A tangled deer tale: Winnipeg men rescue stuck buck in provincial park

Two Winnipeg men decided to save a buck this Christmas season — literally.

Cory Funk, a CBC Manitoba journalist, and his friend Chris Epp-Tiessen were on a day trip at a provincial park Saturday when they came across a deer whose antlers were entangled with those of a dead buck — and decided to risk an attempt to free it.

The two were cross-country skiing in Beaudry Provincial Park, about 25 kilometres west of Winnipeg, when they came across the scene. They had to think quickly and act fast to help the eight-point buck without getting hurt themselves.

But they managed to get it all on video.

"We realized this guy's really weak. He's been here for a while," Funk told Ismaila Alfa on CBC's Information Radio Tuesday morning. "That's when we realized, OK, this guy's not doing too well."

"I figured that the two bucks were competing over something and were kind of tussling, and their racks became interlocked and then they were just stuck," Epp-Tiessen added.

At one point, the live buck frantically swung its head, tossing the body of dead one and ending up stuck beneath the carcass.

It took the full strength of both men to free the deer.

"They were surprisingly jammed together — I couldn't believe how much effort it took to pull them apart," Epp-Tiessen said.

"You couldn't even always tell 'do I have that live deer's antlers, or do I have that dead deer's antlers?'"

Funk and Epp-Tiessen said their emotions ran the gamut while trying to pry the two apart.

"It started off being fascinated — like, 'this is bizarre' — to being downright disturbed, to kind of being sad and sympathetic, to  a little exhilarated … to feeling this deep sense of being rewarded," Funk said.

"In the end, just being dumbfounded. What just happened?"

'A calculated risk'

The men acknowledge getting close to the animal was a dangerous move.

"I was thinking, 'I've seen this on YouTube, we could do this' — which is probably how a lot of terrible videos start," Epp-Tiessen said.

Funk said the buck didn't seem aggressive, though.

"I guess there was a risk there, but it seemed like … it didn't really want to be near us at all."

Epp-Tiessen thinks the risk was worth it. 

"I'm … a little nervous what people are going to say in the [online] comments — like, 'What were you thinking, man? You're an idiot,' or whatever.

"But you know what — you gotta risk it sometimes."

'They did the right thing'

Vince Crichton, a wildlife biologist, told CBC News the bucks were likely fighting over social status or just having a friendly joust.

"When two animals of equal social rank are trying to sort out who's who, or who's gonna be king of the hill … they start fighting," he said.

Those are typically rough fights, and it's common for bucks to get entangled, Crichton says. Those altercations can easily be fatal, he added.

"In this particular case, one animal was dead likely because during the fight, he ended up with a broken neck and then the other kept dragging him around and flipping the dead one around, trying to get disentangled," he explained.

Crichton says the rescued buck is lucky to be alive.

"Fortunately these chaps came along and they did the right thing," he said. "They were very careful, based on what I see in the video here, and didn't get hurt themselves."

However, Crichton says people should be wary of getting close to wild animals.

"You've got to be very careful before you get too close so that you don't end up getting skewered," he said.

Crichton says he hopes the deer will be fine, but it's hard to say without knowing how long it was entangled and how long it went without food.

"He might be a little cautious next time before he wants to start jousting with one of his buddies out there."