Something strange in the woods

Okay, so this one is from an uncle of mine.
He lives out in the sticks, sort of one of those survivalist types. Hunts, lives off the land, a sort of more primitive rural existence.

Well, last family gathering, something had him spooked. He kept talking about his last hunting trip. He had seen something that had put the fear of god into him.

Now, my uncle isn't prone to delusions or spinning a tale, but this is what he told us.
He was tracking a deer he had shot nonfatally, to finish it off. He proceeded deeper into the woods, to find it. Well, he found it, alright. Or what was left of it.

He said he had seen another deer... eating it.. Then, it turned, and looked at him. He fled as fast as he could. I tell him that's impossible, deer are not carnivorous, but he swears to God he saw it.

He was in the Gulf War. Doesn't scare easily. Now, he could have been pulling my leg, telling a story, but if you saw the look in his eyes when he told us... Just very unsettling.

Anyone know what sort of thing could cause a deer to go carnivorous like that? Maybe food in the area is scarce.

Maybe the injury was worse than originally thought and another deer had found the injured one and was licking the wounds?

I would have jumped to that conclusion, but I don't know much about deer behavior. Could that be an explanation?

Is he sure the deer was actually eating? I'm thinking maybe the deer was checking out his fallen friend, maybe even licking his shot-wound..

You say 'what was left of it'. How long was your uncle tracking it for?

reply to post by Grifter42


Well deer do seem like birds.



But cannibal deer thats just really wrong in so many ways.

reply to post by Grifter42


I found this footage of one eating a dead deer on some hunting website so maybe deer will sometimes eat the dead bodies of other deer if there is no other food to be found
www.northamericanwhitetail.com...

reply to post by paradisepurple


I dunno how long he tracked it. A while, whatever a while means in hunter speak. But it wasn't licking the other deer. He made that much clear. It was eating it. Maybe it's some sort of neurological disease? Famine?

reply to post by Grifter42


I'd make sure he isn't just pulling your leg the next time you see him. He had a gun...but he ran in fear of a deer?

I would have had two deers in the freezer.

It's the salt content in the blood.

Quite natural actually, particularly in the middle of winter. That is why it happens and you see it. They are not cannibalistic, (they don't go out and kill for food) they are just after the salt/iron in the blood which they can now smell, since the animal is bleeding out.

Cirque

reply to post by Grifter42


Odd but not impossible, there is an island off the coast of Briton which was evacuated but he sheep were left on the island, years later they were witnessed and even filmed killing and eating sea gull's, they did not eat the flesh but the bone's, it turned out that the island is naturally very poor in calcium so the level of calcium in the grass was very low but was he sure it was a deer, I wonder could there be another species of predator that has evolved to look like it's prey and so far eluded identification.

reply to post by LABTECH767


I just suppose the notion of it seems entirely wrong to me. Deer aren't supposed to eat meat.

What if it wasn't a deer?

Originally posted by Grifter42
reply to post by LABTECH767

 

I just suppose the notion of it seems entirely wrong to me. Deer aren't supposed to eat meat.

What if it wasn't a deer?

Do you think it might have been a skinwalker or shape shifter?

ghall1950.newsvine.com...

reply to post by Grifter42

I've never heard of a deer eating another deer but I have personally witnessed two deer eating road kill once. I stopped the car because I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me- my eyes were fine!

reply to post by olaru12


That's a creepy idea. There's a rational part of me that wants to say that it was just a salt hungry deer, but he said it was gutted. Why the entrails? Deer don't even have sharp enough teeth to get to those. You'd need carnivore's teeth. The more I think about it, the more I think it might be bull, but he seemed dead serious. He's not one to usually play tricks though. Though, I suppose it'd be a good one to play on me.

Maybe a predator got to it, and then left, maybe taking a chunk of the animal with it, and then a deer stumbled acrossed it after the predator left, and it was ravenously starving for salt and went to the most gaping wound and started eating...

When you say "what was left of it" it seems like quite a bit of it was gone... How much time had passed between the non fatal shot and when he found it? Maybe it was some other crazy unknown beast...but your uncle hallucinated a deer because that's just the image his brain went to cause he already had deer on the brain so once his brain made the decision that it could not handle what it was seeing, it replaces it with the deer? The brain, and human body in general can do some amazing things to try to protect itself, including blocking out memories that could be damaging to the stability of ones psyche...

Gutted you say? Perhaps he stumbled upon a "cattle mutilation a la deer" in progress? Good thing he got away. Whatever it was eats meat...and we are all made of...meat... It's an unsettling feeling knowing that there are some KNOWN creatures that look at us as food. What about the unknown unknowns?

A lot of people mysteriously go missing out in the woods. There is something sinister in the woods, that can shape shift. The shape shifter has a thirst for blood.

reply to post by AthlonSavage


What exactly do you mean by that?

Scary as hell!

I have seen herbivores licking the other herbivores wounds but eating it? Their biological system can’t handle the raw meat unless your uncle was witnessing a fine example of evolutionary phase, something that make us humans like herbivore/carnivore in the long past.

Nature is indeed the strangest beast of all age.

I know deer will kill rabbits and birds and eat them, so this is believable. I've never heard of a deer eating another deer like that though, and I live in WV and me, my family and friends have hunted all our lives. I say: Possible.

reply to post by Fylgje


Well, this whole thing happened outside of Cedar Rapids. Iowa's usually pretty peaceful. Though, sometimes looks like something out of Children of the Corn. Lots of fields to hide in.
It's creepy to think about, deer eating another deer. Like the balance of nature was off. I don't get it. Why wouldn't a deer just move to a more abundant food source? It's not like it was winter. It's just bizaare.

reply to post by Grifter42


We have some pretty decent-sized corn fields here too, but probably not as huge as out there. My sons trip out every time we drive by them because they are a lot bigger than what we have in our garden. lol .
I'm thinking that it's just in a deer's nature to eat whatever it wants. Maybe hunters should stop using corn to feed the deer and pile some baby birds in a pile? I'm kidding!