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Startling photos of a mature whitetail buck with severe eye bulging and redness emerged on Facebook on Sunday, stirring some questions about what was causing the deer’s condition. Brandon Hydrick from Saluda County, South Carolina saw the buck alive while checking cows on his property on Saturday, he tells Outdoor Life. The buck looked like it was bedded but didn’t show any signs of illness or distress. The next day, Hydrick drove his off-road vehicle right up to the buck, at which point he noticed the eye bulging and signs of blindness and lethargy.

After calling the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, Hydrick killed the deer to put it out of its misery. He sent video footage and other documentation of him killing the buck to SCDNR, per a game warden’s request, but he didn’t have to use his deer tags on it.

“I take pride in harvesting these animals, so I called [DNR] immediately,” Hydrick says. “I know I can legally shoot him because it’s deer season and I have tags and a license, but I wanted to know what the right thing to do was.”

Conservation officers and biologists reviewed the footage, SCDNR big game program coordinator Charles Ruth tells Outdoor Life. After initial observation, Ruth’s main theory is that the buck was suffering from a brain abscess that was impacting its neurological function—especially its vision. The abscess was likely causing pressure on the brain and inside the skull, which in turn caused the eyes to bulge and likely rendered the buck either partially or fully blind.

But where did the brain abscess come from? When bucks rub and spar, they often cause minor, surface-level injuries to their heads, Ruth says. Bacteria that live naturally on the skin can tunnel into the cranium, boring a pinhole in the skull and starting the abscess. When white blood cells attack bacteria, tissue surrounding the infection site dies and creates a pocket of pus. In a location like the brain, without relief, that pocket will keep growing.

Roughly 4 to 6 percent of mature bucks can have brain abscesses, Ruth says. Because these are caused by normal skin bacteria, there’s no risk of transmission or outbreak. But they do become more common during certain times of the year when bucks are fighting or rubbing more, like during the rut or when they’re shedding velvet. It’s not long before the neurological consequences set in.

A few other hypotheses for this deer’s ailments included epizootic hemorrhagic disease or a congenital condition that the buck has dealt with since birth, Ruth says. But the buck is in good body condition, which makes EHD less likely.

“That deer otherwise looked like it was in pretty darn good shape,” Ruth says. “It had good body mass and muscle tone. More than likely, given that it had a nice set of antlers, whatever happened to it has happened since most of its antler development ended.”

If the condition is part of some genetic birth defect, the buck would have been developing these symptoms since it was a young fawn. (Ruth estimates the buck is around 3.5 to 4.5 years old based on its body size and shape.) But Hydrick had trail camera photos of the buck in perfect health from earlier in the year, so Ruth’s primary estimate is that a bacterium like Trueperella pyogenes or a staphylococcus strain is to blame.

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Unfortunately, Ruth says, a brain abscess is a certain death sentence for the affected deer.

“We’ll get the quintessential call from a property owner or hunter who has an adult buck walking in circles in a food plot, and you can walk right up to them and they don’t even have any idea you’re on the planet,” Ruth says. “Those deer are going to die.”

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include comment from landowner Brandon Hydrick.

October has been a big month for sea-run fish records on Idaho’s Clearwater River. On Saturday, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game certified a new state-record steelhead that fly fisherman Kyriacos Panayiotou caught from the Clearwater in early October. That record became official only three days after IDFG certified a new state-record coho salmon, which was pulled from the same river Oct. 13.

Panayiotou caught his record-sized steelhead early in the morning of Oct. 6, according to an IDFG press release. The angler from McCall was wade fishing a stretch of the Clearwater and swinging flies with a two-handed spey rod. A traditional fly-fishing technique carried over from the Atlantic salmon rivers of Europe, it’s one of the more challenging yet rewarding ways to catch a steelhead (a rainbow trout that returns to the river after spending years in the Pacific.)

“The full floating spey line was approximately 120 to 130 feet when the fly started the swing,” Panayiotou told IDFG. “At around 30 degrees of a swing, this beautiful wild steelhead buck boiled to the surface and grabbed the fly with authority. The vintage Hardy Perfect reel could do nothing in slowing down this fish … it’s something that I’ll never forget.”

The fly fisherman knew he’d caught something special as soon as he landed the giant buck (the term for a male steelhead.) While keeping it wet in the shallows, Panayiotou measured the 41-inch fish with a flexible measuring tape and took a picture of it next to his spey rod. He reportedly released the wild fish to continue its journey to its spawning grounds.

Although it sounds like Panayiotou would have let the fish go anyways, he didn’t have much of a choice. Idaho’s steelhead runs are endangered, with only 2 percent of their historical populations remaining, according to the Idaho Conservation League. Because of these low numbers, IDFG requires that all wild steelhead be released. (Wild fish can be identified from their hatchery counterparts by their intact adipose fin.)

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“In a typical year,” DuPont explained, “the number of steelhead in the 40-inch range is less than 1 percent of the run.”

Grayling have an exotic air about them for many anglers in the Lower 48. We’ve seen them in books and magazines, but they’re mostly pictured in far-flung destinations like Alaska and northern Canada where they thrive in large numbers. Historically, however, these salmon relatives were abundant in parts of Michigan and Montana.

Montana’s grayling, which are confined to the upper Missouri drainage and a handful of high mountain lakes, are remnants of a wild population. Michigan’s grayling, on the other hand, once thrived in the state’s streams but went extinct generations ago. Now, thanks to years of restoration efforts, anglers in Michigan will be able to target grayling once again this fall.

Gray Areas

It’s been nearly a century since wild Arctic grayling swam in Michigan waters, Bridge Michigan reports. They used to be the most abundant fish in the state, according to the Michigan Arctic Grayling Initiative, but years of overfishing and the introduction of non-native species like brown trout played significant roles in their eradication. Widespread logging during the early 20th century arguably took the biggest toll on these fish, which require clean, cold, and clear water to spawn in. By removing the trees that provided essential cover and choking some river stretches with debris, these practices ultimately doomed Michigan’s grayling.

Efforts to raise grayling and reintroduce them into their historic Michigan range have been ongoing for years. State-run hatcheries began rearing grayling for reintroduction in 2019, and just recently, two things have fast tracked the ability of anglers to actually find a grayling on the end of their lines.

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If the program is a success, within the next five to 10 years, it’s possible that a species foreign to most of us will be available without having to travel to faraway lodges. The question is: How do you catch them?

Basic Tips for Catching Grayling

As a kid, I marveled at pictures of grayling in my North American Fishing Club books. They’re so pretty they almost look tropical. Iridescent aquas, pinks, and purples decorate their fins—including their signature sail-like dorsal. They’re flecked in vivid white, black, and gold spots.

It wasn’t until my first trip to Alaska in my 20s that I finally got the chance to catch one on remote Peters Creek. What I quickly learned was that up there, grayling aren’t some elusive, once-in-a-lifetime fish that can take years to find. Quite the opposite—they’re everywhere. I’ve fished for them several more times since then. So, if you’re considering taking a road trip to Michigan or a float plane into the Alaskan bush to catch one, here are a few tips.

Grayling are highly aggressive, arguably more so than the average trout. However, even fully grown adults have pretty small mouths. While you might get a grayling to come out swinging at a large streamer fly or spinner, don’t be shocked if you don’t connect. Scaling back lure and fly size is critical. Luckily, like trout, their primary food source is aquatic insects. Any wet fly, dry fly, or nymph pattern you’d use for trout will catch grayling, and the beauty is that you don’t have to worry about matching the hatch perfectly.

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In my experience, grayling simply react to bugs. If there are caddis hatching and you cast a mayfly, they’re probably going to rise to sip it. If there are yellow stoneflies in a river and you send out a black one, they’ll likely eat it. Grayling also respond well to movement, which allows fly anglers to be a bit sloppier than normal. As an example, while you typically want a nice, dead drift with a nymph for trout, I’ve caught more grayling stripping my nymphs back like a streamer. It’s a totally unnatural presentation, but they don’t seem to care.

Grayling also fight very hard for their size, but be careful not to overpower them with unnecessarily heavy gear. A 4-weight fly rod is the perfect choice, and a 6-foot ultra-light spinning rod and reel loaded with 4-pound test line is another great tool for delivering small spinners and jigs while getting the most out of their scrappy battles.

The Australian government has announced an ambitious plan to cull thousands of wild horses using helicopters and sharpshooters. The effort will concentrate in and around Kosciuszko National Park, which encompasses the Snowy Mountains—better known as the “Australian Alps.” The park is also home to about 19,000 wild horses, according to a 2022 survey conducted by the New South Wales government.

Environmental authorities say this feral population is negatively impacting the park’s native species, and particularly its delicate alpine ecosystems. They’ve announced a goal of reducing that number to roughly 3,000 animals by 2027.

“There are simply too many wild horses in Kosciuszko National Park,” New South Wales environment minister Penny Sharpe told The Guardian. “Threatened native species are in danger of extinction and the entire ecosystem is under threat … I want to make sure our national parks staff have all the options they need to reach the population target and protect this precious alpine environment.”

Those options include aerial sharpshooting, which allows wildlife managers to efficiently remove animals over large expanses of rough terrain. It could also be one of the only effective options left, as other attempts to reduce the park’s wild horse population have proven unsuccessful. This practice has been met with extreme controversy in the past, and public outcry was swift when Australia conducted its last aerial sharpshooting operation, killing 600 horses in 2020. Many people also have a strong emotional reaction to management of wild horses, known as “brumbies” in Australia.

Public opinion on feral horse management in the U.S. remains fraught, but attitudes in Australia seem to be shifting. The country’s government sought public input about the most recent horse culling proposal in Kosciuszko, and more than 80 percent of the respondents were in favor in lethally removing the animals. Although they still have a cultural value to many Australians, wildlife managers and environmental experts are trying to convince the public that wild horses grazing and damaging natural resources to the detriment of native species.

“I can’t stand by and say the status quo is adequate, because the harm and damage that’s happening to the park is too great,” Sharpe said. “I love horses, but they don’t belong in national parks. Feral horses are causing serious damage to our native plants and animals, including many endangered species in the Australian Alps.”

This issue is not unique to Australia. The Western United States also struggles with wild horse management, where drought and habitat loss already threaten native species and ecosystems. The wild horse, a heralded symbol of the West that’s also federally protected from mass population reduction tactics, compounds those issues.

“If we’re managing for the health of the landscape, [then] there are way too many horses on the landscape,” Bureau of Land Management director Tracy Stone-Manning told Outdoor Life last year. “It’s not tenable for wildlife. It’s not tenable for healthy [lands], and it’s not tenable for the horses.”

An out-of-state angler who was visiting South Dakota’s famed Lake Oahe was trolling a deep-diving crankbait when a heavy fish struck his plug on Friday. Pretty soon, Aaron Schuck of Bismarck was reeling in what will likely be the next South Dakota state-record walleye.

“It took a while to get in,” Schuck told Keoland News. “I had like 187 feet [of] line out there. So, it took quite a while and then when I got close to the boat, it was pretty much straight down.”

Until this trip, Schuck has caught walleyes weighing up to 10 pounds. He is a dedicated angler with plenty experience on Oahe, which is actually a long, winding reservoir on the Missouri River in central South Dakota. But Schuck’s heavyweight catch, which weighed in at 16.5 pounds and measured 33 inches long, came as a major surprise to him.

“I was shocked,” Schuck said. “It was a long-time dream of mine. All I wanted to catch was a 14-pounder and now I have my name in the record books.”

Schuck had the 33-inch long fish officially weighed on certified scales at Oahe Sunset Lodge and Steakhouse, near the town of Pollock. Sunset Lodge owner Lisa Moser confirmed that Schuck actually caught the fish near the town of Akaska. Pollock and Akaska are both on the eastern shore of Upper Lake Oahe.

SDGFP stocks walleye at 15 different locations on Lower Lake Oahe and just two location on Upper Lake Oahe. In 2022, they released 2,000,000 walleye fry across all 17 stocking locations. In prior years, they’ve also released small fingerlings or a combination of both fingerlings and fry. Walleye greater than 20 inches long have been on the decline in Upper Lake Oahe over the last few years, SDGFP reports.

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Schuck usually releases big walleyes, but he plans to get his record fish mounted, he says.

“Instead of killing the fish, I just take a picture let them go,” he said. “But I always wanted a big, big one.”

Long before Alabama’s 2023 bow season began, Joby Newman started getting cellular trail camera photos of a giant buck on his family’s 1,600-acre deer lease southeast of Montgomery.

“We’ve had the lease for four years and have managed it for big deer,” Newman, 24, tells Outdoor Life. “But the huge buck we started getting photos of in July was way bigger than anything we’ve seen on the property. We had photos of him throughout the summer, visiting different spots on the lease. He moved near a clear-cut area just before bow season, and that’s where I set up a lock-on stand, 25 feet off the ground.”

Newman climbed into his stand to hunt for the first time on Oct. 14 at 1:30 p.m. Within 10 minutes, does and small bucks began showing within bow range, including some decent 8-pointers. He estimated he saw at least 30 deer that night.

“I was going to hold out for the big buck no matter what,” Newman says. “He was in velvet, which is rare even in early bow season. He was my main goal—the only deer I was gonna shoot that evening.”

The velvet buck had routinely traveled through the clear-cut from 5:30 to 6 p.m., according to Newman’s trail cam photos. At 5:25, he showed up following several small bucks and a doe.

“I turned to look at the doe, and there he was, out about 70 yards coming right to me,” Newman says. “As the velvet buck got closer, two smaller bucks started head butting. The velvet buck turned to look at them and began making a scrape about 20 yards from me. I was afraid he was going to start fighting the little bucks or rub a tree and scrape off his velvet. I had to shoot.”

“I hit him right behind the shoulder, and I knew it was a good shot,” Newman says. “I watched him run, then stop about 40 yards away in some woods. I immediately texted my dad and told him I’d shot the velvet buck. Then I called my fiancée, Jordan, and told her.”

He waited about 30 minutes then backed out to his vehicle, giving the buck plenty of time. As Newman slipped out, he noticed a big brush pile near the clear-cut, and happened to spot the buck.

“I watched him carefully and he didn’t move,” Newman says. “I got closer, and confirmed he was dead.”

Newman’s father arrived, and the pair loaded the buck into their truck and took it to a barn for cleaning. The 16-point weighed 203 pounds and was estimated to be 5.5 years old.

Buckmasters scored the buck at 162 6/8 inches, which is a Buckmasters Alabama record for a “semi-irregular buck with a compound bow.” The deer’s main beams measure 5 inches in circumference with an outside antler spread of nearly 19 inches.

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Newman will have the velvet buck mounted by a taxidermist, and he’s contacted Pope & Young for entry into their bowhunting record book.

“I’ve talked to the P&Y scorers,” Newman says. “They say the buck should become the state record for velvet bucks when they measure him.”

There are only two typical velvet whitetails from Alabama in the Pope and Young record book; the largest was taken on Oct. 19, 1996 and scored 144 6/8. Curiously the other Alabama velvet buck on the recordbooks was taken even later in the season—on Nov. 5—in 1998.

On the opening day of Oklahoma’s bow season, Ethan Kile finally tagged a massive buck that he’d chased all through the 2022 season without success. He killed the 30-point buck on Oct. 1 while bowhunting a small, 40-acre parcel of private land in Gavin County.

“Friends and I unofficially scored the buck via the Buckmasters system at 229 7/8 gross inches, with 30 antler points you could hang a ring on,” Kile tells Outdoor Life.

He adds that his taxidermist will get the deer officially scored after the mandatory 60-day drying period ends. And if the official score comes anywhere close to that 230-inch mark, Kile’s buck will likely be among the top 10 archery bucks ever taken in Oklahoma.

Kile first spotted the giant non-typical during the summer of 2022 while he was mowing fields on the private, 40-acre parcel that his uncle owns. After noticing some more deer sign that September, he set up some cellular trail cams and started getting pictures of the buck at night.

“He was about 30 inches smaller in 2022 than he was in 2023,” he explains. “But I sure would have taken him last year if I’d had a chance.”

The buck returned to the same general area on the property this July, and Kile started getting trail cam photos of it at night. By the time bow season rolled around, Kile figured he’d get to the blind late in the afternoon and hope for an opportunity that evening. He got his chance around 7 p.m.

“I had a small buck close when the big deer showed in the woods near the opening I was hunting,” Kile says. “He watched the little buck for 10 minutes before walking closer, and I got a broadside shot of him at 28 yards.”

His arrow sailed a bit high, though, and he says the buck “jumped the string.”

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“My broadhead hit him in the neck, but fortunately it severed a main artery, and he only went 250 yards before dropping,” Kile says.

Kiile’s father came out to help track the buck in the 90-degree heat. They gave it an hour and then found the buck’s blood trail in the tall grass.

“The grass was so think I was just 10 yards from it before seeing the deer,” Kile recalls.

They loaded the trophy buck in their pickup after field dressing it. The deer weighed around 160 pounds dressed, and they estimated its age around six years old.

Kile says he’s gotten out hunting four more times since tagging the massive buck earlier this month. But he still hasn’t drawn his bow again.

“I’ve had some deer [in] close that I could have taken, and I even had a 140-inch buck in bow range. He was only three years old, though, and there’s plenty of time for him to grow bigger in the coming years,” Kile says. “But I don’t know if he’ll ever reach the size of the buck I got on opening day this year.”

Wyoming legislators and wildlife managers convened at the University of Wyoming Tuesday to discuss ways to manage the overpopulated elk herds found in certain parts of the state. A potential solution proposed by one legislator would be to issue “all-you-can-kill” elk permits for ranchers, according to Cowboy State Daily. The proposal elicited backlash from some hunters, many of whom hunt public land and have long criticized the state’s handling of private-land elk management.

Rep. Bill Allemand (R-Midwest) floated the idea during the meeting, which brought together members of the Joint Agriculture, State and Public Lands and Water Resources Committee. Allemand, who represents District 58, said these unlimited take permits would help alleviate the burden that overabundant elk herds are having on ranchers—particularly those in the southeast corner of the state.

Under Allemand’s proposal, these permits would cost $20 apiece. A landowner could then use that permit to kill as many elk as they’d like, or they could hand the permit off to someone else. The permits would be valid from Aug. 1 until April 1 of the following year.

“This our last chance to help these people in these areas,” Alemand said during the meeting, according to CSD. “They haven’t been helped in 30 years.”

At this point, however, Allemand’s proposal is just that. The legislator from Natrona County tried introducing the permit program as an amendment to another bill being considered by the committee, and then as a stand-alone bill. Both attempts failed.

Wyoming’s overabundance of elk on private land has long been a topic of discussion among wildlife managers. It’s a real problem in Albany and Laramie Counties, where thousands of elk migrate onto ranches to graze during the fall and winter. These large herds compete with cattle for grass and hay, which leads ranchers to seek reimbursement from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. In some years, individual landowners have received more than $70,000 from the agency to cover costs and replace lost revenue, WyoFile reports.

“Hunter Management Areas, Landowner Assistance Programs, Walk-In Areas, social media, word of mouth,” one user wrote in a HuntTalk forum. “There are plenty of hunters willing to help kill these elk, but if landowners don’t want to participate … I don’t think it’s right to give them preferential treatment and come up with an entire special program for them.”

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Allemand initially suggested that ranchers would be able to sell their unlimited take permits if they wanted to, but WGFD chief game warden Rick King nipped this idea in the bud, according to CSD. King argued that this would only incentivize landowners to keep elk populations high and create an even bigger market for high-dollar hunts. Allemand then agreed to change the language in his proposal to allow landowners to give these permits away but not sell them.

The legislator also told Cowboy State Daily that if he did try to introduce his proposal as a stand-alone bill during the 2024 legislative session, he would make the permits valid for cow elk only. His proposal would also require that any elk killed using these permits would have to be processed and not wasted. He added, however, that he hasn’t decided whether he’ll move forward with the proposal next year.

This week, as North America’s wildlife professionals gather in Louisville, Kentucky, for the annual meetings of The Wildlife Society, the question of who calls the shots in wildlife management will be a hot topic.

Last year’s Wildlife Society annual meeting, in Spokane, was defined by what some in the wildlife-management profession characterized as a takeover by animal-rights activists who generally feel left out of traditional wildlife management.

They’re not entirely wrong. Most state wildlife agencies are funded mainly by hunters, either through license sales or pass-through revenue from taxes on guns, bows, and ammunition. And while state fish and game departments have wide authority to manage butterflies, minnows, and songbirds, most manage primarily for catchable fish and huntable game.

The wildlife activists, who want state agencies to de-emphasize hunting and fishing in favor of more tolerance for carnivores and non-game species, are not politely asking to be included, as last year’s Wildlife Society meeting indicated. In many states, they’re using the political process to win gubernatorial appointments to fish and game commissions. Washington, where these animal-rights advocates now hold a majority of commission seats, has become the leading indicator of a transition away from agencies that cater mainly to hunters and anglers.

Colorado is quickly moving toward a similar model, with the recent appointment of three commissioners who represent constituents who may have never bought a hunting or fishing license.

Over the next four weeks, I’ll join Randy Newberg, host of the popular Hunt Talk Radio, to discuss why these nerdy procedural topics matter to everyone who hunts and fishes in North America. In episode 1, which drops today, Newberg and I line out what’s at stake in this transition, which is going on with very little input from states’ hunting and angling communities.

The magnitude of the change isn’t lost on many wildlife managers. In Louisville this week, The Wildlife Society will host a number of conversations around the topic. Two of the most pertinent gatherings are this Wednesday. Early in the day, the executive director of the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, Ron Regan, and Tony Wasley, the president of the Wildlife Management Institute, will moderate a symposium that highlights the efforts of fish and wildlife agencies as they expand the reach of their conservation mandate to include species that are not hunted or fished.

Later on Wednesday, a panel of state-agency directors and commissioners will share their experiences with guiding conservation efforts within the changing context for wildlife values and expectations.

The idea for these related sessions is both to confirm that state, provincial, and tribal wildlife agencies are at the forefront of wildlife conservation, and that hunters and anglers fund an awful lot of non-game species management. If that prompts a “well, duh!” response from you, then you’re the perfect listener to this first podcast, which lines out how hunters and anglers could lose if this trend gains traction in your state.

The rut is picking up in British Columbia’s Okanogan Valley, where three different people were attacked by deer in the span of a week. All three attacks targeted women who were walking their dogs. In one instance, the dog was killed.

The most recent incident took place on Nov. 2. At around 8 a.m., a mule deer buck charged and attacked a 50-year-old woman who was walking two leashed dogs in a Kelowna neighborhood, according to the Coast Reporter. The victim was transported by ambulance to a local hospital, and authorities did not give an update on her condition as of Nov. 3.

David Karn, a spokesperson for the province’s Ministry of Environment, told reporters on Friday that the BC Conservation Officer Service was investigating the attack. He said wildlife officers were trying to locate the aggressive buck so they could euthanize it.

“I think in this case, they’re going to treat it similarly to a predator incident. We’re tracking it and trying to find the offending deer,” Karn explained. “Officers will continue to search for the offending deer, which may possibly have a broken antler.”

The other two attacks that took place in Okanogan throughout the week occurred on Oct. 26 and Nov. 1. Both involved women and their dogs in West Kelowna, which sits across Okanogan Lake from the larger town of Kelowna.

On Nov. 1, a 74-year-old woman reported a run-in with a deer that was “determined to kill somebody,” according to the Coast Reporter. She was in her own backyard when the deer charged her and her 5-pound chihuahua.

She added that the attacking deer got within 3 feet of her before she jumped up on her veranda and threw a board at it. Some other neighbors also threw rocks, and the deer left before any people or pets were injured. The woman said she was surprised by the attack, as her house is usually surrounded by deer and she’s never been afraid of the animals.

“I’ve had deer sleeping under my window all summer, they have never bothered me, even with their babies,” she said. “[This deer] wanted to kill something. I’ve never seen this.”

The Nov. 1 attack was especially concerning in light of the deadly deer attack that happened at a nearby park on Oct. 26. While walking her dog Elly on a leash that morning, West Kelowna resident Maren Corner was suddenly kicked in the back by a large doe, according to the Coast Reporter. Corner then dropped the leash, and when Elly tried to run away, the doe trampled the small dog and killed it.

“The deer didn’t do it all at once, she just kicked her many times. When Elly tried to get away or start moving, it just belted her,” Maren told reporters. “[The deer] trampled her in front of everybody to death, and nobody could help her.”

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Maren’s run-in seemed out of the ordinary because it was reportedly a doe, and not a buck, that attacked her and her dog. As for the Nov. 1 attack, it’s unclear whether the aggressive deer was a buck or a doe. (The species of deer is also unknown in both incidents, although a recent report found that mule deer are more prevalent in urban areas of Kelowna.) Generally speaking, it’s more common for bucks to go on the attack during this time of the year as they go into rut and seek out females to breed. Leashed pets can also lead to attacks, however, as a barking dog will sometimes trigger a prey response from a frightened or aggressive deer.