A crossbow hunter nearly died in January after being gored by a buck he was blood-trailing in freezing weather.
If that wasn’t harrowing enough, he was then slapped with a fine.
According to published reports, Richard C. Harris, 71, began tracking a deer he shot around 4:30 p.m. on Jan. 5. in Columbia County, Wisconsin. His arrow went awry, however, and produced a wound that was not immediately lethal. While blood-trailing, he bumped the buck several times from its beds. At one point, Harris was reportedly standing about 6 feet from the deer, trying to decide if he should go back to get his bow for another shot. The buck then stood up and ran toward Harris, goring him in the leg with his antler.
The Portage Fire Department and the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office were dispatched at 12:41 a.m., according to a press release on the Portage Fire Department’s Facebook page. The County Sheriff Deputies found Harris’ ATV and followed his tracks. They located him in a drainage ditch with a wound to the inside of his right leg. Disoriented and possibly suffering from hypothermia, the fire department and sheriff’s office contacted Med Flight which transported him to a hospital for emergency treatment. “Med Flight made a difficult landing in the snow-covered field to make the rescue possible,” announced the Portage Fire Department in their press release. According to NWS Milwaukee, windchill was around -6 degrees that night. “Doctors were saying he was an hour or two away from dying,” Columbia County Sheriff’s Office’s Captain Todd Horn told Newsweek.
According to the Antigo Journal, after Harris was rescued, Wisconsin DNR conservation warden Peter McCormick located Harris’ ground blind, which was next to a food plot planted with brassicas and turnips. McCormick also found a pile of shelled corn that he believed equaled about 3 to 5 gallons of bait. However, baiting whitetails has been illegal since 2003 in Columbia County.
McCormick followed the buck’s blood trail 500 yards to Harris’ property line. Harris had left his crossbow and warmer clothing behind and parked his ATV at the line, continuing to track the buck onto the neighbor’s property for another 250 yards. The injured buck gored Harris after he approached it head-on about 6 to 8 feet away. McCormick doesn’t believe the attack was intentional. He said the brush was thick, and Harris was probably standing in the middle of its attempted escape route. Harris’ phone died just before he was injured, and his wife called for help after he did not return home.
McCormick fined Harris $343.50 and returned his crossbow, though he could have been fined over $2,000. The warden also confiscated the buck, although Harris asked several times if he could keep it.
