Battle royal: Three Ohio bucks lock up for fight to the death
Evidence at the scene indicated there had been a violent struggle.Everything around the pool was demolished, and three dead bodies were in the water.
But this wasn’t a home invasion or a triple homicide. The location was a hilly, wooded area of Meigs County in southeast Ohio.
And the victims were mature white-tailed bucks, their antlers locked in a three-way death grip. The water was a pool off of Leading Creek.
The deer were discovered in mid-November by a forester checking trees on the Burke family farm. The family notified the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
Photos were taken and now the demise of the bucks has become an Internet sensation.
“I get a half dozen calls a day on this,” said State Wildlife Officer Josh Shields, who responded to the scene. “And I’ve been getting calls from all over the country.
“One man in Michigan who collects antlers said he knows of only five incidents like this, and two were out of Ohio.
“But at least one came out of Texas.”
A month later, Internet chat room commentators still speculated on how the Ohio bucks got into the water, but Shields had a pretty good idea.
“This was mid November, the peak of the rut,” he said. “For a battle like that to take place, there had to have been a doe in estrus in the area.”
Trees were gouged, bushes were knocked over and the ground near the pool was tore up, probably by the hooves of the battling bucks.
“I don’t think anyone will ever know exactly what happened,” Shields said. “But, I would make the assumption that at least two of the deer were fighting and the third one came in and joined the battle.
“I’ve never seen that in the woods, but I have seen a video that had two deer fighting and another one came in and nudged the others.”
The duration of the battle is also up for speculation, but it continued long enough to make the mess around the pool.
“Whether they were exhausted or there was a lack of coordination … I don’t know, but they fell into a pool.”
And then they drowned.
Brien Burke, who has been speaking for his family about the deer, was unavailable for comment.
Shields, however, said the Burke family did the right thing by not touching the animals before he arrived.
He gave them permits to legally possess the deer. Together they helped remove “600 pounds of waterlogged deer” from the frigid pool.
The bucks’ antlers gross scored at 122, 140 and 169 — a total of 431 inches.
Shields explained that two of the heads had to be removed in the cold water before the tangled trio could be removed.
The officer said he couldn’t speak for the family, but he noted that the heads were “zip tied together to preserve integrity of the position they were found in.”
A good taxidermist, he said, could attach the capes from other deer onto full-body forms to make a display that recreates the fight.
Editor’s note: As for the report of three bucks locked up in Texas, Shields said he thought it happened in 2004, but he couldn’t remember where. He noted, however, that one of the bucks was still alive and he was freed when someone sawed his antlers. If you remember this incident, please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
