BuckTracker: Buck Meets Grim Reaper

OK, this certainly isn’t hunting…but it is a unique buck “harvest.” The whitetail in the pics below met his maker in the form of a Midwestern combine. I think the photos are from Iowa, but haven’t been able to verify that. The nice buck managed to somehow get tangled in the combine heads and was dragged for some distance before the machine could be shut down and the animal dispatched. Apparently one of the farm workers took the buck so the meat wouldn’t go to waste.

I’ve lived in the Midwest my entire life and have never heard of this before. It’s not unusual for fawns to get killed when farmers make first-crop hay in June, but this is perfectly understandable as the primary survival mechanism of these newborns is simply to lay still and hope danger passes them by. Mature bucks are notorious for holding tight to avoid danger, but they’re usually wise enough to know when it’s time to bail. Maybe there was something wrong with this buck’s hearing?

Note: In my last post I put up a photo of a huge Kansas buck of unknown origin. Fellow FS writer Steven Hill emailed me yesterday and said he’d talked to the hunter, who is Chad Christie. Chad shot the gigantic buck on December 5th, the 3rd day of the firearms season, on his family farm south of Lawrence. Chad says the buck scored “roughly 241 inches” and should rank among the top non-typs in that state. Congrats to Chad!