The recent and unfortunate death of a hunter in north Arkansas due in part to puncture wounds inflicted by a wounded deer reminds me that the white-tailed deer is not defenseless. In addition to rather fearsome antlers wielded by bucks, deer of both sexes can deliver serious blows with their sharp hoofs.
When researching hunting in early Arkansas, I always turn to the stories of Silas Turnbo. A Missouri native and Confederate veteran, Turnbo lived and hunted in Marion County and collected stories about life in the wilds along the border of Missouri and Arkansas.
He was especially fond of deer-hunting and bear-hunting stories and collected numerous accounts in which wounded deer fought tenaciously, sometimes killing pursuing dogs.
Joe Davis, who lived in Oregon County, Mo., was obviously a bit embarrassed when he told Turnbo that "sometimes a man becomes forgetful of his safety and does a thing or two he repents of afterward ..." Referring to an undated hunt, probably in the late 1850s, Davis explained how a deer he thought dead had "quickly revived and got up."
Davis recalled: "I was in such a hurry to reload my gun that I got it chocked and broke my gun stick trying to push the bullet down." With his gun useless, Davis "ran to the deer which was staggering around and jerked him down, but up he rose again and knocked me flat on my back." A counter-attack by Davis resulted in his left palm being penetrated by a horn followed with being knocked down again, and "to convince me who was master of the battlefield, he began to paw me with one forefoot." The fight came to an end when the deer suddenly ran out of sight, causing Davis to conclude that "I felt more comfortable at his departure."
Though Turnbo's informants frequently made light of their encounters with wounded deer, these could be quite serious. For example, in February 1912, newspapers reported that Alvin Irby of Black Rock in Lawrence County "narrowly escaped serious injury in an encounter with [a] crippled deer." Irby believed he "narrowly escaped ... by the timely arrival of a pack of hounds, which killed the deer."
Sometimes the deer got their revenge in unusual ways. In March 1884, W.J. Neely of Bradley County was riding along a country road when he saw a wounded deer in the roadway. According to the Arkansas Gazette, Neely "charged on it, with the intention of knocking it down." The deer had other intentions, and "the collision with the deer threw his horse over backward upon him, crushing his body so that he died the next day."
While no one knows for sure, it seems that most serious encounters with deer involved animals being kept as pets or curiosities. Our ancestors were remarkably fond of keeping wild animals as pets, especially deer and black bears. And, just like today, it often ended in disaster.
Judging from the number of newspaper accounts I was able to turn up, it seems that keeping pet deer was common, even up to recent times. In October 1913, former Franklin County Sheriff E.B. Milton was almost killed by a buck when he entered an enclosure of pet deer on a large farm.
Pine Bluff newspapers in November 1902 told of a 12-year-old boy being "seriously if not fatally hurt" by a pet buck.
"It is said," the reporter wrote, "that there was not a spot as large as a man's hand from the boy's arms down to his feet that had not been bruised or cut."
The prosperous Bragg family of the Camden area kept a large enclosure of pet deer, impressive enough that it was referred to as a deer park. The family patriarch was Dr. Junius Bragg, a Confederate veteran, prominent physician, and owner of a large drug company. His son Anthony Victor Bragg maintained a herd of deer on his land just west of Camden. In October 1907, during the deer breeding season when most of the attacks, not incidentally, took place, Anson V. Bragg's 58-year-old brother Albert Pike Bragg was attacked by a buck "that up to this time had been particularly docile."
The newspaper account of this deer attack was all the more interesting due to the fact that "Pike" Bragg's sister took control of the rescue in a most interesting way: "His sister heard him call and sent the negro cook to his aid and also stopped a negro man who was passing and then blew a danger call on a conch shell for her brother ... who was about a half-mile distant in the field."
It took 15 minutes for the deer to be fully restrained: "In the first onset of the buck, Pike was borne to the ground, an antler passing on either side of him about his hips. He grasped them and hung on while the buck thrashed him about and fought."
The battle ended when Anson Bragg finally joined the fray and restrained the deer: "In its efforts to get up while Anson held its head firmly, the buck broke his neck." Pike Bragg was fortunate--"though bruised all over, [he] is not seriously hurt."
Despite many instances of combat between humans and deer, I was able to turn up only one newspaper account in which a hunter was killed by a wounded deer. Seventy-five-year-old Finis Whitehead of Roland in western Pulaski County reportedly died in November 1949 from "injuries suffered when he was attacked by a wounded deer."
Though not as often as pet deer, pet bears were found throughout the state. Dr. Simeon Bateman of Jackson County was quoted as saying "he never knew a pet bear to grow up without killing someone." He could have cited the sad case in his home county where a pet bear owned by a Jacksonport man broke its tether and killed a slave child.
Pet bears were sometimes kept as institutional mascots by owners of hotels and by steamboat captains. The combination of a moving, busy, noisy steamboat and a pet bear might seem just the place for calamity. On June 14, 1847, Peter Watson, the engineer aboard the steamer Alert, decided to play with his bear--swinging it from a rope and dipping it into the river water.
Although it was a young animal, the bear pulled his owner into the water and "killed him"--probably from drowning.
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in rural Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.
Editorial on 11/17/2019