A white-tailed buck, nearly dead from exhaustion after being entangled with a dead buck, caught a lucky break and was freed, but only after having half an antler shot off in the process.
Outdoorsman Barrett Liquori told Cowboy State Daily that when he and his friend found the helpless bucks on Dec. 7 in the Texas Panhandle country, there wasn’t enough time to hike all the way back home to retrieve a hacksaw.
So he turned to plan B, blasting off one of the dead buck’s antlers with the Springfield Hellcat 9mm pistol he always carries with him in the field.
When that didn’t work, it was time for plan C; blast off roughly half of one of the live buck’s antlers.
That did the trick and the befuddled buck stumbled to its feet. Liquori’s friend caught video of the incident, which blew up on social media.
Reactions have been mostly positive, Liquori told Cowboy State Daily. It seems hunters across the country appreciate efforts to help out animals, regardless of the means used.
Spotted From The Air
Liquori lives and hunts in Texas, but he’s been on hunts all over the country. That includes a trip to Wyoming, to hunt mule deer and antelope in the Kaycee area.
Wyomingites could identify with the Texas panhandle country, he said.
“It’s rough country. We’re not at the same elevation as the mountain country, but it’s rough with lots of deep canyons, draws and rocks,” he said.
He and his friend weren’t hunting on Dec. 7. Instead, they were on a vast ranch, using a drone to do aerial surveys of the deer and elk population there.
Elk aren’t native to Texas and are considered “an exotic species” there, he said.
Though it was daytime, he was using the drone’s thermal imaging.
“I found a hot spot with the thermal and switched to the daytime camera, and that’s when I found the two deer. I initially thought they were both still alive,” he said.
Even from the air, it was clear that the bucks’ antlers were helplessly entangled with one another.
The deer were about a quarter of a mile away, in a small wash and behind a pile of mesquite and cedar that had been plowed up by the rancher.
Ranchers try to rid their property of mesquite and cedar, which are invasive plant species there.
“Once we got to them (the bucks) I realized that one of them had already passed, and the other one wasn’t doing well,” he said.
Just as deer, elk and antelope in Wyoming do, Texas white-tailed bucks will fight with each other for access to female deer during the rut, or mating season.
When animals' antlers or horns get entangled, it’s frequently a death sentence, they might die from exhaustion or thirst.
“I’ve been around deer that were locked up before. Most of the time, we find them dead,” Liquori said.
The dead buck “was in a state of decay,” indicating that the bucks had probably been trapped there for days, he added.
Third Shot’s The Charm
The live deer was in such a sorry state, Liquori was worried it would die if he took the time to go retrieve a hacksaw.
So, he reached for his pistol, which was loaded with hollow-point rounds, which Liquori favors for shooting feral hogs, which are considered a destructive invasive species in Texas.
At first, he tried a couple of shots at the dead buck’s antlers, but that failed.
He couldn’t bust the antlers at the bases, and given the angle, shooting higher up on the dead buck’s antlers presented “too much of a risk of hitting the live deer” in the head, he said.
So, he found a good aim point on one of the live deer’s antlers, took careful aim and fired his third shot, which blew the antler in half and allowed the poor buck to finally pull free.
The buck was dazed and disoriented, so the men decided to leave, rather than hang around and stress it out even more.
They came back a couple of hours later, and the buck was gone. It apparently managed to find a nearby water source, got a drink and then took off.
“I have not seen that buck since,” Liquori said, but he hopes it’s OK.
Pig Blast
In another recent incident, Liquori used his pistol to instantly drop a feral hog that came through the ranch’s fence and started toward him.
Feral hogs are hated in Texas, he said. They destroy fences, dig up farmland, and can destroy an entire crop of corn overnight.
Texans kill hogs “by any means possible,” including hunting them after dark with thermal imaging scopes on their rifles.
Liquori is part of the Night Crew, hunting media content creators, with a YouTube channel featuring their nighttime hunts for hogs and predators.
So far, Wyoming has been spared a feral hog infestation. However, hogs have been moving north into Colorado, and south into Montana from Canada — raising concerns over how far they might eventually spread in the Mountain West.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
