‘Dead’ Deer Kills Arkansas Hunter

YELLVILLE, AR — An experienced Arkansas hunter died this week after a deer he shot rose from the ground and attacked him in an incident a spokesman for the state’s game and fish commission said was one of the “stranger things” that has happened in the 20 years he has worked for the agency.

The hunter, 66-year-old Thomas Alexander, was hunting for deer Tuesday near his Ozark Mountains home outside Yellville in northern Arkansas. He saw a buck and shot it with his muzzleloader.

“I don’t know how long he left it there, but when he went up to check to make sure it was dead,” Keith Stephens, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s spokesperson, told Springfield, Missouri, news station KYTV.

“And evidently, it wasn’t,” Stephens said, telling the news station the deer attacked the hunter. “It got back up, and he had several puncture wounds on his body.”

The wounded buck disappeared into the woods after the attack, though wildlife officials tried to track him with police dogs until rain hampered the search, BuzzFeed News reported.

Alexander was hunting alone, but had his phone and was able to call his wife, who called for an ambulance. He stopped breathing and was pronounced dead at Regional Medical Center in Mountain Home, Arkansas. It’s unclear if Alexander died of puncture wounds from the buck’s antlers or a heart attack, Stephens said.

Though such attacks are rare, they do happen, according to Trey Reid, another spokesperson for the game and fish commission.

"Our hunter education coordinator has been working in this field for more than three decades and knows of only one other incident when a deer has attacked a hunter after being shot in Arkansas,” Reid told BuzzFeed News in an email. “That hunter was seriously injured but survived.”

That happened four years ago in Ashley County. The hunter’s injuries were “pretty significant,” Stephens told KYTV.

Wildlife officials recommend in required hunter safety classes that for their own safety, hunters shouldn’t immediately approach a deer they’ve shot. It’s usually considered safe for hunters to retrieve their kill after they see no movement for half an hour.

Alexander is the first hunter to die in Arkansas since the deer season opened, Reid told BuzzFeed. Three people died in hunting-related accidents last year, including one person who fell from an elevated deer stand, one who was fatally shot after being mistaken for a deer and another who died after an accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound.