Another loss

At about 2pm yesterday afternoon we discovered Gulliver lying in a cedar grove away from the others. At first it looked as if he had injured his front leg and Allan went into the enclosure to see if he could get him to stand up. When he did, we saw that he had been gored in the lower abdomen and a grapefruit-sized portion of his bowels was hanging outside his body. In the shadows we did not see much blood and shortly after standing up, he lay down again with the wound hidden by the earth.

During the past week, the deer were losing their velvet and each one's newest set of "hard" antlers emerged. On Sunday we had observed Max and Bash and then Max and Moki fighting and heard the sound of hard antler on hard antler. We knew that Gulliver was not a fighter, but possibly had been caught by the sharp brow antler of others who are. We will never know just how he came to receive such a serious injury.

We called the vet, Dr. Brian Willows, who asked us to describe the colour and size of the material. He told us that any efforts we would make to try to save his life would be heroics for us, but not for him. There was no doubt that infection from such an injury would occur and cause a slow and painful death even if field surgery were attempted.

We called Don Murphy at work and talked it over with him. He also talked to the vet. We all decided that Gulliver deserved a quick and painless death, and that meant asking someone to put him out of his misery with a bullet. I called upon my neighbour, Bob Bird, who did not hesitate to offer his help.

Allan took Bob to the place where Gulliver lay. I stayed under the maple tree where we have spent so many hours with the herd and they with us. Several of the deer were lying on the ground near me in the shade. At 3:30pm I heard one loud retort. The deer jumped and ran into the woods as far away from the gunshot as they could go.

Gulliver was shot in the cedar grove with a single bullet to his head. He was looking at Allan who thinks that he did not see Bob nor his gun.

Don arrived and we shared some moments with Gulliver's beautiful body. One of our largest and oldest deer, he was the one who escaped from the Scotland Road farm during testing and had been on the lam for about 6 weeks. Don and Wendy spent hours trying to lure him back to the farm and finally accomplished the feat with apples, corn and headlights. After the fence at the Reserve was cut in November 2008, Gulliver was one of the deer who followed Don into the enclosure, returning to this home by his own free will, without need of dramatic capture.

With Don's help we took Gulliver's body to the deer burial ground. With the backhoe, Don dug a deep place. By sunset, Gulliver was lying safely in the earth beside Ty and Dandy.

We are grateful to Bob Bird of Wilton for coming to assist Gulliver at a moment's notice and for his skill and kindness.