Alabama Man Chokes Out Attacking Buck

Jonathon Counts killed a buck with his bare hands when it attacked him while he was cutting down trees in Skyline, Alabama. (Photo by Jonathon Counts)

An Alabama man says he choked a buck to death with his bare hands after it attacked him.

According to Al.com, Jonathon Counts said he was cutting down trees in Skyline last month, when he spotted an 8-point buck with orange bows on his antlers emerge from the woods.

Counts took a photo of the buck and returned to stacking limbs as the deer slowly walked around the brush pile.

“While I was dragging limbs over to the pile, the deer moved closer to me as I dropped the limb on the pile,” Counts wrote in an email to AL.com.

“He then charged my left leg with his antlers. He sent me forward onto his antlers and as I came down, I grabbed hold of his antlers. He then proceeded to pull me back and then charge forward repeatedly, to try his best to kill me.”

Counts said during the attack, he was trying to keep the buck’s head as low as possible. He said he yelled for help as loudly as he could, multiple times, but realized that no one was coming.

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He said he continued to struggle with the deer for several minutes while “a sense of anxiousness flooded into [his] thoughts as visions of my wife and children flashed into my head.”

Counts said he was finally able to get the deer into a chokehold until it stopped struggling.

“As I locked my hand around his bottom jaw, I started applying what I could only describe as half rear naked choke. It was the only thing I could think of. Slowly the deer’s front legs bent, then the rear legs,” he wrote in a letter to popular Alabama meteorologist James Spann.

Counts said when he observed no rise or fall in the chest or stomach and no audible breathing noise, he continued to hold for five more minutes.

He finally let go of the deer and returned to his truck.

Jonathan Counts shot the buck with his pistol after choking it to death to make sure it was dead. (Photo by Jonathon Counts)

“I went to my truck, opened the door and sat gasping for air,” Counts wrote.

“I then went into my console and pulled out my .38 pistol. With some apprehension I approached the deer and unloaded one shot into his chest. No blood came from the wound, so I knew that his heart was not beating.”

Counts said he sustained several injuries including a 6 cm puncture on his buttocks.

Heath Walls, assistant chief of law enforcement at the Alabama Dept. of Conservation & Natural Resources Wildlife & Freshwater Fisheries Division, said the deer exhibited strange behavior toward Counts because it was likely tame.

“It looks like the deer is tame to some extent based on the fact that someone put orange bows on its antlers. That would also be an explanation as to why it was not afraid of people and approached someone. That is definitely not normal behavior for a wild deer.”

He added that Alabama deer are in rut right now, which also explains the aggressive behavior. He said the buck’s rutting behavior combined with the deer’s lack of fear for humans created a dangerous situation.

If someone does find themselves in a similar situation, Walls said “they should create distance and put a barrier between them and the deer.”

You can read Counts’s full account in a letter he wrote to Alabama meteorologist James Spann.