Survival Stories: Brutal Deer Fight to the Death | Fight To Survive | FD Survive

The merciless wild, the heartless seeds. When nature unleashes her cruelty, could you escape? Could you survive? These are the true stories of outdoorsmen confronted by death, armed with raw courage and a will to live. They are the ones who beat the odds and return from their own fight to survive. A hormone-fueled buck attacks a fisherman. I was dead. His nephew jumps in with both feet. I had to get involved or he was gonna die. 170 pounds of raw power. And it was lifting, me and Ron. With only their wits. You gotta use your fear to your advantage. And a fish filet knife. Ron's face was right there. This was no bad. I had so much adrenaline. The deer did, Ron did. It was, you know, it was all crazy. Old Halloween morning in Central Texas. Ron Smith, former Marine, and his nephew, Eric Alvarez, are heading to the river to fish. They are just hours away from their favorite pastime, turning into a tale of terror. Fisherman, camper. I don't get into skydiving and stuff like that. You know, I'm fishing and hunting. I fish in any kind of body of water I can find. Whatever's close, whatever my gas pocket money would allow me to go to. Like, I've done a lot of ocean fishing. My biggest fish I ever caught was a 100-pound seven-gill shark out of San Francisco. I've caught catfish as long as my arm. Don't weigh catfish. Who cares? We just eat them. My Uncle Ron's always been an outdoorsman. He's always been a guy that's really good with kids, really good with taking the next generation out. He's always been somebody to look up to. Most of the catfish is what we went after, but if crappie was running, we'd go. This particular day, that's mainly what we was after was crappie. They make the short drive to a popular fishing area, a river that feeds into nearby Eagle Mountain Lake. We don't take a house with us when we go fishing. Leave the chairs at home. We leave the campers at home. Outdoors, we wanna be in the outdoors. It's a short walk to the river and the start of fishing. I'm a lazy fisherman. I like to sit on the riverbank and enjoy my surroundings. So I use live minnows under a bobber. I cast it out with a light pole because they're little fish, so you want some enjoyment. You wanna fight. Use a big pole, there's no fight. Use a little pole, you got a good fight on your hands. From the five-foot bank they're fishing on, it's 30 feet across the river. What Ron and Eric don't know is they're standing on what could be a fatal path. Had our lunch with us, and being a fishing trip, we had our beer with us. We got our lines in the water, and I just now opened my first beer, took a swig of it, and set it down. Looked across the river, and there's a real nice nine-point whitetail buck deer. And I noticed there was a buck over there, and he was raking his antlers against a tree. And me and Ron were checking him out for a few minutes and thought it was a pretty cool thing. The buck's tree-rubbing is classic rutting behavior, and the rut is when deer are most unpredictable. He walked up to the edge of the water looking at us. Then he swam across the river, which we thought was pretty cool, watching the deer swimming right up to us. He was swimming across to us with something in his mind. And if we would've known what was in his mind, we would act different. And it came about probably 30 feet down the bank from us, then walked up real slow out of the river, and walked over up to us. And I actually stuck my hand out and pet the deer a little bit on the head. It seemed totally tame. We thought it was something that had been around people a lot, and it just wasn't afraid. We didn't feel any fear from it or anything like that. And Ron petted a little bit on the back. And then it went off into the, it kind of walked away and went into these trees that were nearby. Ron and Eric aren't alone in their appreciation of the whitetail deer. Perhaps more than any animal, the whitetail is the symbol of America's open spaces. Hunted to numbers of less than a million a century ago, the whitetail has made a stunning comeback. Now over 30 million roam our mountains, forests, and grasslands. Six million are taken by hunters each year, yielding nearly a quarter billion pounds of meat. Around deer, a lot. Having one come up close to me, no. A deer sees a human, he usually takes off. That's why when this deer came up to us and it'd be in a park-like setting, we thought it was a pet. No, when a wild deer sees a human, he runs, he gets away. But this is mating season. And the seemingly docile buck is in fact a 170 pound hormone crazed nine pointer in rut, capable of 35 mile per hour bursts of speed and eight foot vertical leaps. The buck was in rut and I think he was coming over to assert his dominance. Most people think a deer and you think Bambi. Well, deer can actually be very, very dangerous. They kill people every year. Suddenly, the deer breaks for the pair of fishermen. When I looked up and seen that buck coming out of the tree line, I thought I was dead. I didn't think I stood a chance to do anything. The buck the two men were just petting is now charging at them out of the trees, singling out Ron Smith, driving him over the bank and pinning him to the ground. Once he attacked me and we was engaged, there was no fear that's gone out of you at that moment. Anybody been in any tight situations, know you gotta use your fear to your advantage. Get your adrenaline going. Now you gotta beat whatever's attacking you. I had to beat a deer. When I seen the deer take my uncle down to the ground, I knew that I had to get involved or he was gonna die right in front of me. Eric finds the only weapon available and places it in his uncle's hands. It is now an elemental battle out of the Stone Age and the deer is about to unleash its full fury. Former Marine Ron Smith's fishing trip has turned into hand-to-hand combat with a buck crazed by the rut. When a buck is in rut, he changes completely. His hormones change, his thought process changes and his body changes. During the rut, the bucks get extremely aggressive. Their neck swells up so that they can absorb the impact of hitting each other in the head time after time, kind of like a football player. They are extremely aggressive towards each other. They kill each other all the time. A lot of times they'll fight to the death. Ron's nephew, Eric Alvarez, desperately looks for a way to intervene. I picked up a stick. It was probably about like four inches in diameter, a gentle dry log. And I started to hand it to Ron and he grabbed it out of my hand and he hit the deer right over the head with it, like without even thinking. I mean, it broke it right over the deer's head, which completely infuriated the deer. Uncle Ron weighed about 160 pounds and it literally was throwing him around like a ragdoll. And his antlers went on both sides of me. I went in between his antlers. I wrapped his antlers up under my arms and with his momentum hitting me, that drug is bolted to the river. I figured that was the end of it. When you get a wild animal or any animal, your tame dog, if he's in a fight, you get him wet. Most animals quit once they get wet. And when Ron brought him into the river, you know, I was thinking that was probably gonna be the end of it. When he, I mean, he pulled him all the way out into like the middle of the river. So I'm climbing up on the bank. Next thing I feel, his antlers hit me in the butt side, knocking me up on the ground. And he's still charging me. And the deer chased him right out of the river and hit Ron with his horns and knocked him to the ground. He had had antlers right in Ron's chest, goring him on the ground. He got me good that time with his antlers in my chest and stomach. The antlers of a whitetail buck are a wonder of nature. They emerge as living tissue in early spring and grow up to half an inch a day. By autumn, they are fully formed and become dead bone and lethal fighting weapons. Whitetail bucks use their antlers to duel during the rutting or mating season. To the victors belong the does. Whitetails shed their antlers completely in winter. The size of the beams and the number of points are a function of nutrition, as well as age and genetics. I was like, I gotta get in there, you know? And I jumped all the way down with both feet with everything I had and I hit the deer right in its back, right along its back. And I knocked the deer off at Ron. I didn't think about what was gonna happen to me, but I knew before I did it that it was gonna be basically like kill or be killed. It didn't stop the deer. You know, it gave Ron a little bit of time to get up and I grabbed at one side of the antlers and then Ron got up and grabbed the other side of him. How strong he was? One man, I don't care who you are, how big you are, could not beat a deer hand to hand. The deer will win every time. If I didn't have Eric there to back me, to cover my backside, I wouldn't be here telling you this story. We held on tight and pulled its head to the ground, but its knees, front legs would not buckle. It stood on all fours, but only its head was that strong. And it was lifting me and Ron off the ground as we were holding it with everything we had. During the rut, a whitetail buck's neck will double or even triple in size with muscles fed by rushes of natural steroids, testosterone, melatonin, and other biochemicals. The hormonal soup is triggered by changing daylight in autumn. I realized at that point that we didn't have nowhere to go and we were stuck and Ron was totally wore out already. And I couldn't believe Ron had that much in him because I hadn't fought the deer but half as long and I was totally tired. For men and deer, it's now a fight to the death. Texas anglers, Ron Smith and nephew Eric Alvarez have had their morning's fishing trip turned into a primeval struggle between men and beast. It's very rare for deer to attack people, but during the rut, it happens every year. You hear of somebody getting attacked, people getting hurt, killed, severely, severely injured, cars having the windows broken out of them. You hear horror stories all the time. And I told Eric, I said, now watch out for his feet. So Eric maneuvered around to get out of the way of his feet because I don't know if people know it or not, but a deer's hoof is more dangerous than their antler. They're sharper and they're stronger. Eric and I couldn't really figure out what to do with this deer. I couldn't let go. If I let go, he would just keep attacking us. I dreaded having to do anything to the deer. Right as I was thinking that, Ron said, Eric, get the fillet knife off my hip and cut his throat. I told Eric finally, I said, it's time to kill this deer. We ain't got a choice. And I had a fish and fillet knife on my side. A fish and fillet knife is real thin, real sharp, but it's little. You know, it's only like eight or 10 inches long. It's not something you kill with, it's something you clean with. Then I looked down and I could see the fillet knife right there. And I grabbed it immediately knowing what I was gonna do, but I was full of so much adrenaline that I had to steady myself because I was about to cut any fillet knife, so sharp. And Ron's face was right there by the neck where I had to cut with his hands on the horns. So everything was happening so fast and I had so much adrenaline. The deer did, Ron did, it was all crazy. And I got the knife and I slowed down and I positioned it. Eric only had about a four to six inch spot without getting me. And this whole time, the deer's jumping around, I'm moving around. But Eric makes a perfect stab and gets the deer through the throat and the juggler vein. And we just held on to it, you know, it bled out. Even after all that, after it was done bleeding, it was still standing there and it was breathing and you could hear all the noises and the heat from it, everything. Even mortally wounded, the buck refuses to surrender. And then it stood back up again and then it fell down and it was dead. And I go to get up and I can't. At that moment, I realized the deer's antler was through my hand and had me pinned to the ground. And during this whole process, I never knew I was injured. I was beat up in the chest and stomach, but I didn't know that antler was through my hand. So I had to pull my hand off his antler before I could get up. Ron got into the river and Brett washed his hand off. And when he pulled it out, he'd had an antler went all the way through his thumb into his palm. And then he was having a hard time with anything at that point. I knew I needed to get him to the hospital. Eric helps his uncle back to the truck. They are headed to the emergency room with Ron fearing infection. There, they'll learn the man-made cause of the buck's behavior. Having lived through violent combat with a rut crazed nine point buck, Eric Alvarez rushes his wounded and exhausted uncle, Ron Smith, to the nearest hospital. Really, I was thinking the deer was rabid. That was my first thought. And they were having him, you know, we said, look, he's just been attacked by a deer. Ron needs to get to, you know, in the emergency room. Sir, why don't you come with me? We'll take you right away. Wait there, we'll be out, we'll get you and let you know how he's doing. And they made me wait out in the lobby. The emergency room personnel treat Ron's hand and check him for other punctures and possible broken bones. That looks pretty nasty. How'd you do that? I got tangled up with a deer. Antler went right through my hand. In the lobby, Eric has a visitor, someone he expected. The game warden. And I thought, well, I guess I'm going to jail, you know, for poaching a deer, you know, cause I knew that it was, wasn't deer season. You know, and I, and he sat down and he said, tell me what happened. And I told him the same story I'm telling now. And he said, I'm just going to say you, you got lucky. You didn't get hurt a lot worse. I'm saying it's self-defense and you're okay. That's what he told me. The game warden tells Eric more though. He's already examined the carcass and determined from its swollen neck and glands that it was indeed rutting. But its extreme aggression is more a product of human ignorance. We had a report of a man in the area. He was feeding a deer. And by all descriptions, this is the exact same deer. The game warden told me that there was a man that had been feeding that deer corn. So the deer had actually gotten used to him and started to lose its fear of people. And that's exactly why that happened, I think. I think if the deer attacked us because it was in rut and it was territorial but I don't think it would have attacked us unless there was a man or somebody that was taking, get feeding it and got it used to people. And habituated wild animal that no longer fears people becomes not only a threat to human life, but to its own. Eventually a deer or any other animal not afraid of humans will try to dominate them which can lead to serious injury for people. And once an animal has hurt someone, its own fate is sealed because then it will have to be found and put down. So hand feeding a deer is simply cruelty masquerading as kindness. Don't let that deer come up to you. Do whatever you got to, to keep him away from you. Protect yourself. I don't care if it's a deer, any animal in the wild comes up to you, worry about it. A little squirrel comes walking up to you, worry about it. Cause he's probably got rabies. There's no reason for a wild animal to walk up to a human being. The deer's head went to a lab to be checked for rabies. It wasn't infected. But a question remained, what should be done with the meat? But there was a homeless family living on the river and the game warden asked me if it was okay for me to let that homeless family have the deer. Cause by law, I couldn't take it. Eric and I could not have that deer cause we was the ones who killed it. I told him, okay. And we thought that was an awesome thing to do. I certainly didn't want nothing to do with that deer, eating it or anything. Ron Smith will never forget his day of hand-to-hand combat with a white tail buck. And perhaps he took away from the experience more than he lost. Answering them with the deer made me more interested in going outdoors. When you go outdoors, there are so many things that can happen. And then most of the time, not all the time, they're all good. People who live in the city, stay in their houses, do not know the enjoyment of being outdoors. I do know the enjoyment of being outdoors. Even if bad things happen every once in a while. There ain't nothing in this world except for my health stops me from hunting and fishing. I will hunt and fish until the day I die. Ron Smith continued his life as an avid outdoorsman. In the summer of 2013, shortly after sharing this story, Ron passed away. His incredible tale of his encounter with a deer is just one example of the adventurous spirit that guided his entire life.