Cook County News-Herald readers
enjoy hearing the adventures of our
local and regional Minnesota DNR
Conservation Officersin CO Tales
each week. A recent CO Tale report
from CO Darin Fagerman in Grand
Marais drew regional attention. The
following article by Chris Niskanen
appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press
on November 17. Thanks to Chris for
sharing the whole story.
“ The buck was standing in the back of the pickup. It jumped up, jumped over the tailgate, and away it went. Conservation OfficerDarin Fagerman ”
On the outdoors beat, I hear a lot of stories about deer that are alive and become dead, a logical order of things for whitetail and hunter during the deer-hunting season.
But stories of dead deer jumping up and becoming alive? That is a story of a different magnitude, so I’m inclined here, before describing these two bizarre incidents, to offer the moral of the story first:
Check for signs of life
Darin Fagerman is one of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources conservation officers who patrol the woods around Grand Marais in far northeastern Minnesota. On Nov. 8, he received a call from a man who hit a buck with his vehicle on Minnesota 61 west of Grand Marais.
While everyone dreads smashing into a full-grown whitetail, many rural Minnesota folks view this common event as an opportunity. It’s meat in the freezer.
“The man calls me and says he wants to keep the buck and he’s going to field dress it,” Fagerman said. “I told him I’d meet him in town with a permit.”
But a few minutes later, the man calls back.
“The guy and his friend had thrown the buck in the back of his pickup,” Fagerman said, “and as they were pulling into a spot where they could field dress it, they heard a ruckus in the back. The buck was standing in the back of the pickup. It jumped up, jumped over the tailgate, and away it went.”
Thedeer was never seen again.
“He was pretty surprised,” Fagerman said of the hopeful owner of fresh venison. “The deer was pretty limp. He thought it was dead.”
Fagerman couldn’t locate the man for me, but what are the chances the same kind of incident could happen twice in Fagerman’s patrol area in the same week?
Pretty remote, I’d say, but it did.
Here we go again
This time, it was a bigger deer, a 10-pointer, and the driver was 20-year-old Wade Hoffer. He called Fagerman on Nov. 10—two days after the first incident—to report he had hit a deer with his 1998 Dodge 1500 pickup.
Hoffer and a buddy, Willy Nicolaison, were heading east to Grand Marais on Cook County 7 to rent a movie. “We’re doing 60,” Hoffer said, “and all of sudden I just see deer in the headlights, and we hear ‘boom,’ and we’ve hit a deer from the neck up.”
Hoffer turned his truck around, and he and Nicolaison found the buck lying on the shoulder of the road. It turned out to be a well-known buck in the neighborhood, one that has shown up on many hunters’ trail cameras. The deer was motionless, except for its twitching ears, so the two friends dragged the deer off the highway and into the ditch.
“I wanted this deer,” Hoffer said. “A full-body hit, I figured, and he was dead. Broke his neck.”
Excited, Hoffer said, he was already thinking about having the buck mounted, so he called a friend to get advice for properly preparing the shoulder cape. “I’m like, wow, the rack is still intact. It was gorgeous,” Hoffer said.
” But first, they needed a knife. So they drove back to Nicolaison home, returning with a butcher knife to find the deer still sprawled motionless in the ditch. They also called Fagerman to get a permit to possess the deer.
As Hoffer backed the truck to the deer to load it, Nicolaison stood over the animal and guided Hoffer. Their plan was to cut the deer’s neck and begin field dressing it before putting it in the truck.
Suddenly, Hoffer heard Nicolaison, who is 6 feet 2 and weighs 250, screaming that the deer was coming at him. “Willy has an unsheathed knife, running toward me,” Hoffer said. “Kind of scary, you know? And the deer is running away into the woods.”
The two men stared at each other in disbelief.
The shoulder mount, the venison steaks—all still on the hoof.
The recovered buck is still roaming the woods; it has been spotted several times since its collision with Hoffer’s truck, which sustained $1,800 in damage. In his excitement, Hoffer didn’t take any pictures of the buck. The story has spread around town, Hoffer said, “and everybody’s getting a good laugh.”
He said he realized later he had a hunting knife in his truck, so the trip to get one wasn’t necessary and the outcome could have been much different for the deer.
“I would have my buck in the freezer,” Hoffer said.
But if things had worked out differently, “I wouldn’t have such a good story to tell, either,’’ he said with a chuckle.
I asked Fagerman if you can always assume a deer is dead, even in a hunting situation?
“It’s good to check,” said the conservation officer, and often this can be done by looking to see if the deer’s chest is moving, as a sign of breathing.
Hunters will dispatch a wounded deer with a final shot, but a car-struck deer can simply be stunned. It’s not uncommon for law enforcement to dispatch a road kill deer if there is any question whether it’s alive.
“In the dark, I guess you just can’t take it for granted,” Fagerman said.
Leave a Reply