Be a dear about antlers

A buck’s struggle to free its antlers from a backyard hanging chair the evening of Thursday, Oct. 24, offers a lesson in people’s relationship with male cervids in particular and wildlife in general.

“Bucks are more active this time of year, which is the beginning of the rut,” Joe Lewandowski, a Durango-based spokesman for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, said Friday. “They’re out trying to line up a likely female.”

The West Third Avenue buck ripped the hanging canvas chair, or sky chair, from its moorings but couldn’t dislodge the chair from its antlers. Witnesses said the stressed buck fled the backyard, ran down an embankment into the Animas River, then back up the slope to disappear from sight near Manna Soup Kitchen.

There was a happy ending.

Wildlife officers found the buck mid-morning Friday behind Durango High School, Lewandowski said. They tranquilized him, and cut off his antlers to disentangle the sky chair. The buck was moved to a discrete spot and left to recover from the tranquilizer and regain strength and composure, Lewandowski said.

Removing the buck’s antlers doesn’t harm him, Lewandowski said. He would shed them anyway around the first of the year.

Sky chairs, such as the one in the West Third Avenue yard that snared the buck, are a problem for deer, Lewandowski said.

“We urge people to take down hammocks, volleyball and badminton nets,” Lewandowski said. “They aren’t going to be widely used at this time of year anyway.”

Holiday lights are another potential liability for bucks, Lewandowski said. Ideally, lights should be hung against a wall or high enough in a tree to escape the reach of antlers.

An incident, if not an everyday event, occurs frequently enough to warrant a review of human-wildlife coexistence, Lewandowski said.

Lewandowski said that a few years ago a deer got its nose wedged into a plastic pumpkin in Greenmount Cemetery. The animal had to be tranquilized to free it, he said.

People should not try to free a buck from an entanglement, Lewandowski said. The effort could stress the animal more or, worse, result in an injury to the good Samaritan, he said.

People also should not allow their dog to harass a buck, Lewandowski said.

“Bucks are aggressive, especially at this time,” Lewandowski said. “A dog could get gored – and they have.”

A buck, or any animal in distress, may be reported to Colorado Parks and Wildlife at 247-0855.

The same hands-off policy holds in the spring when wildlife newborns abound, Lewandowski said. People shouldn’t interfere with the natural process by picking up fawns, even if they appear to be abandoned because the mother is nearby, he said.

As for the antlerless buck, Lewandowski hopes the bald look doesn’t make him less attractive to does.