According to a press release issued by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), on September 27th, Environmental Conservation Officer (ECO) Mead received a report about a deer with its head stuck in a swing set in Jamestown, Chautauqua County. The caller reported the animal was struggling to free itself for an estimated 45 minutes.
When Officer Meade arrived, the caller showed him the four-point-buck entangled in a large tree swing with a 25-foot rope. The animal could run more than 20 feet in any direction only to be snapped back and swept up to eight feet in the air before crashing back down, often into and around nearby smaller trees.
With daylight fading quickly, Officer Mead said he duct-taped his knife to a long stick and grabbed a flashlight. Doing his best to avoid the animal’s wildly thrashing hooves, after several attempts the ECO freed the animal without injuring himself or the deer by cutting the rope and preventing the deer from re-entangling itself. The buck ran away showing no signs of significant harm.
On October 12th, ECO Vencak responded to reports of a deer trapped in a soccer goal net at Hartwick College in the city of Oneonta, Otsego County. Officer Vencak managed to cover the yearling deer with a blanket and hold it long enough for Hartwick employees to cut the net off and free the deer. The animal ran off into the woods, uninjured, after the incident.
Photo of Deer tangled in soccer net at Hartwick College in Otsego County provided.
Thanks to those two officers who helped in those two deer situations. Those poor animals must have been terrified and the officers used good thinking to avoid injuries to themselves and to the deer in how they got the animals free.
It’s sad that wildlife has fewer and fewer places to go. It’s really not that there are so many of them – it’s that there are so many of US and we are pushing them all out.