By Jason Blaylock
Conservation Officers receive many calls regarding animal disturbances, some routine and others unforgettable.
I have received calls about snakes, raccoons, and opossums in the house. Two years ago, I received a call from a woman in Kosciusko about a deer in her backyard that would not leave. She did not explain to me why it would not leave, just that it was in the backyard.
Upon arrival at the house, she directed me to the backyard, where two other women and a man who worked for the city of Kosciusko were standing near a swimming pool covered by a tarp. I looked around for the deer but could not see it.
I asked the woman, “Where’s the deer?”
They all pointed toward the swimming pool and said the deer was under the tarp. I walked over to the pool, lifted the tarp, and there was a buck at the shallow end. It was a nice buck, too. It had five normal points on one side and a drop tine on the other. It was a non-typical 10-point buck.
So, what was the deer doing in the pool? It was doing laps. The deer circled the pool under the tarp, showing no desire to leave. I asked the man to help me lift the tarp at the shallow end of the pool, where there were stairs, and maybe we could scare it enough to get out of the pool. When we tried that, the deer would get near the stairs and start doing laps around the pool again. We had to try a different tactic. On one side of the pool, the man took a pole to keep the deer toward the shallow end, and on the other side, I started banging on the tarp to try to shake it out.
While we were doing this, one of the women walked over to the shallow end of the pool and got her camera out because, you know, she had to have a photo of this. There she was, trying to get set up for a photo, when that buck decided it was time to get out of the pool. The deer came bounding out of the pool and almost ran over the woman.
In case you were wondering, she did not get the picture.
Lt. Jason Blaylock is an MDWFP Conservation Officer in Attala County. To see a complete discussion with Lt. Blaylock, Lt. Sheila Smith, Lt. Marcus Christon, and Mississippi Outdoors’ Matt Wyatt, download the Mississippi Outdoors podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. erns.
Wildlife and Hunting