Arnold knows a lot about what goes on in the Village of McBride, a community of about 600 people in British Columbia's Robson Valley.

As a reporter for the Rocky Mountain Goat newspaper, she keeps track of wildfires, local sports teams and pretty much everything happening in the picturesque mountain valley town that lies a 200-kilometre drive east of Prince George, B.C.

But nothing quite prepared Arnold for what she saw while driving through town Sunday afternoon.

"The vehicle in front of me had slowed right down, which is not abnormal because there are deer that cross the highway," she said. "But this one was wearing a high-vis jacket."

She managed to snap two photos — which show a deer fully wrapped in a jacket with strips of reflective material — before the animal walked away. But she still couldn't quite process what she had seen.

"I was like, 'What? Like ... what?'" she recalled. 

Joe Rich, who owns a tow shop along the highway through town, said he saw the deer in the woods around the same time.

He said he managed to take a closer look at the deer and it was clearly dressed in the jacket, with its legs placed through the sleeves.

"It's zipped right up," he said. "Someone ... obviously had to tackle this thing and put the jacket on it. At first I thought maybe it got tangled up in it, but on second glance, that's not the case."

Arnold posted her photos to Facebook, hoping to get some answers, but so far has mostly gotten more speculation — and lots of jokes.

"If you're cold, they're cold, as well, let them inside," she said, reading through some of the comments she's received.

"A deer on its way to work," reads another comment. "Trying to pass as a hunter!" says a third. 

Others speculate someone wanted to protect the deer from getting hit by a vehicle.

Rich said he thinks it might be a practical joke — but pointed out out that even though the deer seems "unbothered" at the moment, it could cause problems down the line. 

"It needs the game warden's attention because it won't survive like that," he said, saying if it can't shed its fur it could develop disease.

"This is a new one," Eamon McArthur of the B.C. Conservation Officer Service told CBC News after receiving photos of the deer. "I've had deer with Christmas lights in their antlers but never anything like this."

McArthur said as long as the animal doesn't seem to be stressed, the jacket was unlikely to cause it any harm.

"We'd hope if it gets caught on anything it would rip off," he said.

But he encouraged people to keep an eye out for the deer and report any new sightings, especially if the deer seemed to be distressed or in trouble.

He said people should not approach wild deer — nor put clothes on them.

"I didn't think I'd have to specify that one," he said. "Usually they're pretty quick."

Arnold said there are people in town who sometimes provide food for deer. But to dress a deer would require someone to get the jacket around the wild animal's legs and zip it up — and she would like to learn how that happened.

"I don't need to know the who," she said. "I just want to know how."